Re: Thoughts after running with the Watch, part 2
I assume when you do an outdoor activity, it will automatically connect to the GPS if you have your phone with you to track the activity? I like that it said what the weather was, but I would also like it to map my route. Hopefully that will come in an update.
Also, if I want to see how many miles I ran in a month, where can I do that? I can see its not pulling the data from Health into Runkeeper, even though that's an app I have connected to Health. am I missing something?
Good questions...so for the first part, if you have your Watch connected to your iPhone, and you bring it with you, it automatically uses the GPS in the phone to track distance, pace, etc. It provides for a more accurate run. According to Apple's documentation, they recommend a total of 20 minutes of running/walking outdoors with a clear sky (ergo a good GPS connection) to "calibrate" the watch to your pace.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204516
This article also explains more about the details of the Workout app:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204523
I also do P90X, and for those exercises, I use "other". I found it still constantly tracked my heartrate, giving me minute by minute stats, and average heart rate after. Since those workouts are an intense hour or so, I more than exceeded the 30-minute requirement. Sunday, it will suggest a new goal for me - based on my daily activity level. It seems to get better with more data to work with.
As for heart rate, the workout app will measure any time you have your rate between 70-100% of your max HR, based on the Mayo Clinic's rules: take 220, subtract your age, and that's your max. I'm 40, so my max is 180. Then divide by .7, to get your 70% rate, which for me is 126. That's how some people are reporting their entire workouts aren't measured in the workout app - you have to actually start a workout to do the constant measurements. Otherwise it measures your heart beat every 10 min.
I wish it mapped runs too - even in the iPhone Activity app. No such luck, as you said.
So - Health doesn't feed into RunKeeper. But the opposite is true. In the Health app, go to Sources, and you should see RunKeeper - if not I think you add Health rights from the RK app. Then see what it's allowed to write and read data from and to. For me, I've always manually plugged in my runs, as I used Nike+ Running to measure my runs. Now that I'm thinking of migrating to Apple's solution, I'm just manually plugging in my runs from Health to RunKeeper. I have nearly 1500 miles logged in RK, and I don't want to lose all that data!
I wouldn't really advocate for one or the other - we all have to just pick an ecosystem.