Pail Tales

It seems there is a green theme for my favorite things: Oboz hiking shoes and Withings watch with new Barton watch band. Oh! My green reading glasses and green comforter should be in the picture. Who knew?

My experience over the last few weeks suggests that the Withings watch counts about half of my steps. I think of it as a stride counter. Both the watch and the Oura ring under-count steps when the steps are due to short bursts of activity (walking down the hall to get clothes out of the dryer after sitting reading for an hour). The ring over-counts steps in certain situations. For instance, it will not count all this typing as steps, but it will count weightlifting or yoga as steps; apparently it senses correctly the difference between sitting and motion. However, I got an epic 17,000+ step count on the ring recently, when I drove my car for 10 hours. The ring detected the physical work and mental focus involved in driving cross-country and translated that into steps. The watch counted 2,465 steps that day; it only counted walking to/from the car when I stopped at gas stations and rest stops. The ring was clearly over-estimating steps and it appears t...

Yesterday, we had a break in the afternoon weather (no gray clouds or lightning) and it was not brutally hot/sunny. So, we went to the preserve for a long, slow hike. We walked out to the Ocotillo Hill trail, one we don’t often do. The trail begins on the crest of a hill, such that it seems my head is level with the tops of 50 feet tall Saguaros and then it winds down through some switchbacks so that I am walking through a forest of Saguaros. The picture does not really capture it or the calming effect it has on me. The vegetation I see on this part of the preserve is different. I see fewer paloverde and more mesquite. The jojoba and greasewood are 5 feet tall instead of 2 feet tall. There is thick underbrush. There is more water and shade in this wash area (a normally dry river bed that floods with the rains). The trail is more sandy less rocky, but there are more outcroppings of weathered volcanic rocks. It was an amazing evening walk. ...

We have been slowly increasing the length and pace of our hikes. We have had some wonderful weather for evening hikes this week. Yesterday promised to be lovely so we took the opportunity to go up the Lost Arrow trail at Sweetwater Preserve off Tortolita Rd. It is a 10 to 15 minute drive from the house and then a 1 hour walk to another world. The ocotillo and saguaro cacti were incredible in the evening light. The rain has kept the skies clear, so we could see all the way across the valley East to the Catalina mountains. It is so beautiful - peaceful and exotic; it is calming. Walking up the canyon looking West into the Tucson mountains was fascinating - the different terrain and the plants. The cottontail rabbits and quail were out, as were dozens of different birds. Earlier this week we were followed by two small hawks who were hunting collaboratively. Watching them fly was awesome. There were lots of sounds...

Early in July, I compared the daily step counts of the Oura ring and the Withings watch (see post of 7/9/2019). In an informal test over a short course, I concluded that, “...the watch consistently counted half the steps, as though it were counting strides, not steps.” In a subsequent multi-day test, I compared the step counts from the two devices after wearing them on the same hand all day. Again, the Withings watch counted differently. Since that time, I have been wearing a more comfortable watch band and have been taking longer hikes. Below is a plot of the step counts I got over the last 10 days. Two things are immediately obvious. (1) The two devices show the same lows and highs. Both are good for looking at changes in performance over time. (2) The two devices disagree a lot on the actual number of steps. If I were using the ring to track the number of days I walked 10,000 steps a day (the default goal of most fitness trackers), I...