Life After Marathons: A Running/barre3/Coffee/Life Journal

[col1]

It was not, in fact, as small as the urgent care doc said it was.

Today I got my third ever set of xrays and my first fracture diagnosis! Woohoo! (Small fracture and thankfully no surgery but still a fracture)

Oh no Wishing you a speedy recovery

 

[SarahDisney]

Oh no Wishing you a speedy recovery

Thank you! So far things have been ok other than getting an incorrect diagnosis at first so I'm optimistic that it'll be a pretty smooth and speedy recovery.

 

[SarahDisney]

Anyway, some updates. I went with the modern apartment. I think I'm happy with the decision. Ultimately, both apartments met my needs, and I was more excited about the kitchen in the modern apartment than anything

One of the nice things about having this journal is that I can go back and look at what I was doing/thinking/liking in the past to help me make decisions. Sometimes that's health/fitness decisions. Sometimes it's apartments.

Currently trying to decide some apartment things so I went back to revisit some thoughts from when I first decided to move into this apartment.

Also, exciting news: I ran for 15 minutes this morning! A little over a mile. On the treadmill. I'm hoping to try outside soon but weather + taking it slow. I also will have to figure out what to do about running once I'm cleared to return to my regular exercise routine but we're not there yet.

Also I'm gonna try to remember to write up a Vivoactive 6 review this weekend, in case anyone is interested in shiny new Garmin things.
Spoiler alert: I finally remembered to turn off the smart wake alarm this morning. It's fairly useless.

 

[FFigawi]

One of the nice things about having this journal is that I can go back and look at what I was doing/thinking/liking in the past to help me make decisions. Sometimes that's health/fitness decisions. Sometimes it's apartments.

Currently trying to decide some apartment things so I went back to revisit some thoughts from when I first decided to move into this apartment.

What is winning right now, the lower rent or the better kitchen?

 

[SarahDisney]

What is winning right now, the lower rent or the better kitchen?

What a question. I think I'm leaning better kitchen but it's been a tough decision.

 

[SarahDisney]

Garmin Vivoactive 6: A Review​

I promised a review of my new Vivoactive 6, and now that I've had it for almost two months, I think it's time. Also, fair warning, google gemini wrote a lot of this review (based on my thoughts) so I take no responsibility for anything. Sorry, while I was gone I became an AI bot (I use AI at work too ... it will not replace me, I need to tell it to do the same thing 4 times before it does it right).

Things I Don't Love:

• The "Smart Wake" alarm feature kinda sucks. I finally turned it off because it was consistently waking me up at the very end of the 30-minute window. There were times that I woke up on my own before it went off ... which seems like maybe there was an earlier time it could have woken me up? I had high hopes for the smart alarm but sigh.
• The other big new feature of the VA6 is suggested walking workouts. I had high hopes for these, but I think they're not for me. For one thing, you need to pick 5-7 days that you will walk ... and walking 5 days a week doesn't really fit my schedule (it's probably awesome if walking is your only exercise). Plus, it doesn't update suggestions based on whether or not I actually do the walks - so now I'm up to 55 minute suggested walks even though the longest one I've done so far was 35 minutes (that was a few weeks ago).
• I really wish I could start phone workouts from the watch. Like, if I want to do a meditation, I don't want to have to connect my watch to headphones, I want to tell the watch I want to do it and have the audio come from the phone. It's a small thing, but it's annoying.
• This is a big one for me. The always-on display is not truly always-on. It turns on with a gesture or a touch. The VA3 was truly always on - the screen could dim but it never went black (if you had it on always on). I get that this is a battery thing but sometimes I just want to look at my watch and see the time without having to touch it or move my wrist.

Things I Do Love:

• This is a pretty big upgrade! I get way more detailed workout stats right on the watch after activities, which I love. I even set it up to prompt me for effort/feeling at the end of my run this morning, which is a nice touch to keep track of how I'm actually doing. I really like the "Workout Benefit" section (maintaining health/improving fitness, etc) - I think that will be super useful in balancing my activity once I'm back on a normal schedule.
• Water tracking and period tracking – yeah, two totally different things, but both are super useful to have right on my wrist. I used to have to open my phone to do both of these and it kinda sucked. I still have to open the phone for some period tracking (mostly if my cycle is a day or two off) but I can track most things on the watch and it's so much easier.
• Breathwork, meditation, mobility... they've added a whole bunch of new sport modes that will make tracking some of the thigs I do a lot cleaner. No more yoga for everything! And meditation and breathwork are things I never tracked before, so yay more activities. I do the breathwork sometimes before bed and I'm excited to get started with meditations now that I've paired my headphones (see gripe above) and with mobility once I can put weight on my left arm again (hopefully soon).
• Sleep Score is good, but I feel like it's missing the most important part - what does it mean?? I really wish it would give me some actual suggestions on how to tweak my day if I get a poor night's sleep. Just telling me I slept badly isn't super helpful without the "what now?"
• Battery Life is a huge win. It's definitely an improvement over my 6+ year old VA3, and I even think it's better than the VA3 was when it was new. My first charge was almost two weeks after I got it (granted, I didn't wear it for a few days and also wasn't using the GPS at all so I wasn't draining the battery as much). But seriously, I'm charging it way less than the VA3, which is fantastic.
  • ... although I think I should charge it before work tomorrow
• GPS has been pretty good so far. It's finding the signal decently fast and the GPS maps look right. I mean, it's Manhattan, so it's always going to be a bit weird with all the tall buildings, but today I used the "Use all" setting (as opposed to GPS-only) on my run, and it actually looked pretty accurate. I was impressed.
• The menu! I love, love, love the new menu/stats display (if you haven't seen it, google - it's pretty)! It's so much better that it lists things instead of making me go through different screens, and everything just looks really well-presented.

Things I'm Still Forming Opinions on:

• Music Storage & Playback: I've loaded music onto the watch, but I haven't actually used it for listening since I always have my phone with me. So, while the feature is there, it's not particularly useful for my personal use case.
• Stress Tracking: It keeps telling me my stress is high, and I can't decide if that's actually true or if somehow wearing it on my broken (hopefully mostly healed by now) arm is impacting that. I still have mixed feelings about stress tracking. Which is disappointing because I want stress tracking to work well for me.
• Morning Report: The morning report is nice for telling me about my sleep, but honestly, I haven't found it super helpful overall. Also, I can't decide if I want the weather background or the art background.
• Body Battery: I was all about tracking Body Battery when I first got the watch, but now I'm kind of over it. I don't really know what impact it's supposed to have on my day, so it feels a bit... pointless? Am I using body battery wrong? Is it supposed to be helpful?

Overall Thoughts:
So, yeah, the VA6 is a definite upgrade from my old VA3, and I'm genuinely happy I made the upgrade It's got some features I probably won't use much, but to be honest, the VA3 probably did too. I like having data, and the more detailed data and health tracking is definitely making my inner data nerd happy.

TL;DR: The Vivoactive 6 is a solid upgrade with great new activity tracking and battery life, though some "smart" features aren't quite there. Overall, I'm glad I made the switch!