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Transcript\n
[00:00:00] Zac Hall: Hey, how are you this week?\n
[00:00:01] Rahul Matta: I’m good. How are you?\u00a0\n
A guy named Paul\n
[00:00:04] Zac Hall: I’m I’m getting by I want to talk first about a person named Paul, who? Yeah. Hey Paul. You know, we, we talked the, in the episode previously about the star kind of our introduction and and how we were connected by I believe ha. A nine to five Mac happy hour listener who kind of heard my discussion and you know, looking for a feature that would replace Nike run club to give you personal records, personal best from runs and specific distances.\n
[00:00:39] And they turned me on to your app tempo and that’s how we got in touch. And that was a while ago. And I actually, I went, I went back after we were talking to like search for the tweet because I remembered it was a tweet that somebody had sent it. That was, that was the recommendation. And I couldn’t find it.\n
[00:00:55] And I just figured it all, you know, things, things go away. But you had an email this week. Tell me about your email. You had.\u00a0\n
[00:01:02] Rahul Matta: Yeah. So I got an email from Paul because I I had a request out during our last session to please reach out. And Paul was like, Hey, here’s this screenshot off? What I had mentioned to Zach and you know, he’s like, I’m super glad you guys were able to connect and what you’re doing right now.\n
[00:01:19] And I was like, wow, this is amazing. You know, they’ll power off like the internet and podcasting, I guess. And I, I do want to say thank you, Paul. And he has a feature request that I’ll be talking about in the future episodes. And that’s something that I’m starting to work on. I think it’s something that.\n
[00:01:38] A lot of folks have requested and it’s just been sitting on the list because of all the other reasons that that things that I have been shipping with temple, but this, this feature you know, I think this is the best reason to prioritize it all the way to the top. So It’s happening now, it’s in the works.\n
[00:01:55] Zac Hall: That is awesome. I can’t wait to hear more about it. And I think Paul took his account private, which is why I didn’t see the tweet anymore. But that makes perfect sense. It’s like, Oh my gosh. That’s so cool. Cause it was from so many years ago from 2021 and that is just too cool. Absolutely. So the next thing this week is I want to check on, on our, on our health homework that we introduced last week.\n
Last week’s health homework\n
[00:02:19] So on the onset of these six episodes and watch time, you challenged me in the first week to run three different times for five minutes or more. And I didn’t. Quite meet that challenge in the first episode. So that was again the homework for the next next week. And then my, my assignment to you was to complete an Apple fitness plus time to walk exercise, which is a walking workout from the Apple watch, which is mixed with storytelling and music from someone who Apple selects.\n
[00:02:51] So I want to begin with you. I think that might be the easiest to do. Did you complete your homework and if so, how did it go?\u00a0\n
[00:02:57] Rahul Matta: I absolutely completed my homework and it went really well overall. I really enjoyed it. I listened to the. To the audio by ouzo. Duba. She is an actress from orange is the new black series on Netflix.\n
[00:03:13]I haven’t watched it. I, now it’s on my list to go watch it, but essentially you know, she talked about her story from being stage artists to all the way to now being you know and Emmy award winner and you know, it was, to me, the entire walk was generally it, I was surprised by the fact that.\n
[00:03:37]It, it felt so intimate in the sense that it, it almost felt like I was walking with the speaker. I think the combination of having the AirPods on with noise cancellation and the way the recording has been done and the background noises My guess is the timing of my walk. I did it like late in the evening.\n
[00:03:57] So it was like, you know, almost like, you know starting to get dark by the time I finished it was dark and it might have been that at the same time, because all the background noises, there were a few times when I kind of turned around and was like, is there a really somebody like around me or did I just hear somebody?\n
[00:04:11] And it was just like, you know, just from the audio background. Yeah. So that was good. It, it reminded me of the times back in the day when I used to live in Chicago and commute to work, take the train and whatnot. And my walks from the train station to home or work were a good way to like, just.\n
[00:04:30] You know, wind down and wrap up the day. So it just kind of felt like that. And I’ve done that on and off here, just working from home now, but It’s with the last year and pandemic, it’s been very difficult to get out, you know, after a certain time, during the day because of kids being home all the time on that.\n
[00:04:48] I mean, I can go out with my kids, but it’s very different than when you’re just going on a walk by yourself. Right. I did have a technical issue, man. I started the walk. Because I had, so, you know, like I said, last time I don’t really run with any music or podcasts or anything. So usually there, you know, I don’t have my AirPods on.\n
[00:05:10] So as soon as I put them on, I was like, Oh, I need to, you know, this feels very awkward. And as I started the walk, it was very loud and I couldn’t turn the volume down. So I had to stop the walk. And then go look for the volume, turning the crown didn’t change anything. So I had to manually go into the now playing app on the watch and turn it down to actually fix that.\n
[00:05:37] So that was kind of like really weird because I would imagine my guess is this is probably just a bug, because that seems like a very bad interaction. But overall, it was just fantastic. The fo the first five minutes were like I was walking in my running shoes, so my feet were like, what’s going on here?\n
[00:05:56] You know, like I was like, should I be running? But as soon as I got into it, you know, after the first five minutes it felt really calming and really relaxing. I mean, especially because it had just rained in, so it was like, just. Drizzling. And so just, just to right. Set up for that date, it just felt right.\n
[00:06:17] So yeah. Overall I enjoyed it. Will I do it again? Yes, but cool. I would say the one feature request I would make here for this time to walk thing is After first three days of after three days of doing it, I had it on my watch, but it irked me that it takes like the very first spot when you launch the workout app on the watch.\n
[00:06:42] And I’m just not used to it. You know, like when I’m walking out the door six o’clock in the morning and just trying to like, just start my run. I don’t want to like scroll up or down. It’s just like, you know, my muscle memory is to say, you know, whatever I have to do to, you know, my fingers know like, okay, this is how I’m going to start to run.\n
[00:07:00] And now I had to like scroll up a little bit and I re I removed it from my list of workouts. So I’ll have to like, you know, go back and forth every time I do this workout to maintain it. But yeah, Heidi\u00a0\n
[00:07:12] Zac Hall: recommended. That makes sense. I did one, I did the Dolly Parton episode just to test the feature out and then found that I really enjoyed it.\n
[00:07:21]I haven’t done one since then. And that was when it was first released about a month ago. But I’ll talk about today. I’m kind of. In a, in a mode where I just want to be active all the time and not be stagnant. And I’ve already done the gym today. And I, I thought about, well, maybe I’ll go back in the evening and do the gym again.\n
[00:07:40] But I think, I think variety is also very important and making. You know, being active, sustainable. And so what I have in mind for after we finished recording today is to go to a bridge and beach that I’ve spent a lot of time running and do a time to walk exercise there. Just because, you know, I want to be in motion, but I don’t necessarily want to.\n
[00:08:04] You know, do anything too intense because I’ve already exercised today and I don’t want to burn out. And so time to walk is, is I think a pretty good fit for that. I also don’t want to, I kind of, it’s kind of a mix between like bringing a podcast or music and it’s, it’s a little bit of both in that it’s.\n
[00:08:23] It’s spoken word and then in some music involved as well. So I’m looking forward to having that in my rotation, but I totally understand what you mean about it being right up top because they’re promoting the heck out of it right now as it’s brand new. Right. And, and that means putting that at the top of the list.\n
[00:08:39] Rahul Matta: Yeah. Yeah. I I, I mean, I completely get it, but at the end of the day, you know, app it’s Apple, they, they know better than this in terms of like doing the right thing. So I, I would imagine over time it would just you know, find its place on how we use it versus\u00a0\n
[00:08:55] Zac Hall: in the only plan to have like maybe a half.\n
Zac’s life update\n
[00:08:59] Well, maybe, maybe a dozen or so, maybe 10 of these in total, and then they’re not going to have any more until, you know, they decide to do it again. So at that point it really shouldn’t be at the top. I mean, that’s, that’s a very good point. So for me as listeners will know, I postponed last week’s episode and took some personal time both from, from wash time and from happy hour.\n
[00:09:21] And it took a couple of personal days on Thursday and Friday last week to sort of just focus on, on things happening in life. And and I will say I did not run first week that I was challenged to run for five minutes or more for three, three, three different times. Initially really it was that I was just putting it off and I knew I only had to do it at only at least three times.\n
[00:09:44] And so that meant I could do like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday but life got in the way come Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and all of a sudden those days that I put it off. Four weren’t available in the same way. And, and so that was kind of a lesson all on its own. Do things when you can do them, not when you think you might be able to do them.\n
[00:10:02] And and then the next, the week after, so this last week that we’re in, I, I did I certainly did complete the exercise and running for five minutes or more on three different days. I’ve also kind of. Decided, I mean, we’re, we’re going to talk about some of our high level fitness goals later in this episode, but I’ve also kind of decided that maybe, well, certainly that, that right now in the condition that I’m in physically.\n
[00:10:28] It’s running is, is in the rotation because I, I can’t ever just go for a walk and be content. I always like, like you did, when you first started that walk with your running shoes on, you felt like, Oh, should you, so you start running. I always feel that even if I tell myself I don’t want to run, you know, all start a walk and it’s like this could, this could be more fun if I ride, you know, it’s more intense and, and just the whole feeling is a bit different.\n
[00:10:52]And so I think running will always be a part of my rotation, but for the short term, While I’m not necessarily training for anything. And I don’t have a goal that I’m trying to reach. I think that running is just one part of a full week exercise. Most of it, what, I’ve, what I’ve found I did take, I took a walk the other day and I was just kind of, you know, in my head thinking and I didn’t even bring my watch or anything.\n
[00:11:23] I just went out for a walk on my own and And just kind of walked into my legs, started to burn and tingle a little bit, you know, from, from, from moving and then turned around. And it was, it was you know, it was, it was probably a mile and a half walk. But after that I was kind of, that kind, kinda like woke me up and then I.\n
[00:11:42] Felt motivated to go to the gym and, you know, wear a mask and bring you know, a towel and clean everything off really well. But I was just kind of, sort of in a place where I needed sort of a, a people environment. And that was the thing that kind of lifted my spirits. And so, yeah. I did, I did run on the treadmill and that affirmed again, that running outdoors is just so much easier for me than like running on a treadmill because when I run outside for the, for the five minutes, I can run without stopping.\n
[00:12:15] I can run a mile without stopping. Like that’s not a problem on the treadmill though. I feel the need to like slow it down and walk and catch my breath. And like, I can’t, I don’t know. It’s my, I think I’m overdoing it. Or maybe it’s just easier outside than on a treadmill, but\u00a0\n
[00:12:33] Rahul Matta: it, it does make sense. I always find it to be easier to, I mean, I don’t have a treadmill at home.\n
[00:12:40]Primarily for the reason that, you know I, I just find it a boring and the, because it’s, it’s, it just seems like a different kind of mechanical movement than running outside. Like if you, if you look at the pace chart for any run done outside what you would notice is the pace never stays exactly the same.\n
[00:13:03] And the fact that the treadmill just imposes that on you. It’s actually over time, once you have, you know, Gotten your legs back, you’re running legs back in terms of like, just being able to like keep running. It’s good for me, a certain level of consistency, you can actually get on a treadmill and you can maintain a certain level of pace.\n
[00:13:25] And then it, you know, it just works well. But if you’re just starting It’s it’s actually probably harder.\u00a0\n
[00:13:32]Zac Hall: And I would even make sense, which is discouraging.\u00a0\n
[00:13:35] Rahul Matta: I mean, I, the way you do that then is like, you know I think it’s coach Galloway Jeff Galloway he he his running pattern is like very well-known it’s essentially like, I mean, depending on you just find a rhythm off, like run for so many minutes and then take a minute.\n
[00:13:52] Break or whatever time you need. But it’s not like, you know, exact same intervals. It’s more like, you know, run for 10 minutes, take a minute off and just walk. And it’s actually something that he has marathon programs for that kind of stuff. And people run like crazy fast marathons. Based on that trend.\n
[00:14:09] Like they, they actually do that even do you know the train for that? And some people even do, I don’t know. I think some people do it during the races too. So it’s, there, there is value to like taking short breaks within your runs. And if you’re on a treadmill, especially just starting and trying to get back into the rhythm, this might be, you know, worth it to try, like just run for five minutes and then.\n
[00:14:31] You know, do it for like, you know, walk for 30 seconds or something like that. Whatever feels comfortable.\u00a0\n
[00:14:37] Zac Hall: That makes, that makes a lot of sense. The time that I had Peloton, I don’t know how much it cost, like $3,000 treadmill to review and then send back on loan. They have the best interface I’ve, I’ve seen for changing your pace because it’s like, Oh, it’s like a wheel that you roll up and down.\n
[00:14:54] And instead of, you know, buttons that you mash or a speed that you input and it just felt really natural. Like if you want to slow down a little bit, you just do kind of a gesture over the wheel and it slows you down. And it’s almost like an in sync with your motion. Then if you want to speed up, you do the same thing and kind of the bigger the motion, the more you go.\n
[00:15:11]But, but again, that is an exorbitantly expensive treadmill. And. And I wish that interface was copied by everybody that makes treadmills of all of all prices. But other than that, the elliptical is, is really where I started getting in shape for the first time back around 2017. 20, well, 2016, I would say.\n
[00:15:30]And that, that’s a thing where it’s low friction enough and it, it doesn’t beat you up, but you do, you know, I, I end it by sweating a lot. And my heart rate is consistently up and I burn calories and I’m happy with it. And I can do different things. I can listen to music. I can listen to a podcast.\n
[00:15:50] I can, I can watch a video or something and pass the time by. And, and that, that’s what I found the most enjoyment just forgetting cardio this past week is, is doing that. So, so, so mixing in some runs, but at least doing a half an hour of elliptical when When I exercise and that’s been, that’s been, that’s been really good for me.\n
[00:16:11] I think that’s, that’s what I did exclusively. Like every single day, whenever I, I first lost a bunch of weight. And then when I lost the weight, I was then kind of getting in deeper and running was not easy, but it was much more approachable than it is today for me. And I think that that’s kind of the path I’m going to go back on as is focused a lot on elliptical.\n
[00:16:34]You know, eating better and, and also, you know, mixing in things like I’ve, I’ve certainly felt that my arms aren’t as work as they should be, or as, as they have in the past. So I’ve been doing, you know, different, different weights. And, and that’s. That’s something that I’m lacking in. And so at the end of the day, if I, if I feel sore, you know, in my arms, I feel better than then.\n
[00:16:55] I just kind of feel, you know, like they’re just kind of flailing around. And I definitely feel like over the last, you know, several months I’ve lost some strength that I used to have. And so yeah, and, and it was, again, all of this is. Comes from your, your homework challenge of, you know, try to make a habit out of running and it’s become I’ll, I’ll put on my running shoes, you know, to, to, to get out and getting that mindset.\n
[00:17:20] And then from there now I’m already in the mode of, you know, movement. And what else do I want to do? And I think now that it’s not going to be a hard habit to, to build because there’s more motivation there that I had before. To, to sort of self-improve and everything. So it’s, it’s so far so good.\n
[00:17:38] That’s great\u00a0\n
[00:17:38] Rahul Matta: to hear. I just have one tiny comment and maybe a question, like in terms of consistency, do you try to do it at the same time during the day, or does it just vary a bit based on your school? Yeah, so I, I,\u00a0\n
[00:17:54] Zac Hall: so. A long time ago. First thing in the morning was the best time for me because I was motivated by closing my Apple watch rings and then having them close for the whole day.\n
[00:18:05]What I’ve found myself getting into the rhythm of now is after I finished working, then the next thing I do is I go exercise and I think that’s. Extremely sustainable based on my schedule and my kids’ schedules. And, you know, when basically I, if I finished working at 4:00 PM central, then I can go and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll have between four, four o’clock and like five 30, five 45 to pick up the kids.\n
[00:18:38] And that gives me a lot of flexibility and, and spending a full hour in the gym or something, you know, and And, and, and so that that’s, that’s kind of where I’m successful is if I can make something that’s that’s I can do over and over again as a routine versus I found some time here. I found some time there.\n
[00:18:59]I, I do enjoy first thing in the morning. And actually today I had an opportunity to go to the gym earlier than later because I needed a, to run an errand and I happened to be right, right by the gym. And so it was all right. And I, and again, I like having done something earlier in the day than later.\n
[00:19:15] But also, I don’t, I don’t mind the chance to sleep in and then jump into work. And then as soon as I’m done working, use the exercise as a way to decompress, I think that’s all right. And, and that’s so, so I think that, that that’s, the answer really is, is after work, not too late in the day, but, but, you know, early evening.\n
[00:19:37] Rahul Matta: Yeah. I think I would say. Consistency might help here a little bit, at least to form a habit. That’s just my personal experience, but you’re still starting. So find the rhythm. You might even find consistency across different days. Right? So Mondays could be first thing in the morning and Tuesdays could be like, you know, the last thing during the day.\n
[00:19:59]Yeah. And that’s fine, but it’s just like teaching error. You know, you’re subconsciously like your body also gets used to that habit and that format offline, this is when things happen. And this is when nutrition happens. This has been sleep happens which kind of helps overall in the long run\u00a0\n
[00:20:23] Zac Hall: too.\n
[00:20:24] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I look back, I look forward to not reporting back that I’ve had challenges, but that I’ve had successes in the coming weeks. And, and sharing that here really quickly. I also wanted to talk a bit about kind of what me down last week and kind of where my head space has been because I’m feeling better now and it’s easier to talk about on the upswing then than, you know, when you’re in the pets.\n
[00:20:46]But basically. You know, I, I was very open. And when I started doing this podcast, watch times talk about mental health. Yeah. And, and some specific situations I was going through that I found challenging and where the watch and health and fitness were helpful. And. And last August, I made the decision to move to Orlando and focus heavily on uncovering space and you know, being close to NASA and Kennedy space center.\n
[00:21:15] And I made a ton of friends there and more friends that I’ve made. Before, you know, living in Mississippi, you know, and it’s and way faster. And so I was very happy there. But, but my, but my kids were here in Mississippi and it’s an eight hour drive and it was all kind of the, the reaction to getting divorced after five years and being with the person that I was with for 10 years.\n
[00:21:40] And You know, I, I think it was me trying to make the best of a, kind of a rotten situation that I was in. And and it served me well, you know, some of my goals in going there were to focus on my health and fitness and self-improvement, and I did not make time for that. And those four months that I was there.\n
[00:21:56]But I made the decision I’d say last, last week too. Began the process of moving back so that I could see my kids more consistently than I was. It’s something that whenever I, I, my, my, my, my stepdaughter she’s lived with me since she was 10 months old. And she’s, she goes to her dad’s every other weekend, but for most of the time she she’s with us and.\n
[00:22:20] Then when my son was born, you know, there were issues in the marriage before that and after that, but it was something that I, I just couldn’t conceive the, the notion of not seeing my son every single day. And so we stayed together and try it again and then took some time apart and then got back together again.\n
[00:22:36] And you know, ultimately it didn’t, didn’t go as planned, but it kinda, it kind of hit me that. You know, in the beginning, I could never see myself giving good time with my kids. And then ultimately what I was doing was putting a really big barrier between myself and my kids and that I wasn’t happy with with how much I was seeing them.\n
[00:22:53]And so I’ve clearly began the process of moving back to Mississippi and it’ll be done in just a couple of weeks. So I’ll be kind of back and forth in the meantime. But also I kind of got in my head that. You know, I want to unwind this distancing that I’ve done to the point where, you know, I want to fight for my marriage and I want the family to be together in the same house that I, that I, I don’t accept that, you know, there’s when my son, he’s three that there’s this 15 years of like, you know, parenting separately and apart.\n
[00:23:25]And just this really determined about that and, and almost like It it’s almost like, you know, I had this big idea and it didn’t, it didn’t matter. I was just going to go and do it. And of course the other person is, is, you know, half of the equation. And there’s sort of just no interest in, in doing that right now or in the future.\n
[00:23:45] And you know, she’s happily happy in a, in a new relationship and that’s been difficult for me to kind of come around on and it’s. Taking a lot of counsel with friends and, and, and, you know, self-thought, and, and, and time spent exercising. When that helps me so much for the endorphins and everything, you just feel better than, than doing nothing.\n
[00:24:07]To kind of realize, you know, my, my part in a lot of things and the, the costs of me going away for those four months, you know, which was going to be much longer than that. And, and, and that I can’t just walk back in and say, you know, let’s, let’s put everything back together again. So I’ve slowly had to transition from that big lofty goal I had of kind of fixing everything and, and, and thinking that because I learned lessons and, and, you know, a Mueller and wiser now, Things can just fall into place again that it’s not entirely up to me.\n
[00:24:38] And so I’ve had to accept that this is still where I want to be, you know, with my kids so I can have them every other week. And you know, that, that being available, being here and, and, and accessible is. Is all that’s, you know, I nothing’s owed to me and that I, you know, I I’m supposed to be here and be available.\n
[00:25:01] And so there have already been situations in the last week where I’ve been helpful just in being, being present and being, you know, the next town over instead of eight hours away. But it has been a big, like punch in the gut to, to, to go from four months of trying to kind of get over, you know, a five-year marriage to, you know, getting the idea in my head that I can, I can put this back together.\n
[00:25:26] And it’s obvious that it’s worth it, that it, that it’s meant to be this way. And then if I work hard enough that I can have this goal and then realizing that it’s, I’m only half of the equation and the other half of, you know, the, the other side of it as a whole other person with their own life. And so so it’s, it’s been, I would say it’s been very hard this past week, too.\n
[00:25:47] Kind of realign my expectations and decide, you know, kind of realize that the house that you bought together, isn’t, isn’t my home anymore. And you know, that there’s this whole other life that has to take place because we’re not together anymore. And I’ve slowly been in it kind of been accepting it and putting the pieces together and that.\n
[00:26:06] You know, what is my identity on my own here? And, you know, the easy things, where will I live? How soon? Well, he moved there and, and then, and then kind of finding the things that, that brought me joy in the time when we had a part before, which is, you know, Definitely running and racing. I think when those things come back and full swing, I will be positioned to participate in a way I’m proud of, and in the meantime, like I mentioned before that, that beach and that bridge, that’s where I learned to run in the first place.\n
[00:26:37] Because the bridge has like a really steep incline and then a really steep decline. Well, not quite as steep as the incline and then a little bit of flat, and then you reverse it and see you’ve got a long way of inclined and then a really steep decline. And it’s tough enough for me that it was never, it’s never about speed.\n
[00:26:53] It’s more endurance and just finishing it. And then when I run on the beach, it’s all flat. So, so I’ve found that in coming back though, that location is going to be very special to me because. It’s it’s in a lot of ways where I found myself before. And, and honestly, the first time I got in shape, you know, I wanted to lose weight and feel better about myself was in a patch in the marriage.\n
[00:27:17] That was one of the big kind of milestones toward it, not working out together. And so I, I really wanted to. You know, focused on myself and improve myself, whether it be for me or for, you know, me and the marriage and for a while, it was for the marriage and, and, you know, for the time being it’s, it’s evident that it’s going to be for me.\n
[00:27:37]But I, I so recall that there were a lot of times where I felt just like I was a better parent, more active and more alert because I was active every day. It gave myself that time. So something I mentioned to you before we started recording, is that. I find that it’s easier to focus on health and fitness in a period where I’m trying to work out of workout when we out of a problem than when I’m perfectly content.\n
[00:27:59] And, you know, I’m, I’m not trying to work out myself out of a problem. So it’s, it’s been a fun one, but you know, not, not really, but it will, it will.\u00a0\n
[00:28:09] Rahul Matta: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there, there is a lot that. Is happening in your life right now. And I mean, I’m here for you. I I mean, thank you for being this open and sharing I, I would just say that, you know, as a dad, It just feels right to me that what do you have done here to move closer to your kids is, is a great thing.\n
[00:28:39] I think it matters. You needed your time away. You took that time and now you’re back to be closer to your kid, I think. Yeah, I think that’s I respect that and I, I appreciate that. Thank you for doing that. And staying active. As kids grow just becomes more and more important because you want to stay active with them.\n
[00:29:01] You want to do things with them. And you have your memories but you’re going to build more memories and, you know, have more stories to tell and show things around to your kids and you know, have more good times together. So, yeah. Yeah.\u00a0\n
[00:29:19] Zac Hall: Yeah, I will say it was looking through photos on my phone and having gaps and, and and, and measure of, of weeks and not.\n
[00:29:28] You know, no gap at all. And that was kind of, kind of a big deal for me. And, and so it’s, it’s a, it’s a new chapter, you know, back to an old chapter, but in a different way. And I’m so happy that I’ve got, you know, friends like you and healthy habits to, to, to track, to kind of get me through. So it’ll be all right.\n
[00:29:47] 9to5Mac Watch Time is sponsored this week by pillow. Getting a good night’s sleep is underrated, but with a little help, it can be life changing. Pillow is an all-in-one sleep tracking solution. To help you be more aware of your sleep patterns and discover what might be affecting your sleep quality. If you have enough watch tracking your sleep is as easy as awaring your Apple watch during sleep pillow will track and analyze your sleep automatically.\n
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[00:31:19] Pillow is available on the app store for iPhone, Apple watch and iPad. Discover all the pillars features@navybox.com slash pillow and it’s N E Y B O x.com\/p I L L O w. Sleep well and stay safe. My thanks to Pello for sponsoring nine to five Mac watch time. Let’s, let’s talk a bit about tempo this week, because I was happy that last one on the last episode, some new users were turned on to tempo.\n
[00:31:48] And and so let’s jump into a little bit of a temper discussion this week. Yeah.\u00a0\n
Tempo update\n
[00:31:53] Rahul Matta: So I just released an update to template this morning with a brand new feature called photo summary. And it’s, it’s small feature, but it’s really fun. And it’s, it’s one of those things, which, you know, you don’t think much about it because, you know, you’re trying to not be a social network or stay private and whatnot, but at the same time it’s something that has over time, just, you know, just been there on my, you know, On my list on my things to do or how I would make it or whatnot, because, you know, at the end of the day, we are all social creatures.\n
[00:32:32]Even if we don’t force things on, like whatever our social networks are, share every, every little bit off our lives everywhere. We do like to share with friends and family and I find myself, you know, every now and then raving about my workouts for whatever reasons. And lately I did that with two workouts.\n
[00:32:52] One was actually really cold morning here in Boston. I had to get my run in before seven o’clock. So it was like seven degrees outside. And gosh. Yeah. And I mean, I, I, I think. As a runner at this point, I have adequate gear to like cover any kind of like, you know, Chile weather situation. So I was, I was well covered, but when I got back home, I saw myself in the mirror and hearing in Massachusetts, you also have to have a mask on even when you’re just walking or whatnot.\n
[00:33:31] So just out of habit at this point, I just always have a mask. So it’s, it was like, there was like drips of my own sweat, just frozen as icicles in line. And then there was like frost. Which was on my inter hat. And then there was like this layer of like ice on my outer, outer outermost layer on my top here.\n
[00:33:56] So it, it w it was just like a interesting picture that I sent it to my to my siblings. And I had to write, Oh, I went for a run and this is what happened this morning. And That was like one nudge towards this feature. And the second one came along when I was finishing up a run, it started snowing.\n
[00:34:15] I knew it was going to snow, but by the time it started snowing, I was like, Oh it started earlier than I expected it. And I got home showered looked outside and it was just. It wasn’t like white out, but at the same time, it was like snow enough on the ground that I was like, okay, I wouldn’t have left if this were, these were the conditions.\n
[00:34:36] So I took a picture and I said, I, I just dodged this. The last 30 minutes was really blissful, but at the same time, it was like starting to be like this. And I sent that picture to again, to my friends. So in both the cases it was now like, you know, I was like, you know, tempo should be able to do this for me in some form.\n
[00:34:55] Right. It’s like, yes, I’m taking a picture and sending a picture. But at the same time, I’m also saying this is a workout I did. And For a very long time. I wanted to have some sort of a configuration option in the workout where you could actually share a story like that. And so as I started basically building this feature over now with photo summary, it’s essentially a sharing feature where you can.\n
[00:35:22] Pick the summary stats that you want to include. It’s like layered on top of a picture. You select a picture you want to share or take a picture and you can hide your location if you want to. It’s actually hidden my default, just from a privacy perspective, it includes your date, timestamp and you know, your weather and, you know, it, it looks really fun.\n
[00:35:44] And as I started doing that, what I realized was like, you know not every picture is good enough to you know, superimposed text on obviously, so had to build some additional configurable there where you can also blur the picture or add shadow and whatnot. And it turned into like a fun little feature, which has its own life now.\n
[00:36:06] And I have like, I don’t know. So many ideas now around like, you know, just as I was beta testing and folks were like, you know, how about videos or how about, I, I want to do it in landscape and things like that. So that’s right now it only supports portrait, but you can include a landscape image and just pan across and just pick a slice of it.\n
[00:36:24]Generally a fun little thing. So folks out there do try it. And if you share it on, I’m not saying share everything, but if you do share it on Twitter or something, please tag tempo. So I know you’re using it and would love to see your stories out there\u00a0\n
[00:36:39] Zac Hall: and you, and you sent me a photo. Last week after you completed your time to walk exercise, you sent me two and one was a photo of your environment.\n
[00:36:50] And then one was a photo of the character from orange is the new black. And is this, this is what you’re talking about from\u00a0\n
[00:36:56] Rahul Matta: exactly. That’s a that’s exactly. That was like the first initial setup that I had just completed. And like, I was just starting to play with the feature. So it was like, okay. Well, one way to show my homework here would be share it as a picture.\n
[00:37:11]And it was, you know, like I said, it was raining that day and it was just like perfect time of the day. So as I was walking up a Hill, I saw like really, you know, pictures kind of Corner of the area. And I just took a picture and I was like, yeah, now I can share this picture with the workout. So that’s that’s and the the portrait picture of ouzo was actually something that, so this was another interesting thing.\n
[00:37:33] My watch tapped me a couple of times as I was doing that time for walk workout. And as I looked at, looked at my screen, it was the picture of the speaker. Or there were a couple of times, one was a picture of her. One was a picture of her and her sister when they were kids. And one was like a landmark location that she was talking about.\n
[00:37:56] So that’s another interesting thing that I, I. There was a part of me that was like, okay, why can’t I see this on my phone screen? Can you like just plop it on my phone screen? Because the watch screen is small enough that I really want to do it. And I actually went back just to take screenshot of that picture because it was like, this is interesting.\n
[00:38:13] Do I get back to it? That’s\u00a0\n
[00:38:15] Zac Hall: that’s right. And it looks very good on the Fullscreen watches series foreign later. Because it’s, it’s just, it’s the whole screen. I, I enjoy that part about it as well. And everyone has the same feedback that it should be available on the phone after the fact, because You know, in the moment it’s on the watch and the tap is helpful, but having, having it to reference back to, I think, would be nice.\n
[00:38:35] And I also like the whole, the whole format of the time to walk storytelling, because it does include talking music. And in, in, in that case, you know, the imagery and I would love to create experiences like that if it was something that anyone could create in, in the future. So it’s a really neat Go ahead.\n
[00:38:51] I was\u00a0\n
[00:38:52] Rahul Matta: just going to add, like, that’s, that’s one thing that I found. I mean, I mentioned that the intimacy with the speaker as if you’re with them is really interesting, but in a good way, right? I mean, you can listen to music, you can listen to podcasts. Podcasts usually end up being like, you know, either somebody reading news to you or some, someone else having a conversation, right?\n
[00:39:13] So you become like more like an audience, kind of a PR actor there where you’re just listening to somebody else, having conversation with some other folks. So. In this case, it just felt like you’re just going with the flow. And in a way it also may ma maintains your flow. Right? The, the rhythm is maintained by the speaker as they are locked because they are walking in they’re talking.\n
[00:39:33] So it just feels like you’re right there and just feels natural that way.\u00a0\n
[00:39:39] Zac Hall: Oh, that’s right. So, so quickly let’s, let’s, let’s talk about some high-level fitness goals that we have. Just, just sort of, you know, in, in the months ahead for me, obviously, it’s, it’s something I talk about a lot, which is, you know, there’s this big goal of having a return to.\n
[00:39:53] Form and you know, looking at the last year and not being satisfied with my amount of time Tivity you know, even though there is this pandemic, there was also you know, can be a time to lean in to, to exercise and fitness and is not something that I’ve done. And so now, as I’m in this sort of transition phase in my life I’m, I’m heavily relying on, on activity too.\n
[00:40:16] Sort of keep me focused on the road ahead and not the road behind me and stay in motion and sort of have that, that active movement be symbolic for, you know, progressing forward. And I think the results will be that I ended up being happy, kind of with my fitness level, like I was before and hopefully exceed it.\n
[00:40:39]But it’s, it’s, it’s certainly, you know, just finding, finding. Healthy habits and a repeatable routine. And, and that time to improve, you know, my myself and how I feel.\u00a0\n
[00:40:54] Rahul Matta: That sounds wonderful. But I do want to challenge here a little bit to go a little deeper. And I mean, it doesn’t have to be like for the week or the month, but more like for this year some, some way to quantify this, right.\n
[00:41:09]Whether that is walk 500 miles or worked out like so many hours through the ear. Right. I mean, like, it could be just that. Right. So it it’s, it doesn’t have to be like you have to walk or run or do just, just take a number that’s the easiest to approach. Right. Because I think that would just keep you consistent.\n
[00:41:32]And. Not like, you know, our brains have a funny way off, like just convincing ourselves to like, just not worry about things and, you know, be happy with what we have. And then you put a challenge in front of it. It tries to do it and do better at times. So I think setting some sort of a quantifiable goal would really help here.\n
[00:41:55] Zac Hall: Okay. I, I mean, I know that, so I know, and super important. I mean, it’s important for long-term health, but in terms of just, you know how you look and everything, it’s not important. And and when I was around. When I first got into fitness, I went from like two 10 down to one Fest day and felt amazing.\n
[00:42:16] And it took a long time to gain it back and a lot of bad habits to gain it back. But it, it, it. In retrospect, it’s like a lot of work to break up all the progress that I’d made. And I felt happy with where I was. And so I like to, you know, right now I’m at like two Oh four. So, so not quite where I ended up before, but certainly when I was around one 85, I was trying to lose some weight and, you know, get back to that one 50 goal that I had.\n
[00:42:43]I’m I’m five, nine, five, 10. So, so that gives you an idea and So I think, you know, if, if, if by the end of the year I had, you know, I’m at one 80, again. Well, where I kind of started realizing, Oh, I’ve gained 30 pounds and let go of a lot of healthy habits. I think that would be a huge win mentally for me and quantifying the effort, you know, being meaningful.\n
[00:43:10]The other thing is, is I would say specifically to exercise. At least six days a week. When I, yeah, and in that, you know, one of the days can be, you know, an hour long walk or something, and elliptical is something that’s sustainable for me. Like when I, when I, even, when I got into running, I would run at the beginning just one, one day per week, and that I would focus on a 5k and I would do a little pickle on the other days.\n
[00:43:36]And even that I think is maybe more than I have to do. And so You know, mix it up, but I really do enjoy. You know, trying to, trying to just become stronger and, and film, you know, I know right now I’m at like negative in terms of how strong I am. You know, I don’t want to be like a muscle man, but I also don’t want to be weak.\n
[00:43:56] And so I’m exercising at least six days a week. I don’t I’m, I’m at the point now where I don’t necessarily care about an Apple watch streak anymore. It’s, it’s less the, the motivation there and it’s more the result and. And Russia is important. And so I think that if I find some way to exercise for at least half an hour, you know, six days a week I think that’d be really cool.\n
[00:44:20] Rahul Matta: Yeah. I like that goal. I think generally speaking weight is something that should be like a after kind of it’s like in. It’s more of a result than like a goal to me. Sure. And I think it just helps to like, you know, you could hit your weight goal, like halfway through the year. Does that mean, and the other second half becomes more like, you know, inconsistent again with working out that that’s, that’s where the bad habits start forming.\n
[00:44:47] Right. So I think, I think having the six days the weekly goal, like, you know, that means like three hours a week or something just seems. That’s great. I think that’s, that’s a, that’s a great goal. How are you going to track it\u00a0\n
[00:45:03] Zac Hall: or the watch? I mean, it’s my biggest motivation to, to keep up with, with, you know, quantifying the effort is the watch, because on, on time when, you know, last week, when I felt.\n
[00:45:18] Like not getting out of bed. I also didn’t fully put it on my watch, you know, and I think it kind of goes hand in hand. And I think that, you know, I think I’m definitely associate the watch with, with at least making an effort and not just, you know, passively.\u00a0\n
[00:45:33] Rahul Matta: Okay. Yeah. I was also thinking more from a perspective of like having the, some sort of foot log or something where, you know, if we’re running template does this very, it shows you a mileage and whatnot, but.\n
[00:45:45] Generally like, you know, if you have something where if it shows you the pattern, it just drives that commitment for strongly. So, yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. It’s something that I have thought about with activity stats, which is app we launched last week on the show. So yeah, maybe I’ll send you a beta link for something.\n
[00:46:07] Zac Hall: Cool. Awesome. What about for you in terms of your goals for high level fitness goals this year?\u00a0\n
Fitness Goals Rahul: 30 miles a week\n
[00:46:11]Rahul Matta: My goals are like, kind of like at this point, multi-layered I do have one simple goal, which is even with everything going on last year with the pandemic. I was able to hit close to like, I think 1100 some miles through the year.\n
[00:46:30]Which is, it was kind of odd realization for me come November, December timeframe that I was getting close to 1200 miles because usually my cycle goes more like, you know first quarter of the year is like, take it easy. It’s there, there is consistency, but low mileage through spring slash summer timeframe the miles peak.\n
[00:46:55] And then I run a fall marathon and then I taper off for the year. So usually it ends up being like in the 1300 mile. And I’m usually happy with that. But last year, it was like more or less consistent, like 20, 25 miles a week. And that made me realize that not running a marathon through the year and just going for my runs still allowed me to like, maintain that kind of a rhythm.\n
[00:47:29] And not generally not worry about like, you know, doing 20 milers on the weekend or something like that. And what I realized was there is, you know, I, I’m not too far from like being able to do 30 miles a week. If I really am disciplined and sincere with Mike. Focused like in terms of like, I have to go get a run aid.\n
[00:47:55] Like I, as I saw my trends like my most common run last year was like a four mile run, which is a nice out and back run that I do. If there’s nothing else going on and I could do it anytime during the day, it’s just like the same path I take. And it really takes like, it’s not about like the energy levels or.\n
[00:48:18] I don’t have, you know, I can’t do it physically more. It’s just that, it’s the mental thing that I have not committed to in terms of like, let me just push for a six mile or eight mile run. So this year, what I have been doing more is a consistency and trying to push that four mile to like six or eight.\n
[00:48:40] During the week, and I haven’t even run like more than 10 miles over the weekends, but on the weekends, I’m trying to do longer like eight to 10 miles both the days of the weekends and trying to hit more 30 milers per week. So my goal really for this week is like try to hit as many 30 miles as possible, which, you know, roughly will take me to 1500 miles for the year.\n
[00:49:03]And that would be fantastic because. I haven’t done that in a couple of years, maybe even five years at this point. So hopefully I can maintain that throughout the year and then Chicago marathon, as far as we know right now, seems like it will happen. That’s I’m registered for it in October. So that will peak me through the marathon training during summer.\n
[00:49:28] And what I realized is, so th this is where the whole multilayer thing comes in, because what I’m realizing the best time for me to run, where I can just do it and stay consistent with is first thing in the morning. And if I do that, like last year, I was able to run any time during the day, depending on like, you know, all the scheduling with kids and, you know, whatnot.\n
[00:49:50] But at the end of the day, there were a lot of time where. I would just skip it because it was like five in the evening. I could either hang out with family in the backyard or I could just go for a run and I would be like, yeah, forget it. Yeah. So this year I’m hopeful that this pattern of like, you know, I was talking about like waking up at like five 30, six in the morning and running even now.\n
[00:50:13] I mean, it’s getting lighter outside earlier during the days now. So I’m doing that during the winter. So my goal is maintain it and just wake up early, get my runs in and not worry about anything else before I get my run in and continue that throughout the year. And. Just carry that. That’s, that’s where I’m at.\n
[00:50:33]Hopefully 1500 would be a good number to hit this year.\u00a0\n
Watch Tips: Stacking workouts\n
[00:50:38] Zac Hall: I love that. That’s that’s that makes mindful easier. And for tips this week, I wanted to mention the ability to. Sort of stack workouts whenever you’re using Apple’s workout app. It wasn’t always this way initially and like watch us one and two, you had to stop a workout and started a new one and there was no way to sort of create a session among different exercises and w in one workout.\n
[00:50:58]I think around watch I was through the added the ability to. Swipe over to one of the screens in the workout and tap the plus button. And then that pauses the current workout, your end. And you go through the lesson, you can pick the next one that you’re going to do. And that’s, that’s really helpful if you’re doing a bunch of different stuff within one session.\n
[00:51:19]But it’s also helpful in that. Well, show us seven that we’re on added some new workouts, including cool-down and that’s really useful. So before I know I would I’d want the best data for the actual workout itself. And I wouldn’t track anything from the cool-down session. It would be, you know, in the workout and then do a little bit of a cool-down down and not, not track it at all.\n
[00:51:46]But when you get in the habit of stacking workouts with that plus button, then you can. You know, actually get better data from, from nuclear position as well. And, and they separated as a different workout type than, than maybe what the intensive thing that you’re doing is so I liked that and, and kind of my routine is if I’m in the gym, I’ll kind of go from strength training.\n
[00:52:10]And then get my heart up on the elliptical and then maybe try the treadmill for a bit and having all of those be just, you know, added to gather. And then at the end, you see your troublesome memory of time and calories and. And everything it’s really useful and that you don’t have to do the math yourself and it’s, it’s there for you.\n
[00:52:29]I find that to be a lot better than, than stopping and starting again. And especially in, in giving yourself the time for cool-down, since it’s a dedicated option this, this year, what about you? Yeah,\u00a0\n
Watch Tips: Workout view customization\n
[00:52:40] Rahul Matta: so I have something called customizing workout views, and What it does is it allows you to see the data fields that you care about during your workout on your watch instead of the default.\n
[00:52:56]And the way it works is you essentially. So the way you configure it is from the watch app on your iPhone go under the workout app section and in there. Do you have The very top row is the workout view customization. And in there you can actually pick the workouts that you want to customize for.\n
[00:53:15] So for example, my running I actually have like four metrics, which is not the default. It is the rolling pace, distance duration, and the average pace. I don’t even look at the heart rate right now. I’m just focused on like, you know, just make sure I have a consistent rhythm going and whatnot. But.\n
[00:53:30] There are times during summer when it’s too hot outside. So I’ll change it to like, you know, paying attention to my heart rate and not overdoing it. That makes sense. And it’s really useful. I find it more useful. Yeah. Even as like a trick for myself to identify if I started, you know, say for by mistake wrong workout.\n
[00:53:49] So my outdoor Watts have different set of fields in a different order versus the outdoor runs versus the indoor runs. So at this point, it’s just like, you know, when you’re, when you look at the screen, you glimpse, when you start to work out and it. If it looks as different, a pattern of colors and fields, you instantly know I’m running and I might’ve started something else.\n
[00:54:12] So you abort the run and you’d restart it. So it really works out well. I think there are other ways that you can actually configure More than these metrics the third party apps, but then you kind of lose the workout app you know, the support and the functionality of that. So I like this overall.\n
[00:54:32] I think this is a good balance. Yeah,\u00a0\n
[00:54:34] Zac Hall: I agree. That’s one of the best ways to customize the, I mean, customizing your metrics is one of the best ways to personalize what you’re tracking and and, and even during a workout, you can use the crown to scroll between what’s highlighted. So yeah. And it’s a very small thing, but if, if what you, if you have one thing that’s important to you in that session, then highlighting the thing that’s important.\n
Health homework assignments\n
[00:54:55] It makes it more glanceable. So very awesome tips for homework this week. I, I don’t know what you have in mind for me. Free for you. I just challenge you to track some sleep, to sleep with your Apple watch for, you know, two or three nights. And, and next time we talk next week, look at the data and see if you have any insights from it or if it’s kind of what you expected.\n
[00:55:15]So how’s that, how’s that sound for me?\u00a0\n
[00:55:17]Rahul Matta: I think tracking sleep is that’s good. I’ll I’ll, we’ll give it a shot. It’s actually good timing because I’ve felt more and more the need for like having a, a silent alarm on my wrist. And I mean, I’m, I’m not a person who likes to wear anything like on my hands while going, I actually tried the, what does that ring for sleep tracking Forgetting the name, but I tried it and I returned it because it felt too clunky in my hand to sleep with.\n
[00:55:44]But no, I, I have been considering it. So this, this is a good homework. Thank you. Cool. Is it,\u00a0\n
[00:55:49] Zac Hall: or that you’re\u00a0\n
[00:55:49] Rahul Matta: thinking about, Oh yeah. Aura that’s right. Yeah, I tried it and the insight was like, okay. I find it interesting, but I was not too happy with the app. And sure. You know, generally, I think it just felt odd homework for you.\n
[00:56:04] I would say it’s tricky because I you talked about balancing different activities besides this running. I didn’t get a chance to ask you, but I think using the fitness plus. Might be a good way to also do more activities besides just, you know, doing elliptical or going on a walk. So I would say, I mean, can we take a step back?\n
[00:56:30] I was going to say that my original homework for you was stretch after every workout for good five, 10 minutes and see how you feel after that, because I find it super useful. Every time I skip my stretching routine, it just turns into like, you know it adds up not instantly, but over a couple of weeks, I can tell the difference that I’m getting, you know, kind of stiff and not able to run as well.\n
[00:56:57] And my form kind of like dissipates over time. So I would, I was going to say stretch, but taking that and taking the fitness plus. For you, I would say do a session with the high intensity training and a session for, with yoga. I\u00a0\n
[00:57:18] Zac Hall: will definitely do that. And I love that these are things that I wouldn’t ordinarily do at least this week.\n
[00:57:25] And so, so it changes my path. So I liked that about it. Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you so much for this again. I know we ran a little bit over the half hour this week, but we missed last week. So then it was my fault. So more to listen to. Yeah,\u00a0\n
[00:57:41] Rahul Matta: this was great. I enjoyed it. And thank you for sharing. What’s going on in your life and I you know, I’m here.\n
[00:57:47]If you want to chat even after the show we\u00a0\n
[00:57:49] Zac Hall: can talk. Appreciate it. All right. We’ll end the show right there. All right.\n
Transcribed using Descript “,”title”:”Week 2″,”image”:”http:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/06\/Watch-Time-Wide.jpeg?quality=82&strip=all&w=1000″,”guid”:”https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/?p=699618″,”publish_date”:”2021-02-25T15:35:49+00:00″,”duration”:”01:04:46″},{“id”:”podcast-track-16″,”link”:”http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/9to5macWatchTime\/~3\/GSWw1lcqBbA\/”,”src”:”http:\/\/dts.podtrac.com\/redirect.mp3\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2021\/02\/WatchTime_02-10-21.mp3″,”type”:”audio\/mpeg”,”description”:”This week on Watch Time join 9to5Mac’s Zac Hall for his first week of run coaching with Tempo developer Rahul Matta.\n9to5Mac Watch Time is a podcast series hosted by Zac Hall. In this series, we talk to real people about how Apple Watch is affecting their lives. Subscribe now to catch up with each episode and automatically hear new episodes as soon as they\u2019re released every two weeks:\u00a0\ud83d\udfe3 Apple Podcasts\u00a0| \ud83d\udfe0 Overcast\u00a0|\u00a0\ud83d\udfe2 Spotify\nSponsored by Pillow: Pillow is an all-in-one sleep tracking solution to help you get a better night\u2019s sleep. Download it from the App Store today.\n\n\nFollow Zac\nInstagram @apollozac\nTwitter @apollozac\nSpaceExplored.com\nFollow Rahul Matta\nTwitter @rmatta\nTwitter @TempoLog\nBlog indie.sh\nFollow 9to5Mac\nInstagram @9to5mac\nTwitter @9to5mac\nFacebook\nYouTube.com\/9to5Mac\nListen & Subscribe\n\nApple Podcasts\nSpotify\nOvercast\nRSS\n\nRead More\n\nTempo for Runners (App Store)\n9to5Mac Watch Time podcast episode 6: Making apps for Apple Watch with Rahul Matta and Will Bishop\n9to5Mac Watch Time 22: Launching Activity Stats with Rahul Matta\nApple and Biogen announce new research study to investigate how Apple Watch can detect declines in cognitive health\nApple Watch credited with helping police locate kidnapped Texas woman\nUse Emergency SOS on your Apple Watch (Apple)\n\nEnjoy the podcast?\nShop Apple at Amazon to support 9to5Mac Watch Time!\nTranscript\nZac Hall: \”Welcome to 9to5Mac Watch Time a podcast series exploring the world of Apple Watch and how it changes people’s lives this week. I am introducing a new six-week episode format with my good friend Raho Matta, how are you doing Rahul?\”\nRahul Matta: \”I’m doing great Zac. It’s exciting. Excited to be here.\”\nZac: \”I think, I think this is your third appearance and then that means we should end up at like seven for you in total, by the time this is over.\”\nRahul: \”Yeah, we’ll see. Yeah, this is my third official podcast. There is a podcast that I recorded with a friend that we never released so we can count that as a half.\”\nZac: \”Okay. This is good though because I’m sure as listeners know, I’ve, I’ve had a hard time making watch time, my priority. And then also, you know, 2020 was a little bit weird. I don’t know if anybody else noticed, but it was a little bit weird. And so things that normally motivate me to do this, like training for races and participating in runs with, with friends.It didn’t really happen. And so what I want to do is, is the six-episode series where we can just kinda kind of talk about you know, our habits and, and things that we’re working on. And you develop tempo for runners, which is hugely motivational for me. And it’s. It has to be the best Runkeeper app for runners that I’ve seen and knowing how much work you put into it.I want to discuss that every week too. And just talk about the development of that and, and what’s new and tempo.\”\nRahul: \”Yeah, absolutely. I mean I love talking about running. I love to talk about Tempo and, you know, I can go on and on for a long time, I know VB going to keep it short which is a good idea. So Let’s go for it.\”\nZac: \”Yeah. Yeah. And also I plan on talking about the future, some Apple Watch news and we’ll include a tip each week, from each of us. And there will also be a segment in which you well, we assign each other homework. W w we’ve already begun part of that, that we’ll talk about in this episode.So what, let’s kick it off with talking about our background kind of our, our origin story of how we met. So. You know, I know my version of it, but I’m curious from your perspective how we began to interact with each other.\”\nRahul: \”Yeah. So I think back in the day I want to say that my very first interaction, which was just one-sided was actually an email to you about Tempo when I launched it.And Fast-forward that too, by the way, you never responded, which I was hurt by, but so bad. I don’t think you were running much at that point, but that’s, that’s fine. I think that’s a completely understandable add in yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, it, it, it was, it was kind of like something that I was just like, I did not know as an app developer, as an indie developer, how do you focus on reaching out to reviewers?\”\nZac: \”Sure\”\nRahul: \”So I just blasted out emails to everybody and expected that everybody should write about my, this fancy little app that I wrote. Right. I mean, yeah. But I think it matters you want folks to write about your app with like the care and attention as in like an interest in the app, not just like, okay, I’ll cover your app for whatever reason.\”\nZac: \”Yeah. From, from, from the other side, it’s like, you. If, if resources were infinite, you know, we had infinite hours in the day, infinite amount of energy. There’s definitely maybe about 400% more stuff that I like to do myself, that I just have to plan for in the future. And you have to make decisions.What are you going? What is the thing that you are going to do? And what are the things that you’re going to say, I’ll do this later. If I can. And if I can’t get to them, I can’t get to them. Not to mention, you know, every single day there’s a stream of incoming. You know, pitches and things like that.And so that’s certainly my approach in narrowing down things is, am I actually interested in this as this fits in one of my existing categories of interest? Or is it something that someone else is interested in that’s on the team? Or is this something that, that we couldn’t do justice of covering, you know, it’s just not, not in the cards.So I don’t recall that first pitch. But I, I D I do like that, where it went after that, which is\”\nRahul: \”Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think and I’m actually, you know, not to give you any hard time, but I’m glad that the way things worked out over time, because, you know, you started running and then you found Tempo.All by yourself, I had stopped emailing everybody just for the sake of it. And here I was just like randomly, like one day looking at like I don’t even know if I was looking at the websites, traffic or just downloads on Tempo. I saw a spike and I was like, what’s going on? And. Then I realized, Oh there was a mention of temple and 9to5Mac.And next thing I know, you know, it was like, you know, I found the tweet very, you had mentioned about it and I was like, okay. And this was, I think early 2019 and That was our first interaction where what you had posted was a feature request for Tempo asking for personal bests and you have come a full circle because I recently released Tempo 3.3, where personal bests got launched.So, yeah that’s a that’s what I recall.\”\nZac: \”Yeah, absolutely. So so again, I mean, my inbox, as of like the past couple of days, there have been things that if I had more time and energy I would have written about and just, just can’t do them justice. But yeah, I w w I remember I was talking with my cohost on 9to5Mac Happy Hour Benjamin Mayo about just my experience with writing and everything and how it was being motivated by you know, when you’re first starting out, especially.Seeing this run on this 5k on this Sunday was a few seconds faster than the one, the previous Sunday. And I remember talking to my partner at the time that you know, Hey, last week’s record. And then it became like, guess what? And it’s like, what? You’d be lesson record. And I’m like, yeah, this is like, you’re going to keep doing that.But it was very motivational. And, and then when I would do. Do races, tint, 5k 10k, etc. I was using the Nike run club app, to do that. And it had the feature, you know, with personal records where it would, it would give you an award for your you know, whatever your fastest time was. So if you only ran one 10K, that was your fastest.And and that was, that was really useful. And by Nike run club, you know, it’s a great app, it’s, it has a great community built into it, you know, a whole social network some really great guided Ryans for getting you motivated. But it’s often been, it’s often been buggy on the Apple watch because Apple isn’t the one developing it.And even though it’s like, pre-installed on some versions of the Apple watch and are really, really pushed heavily it just it’s. It’s not as feature-heavy as the built-in workout app even for running, which is kind of surprising you know, that apples and I were looking at the feature request he talks about that was a while ago and things are still true now that Apple’s workout app is the best-run tracking app that I, in my opinion, just for the different things that it can offer and, and, and w we had the discussion on happy hour.And I mentioned that I didn’t want to use the Nike run club app, but I wanted to keep having that feature. And you couldn’t just put your runs in Nike run club and get the same results. So. Some podcasts listeners said I think is what happened, but a podcast listener, I think he recommended tempo as an alternative run tracker, just for record-keeping basically, and seeing your stats.And I checked it out. And just these, this, this is, you know, conceptually really cool. Doesn’t quite do the thing I wanted to do with, in terms of, you know, personal records, but. Fast forward to now and it does. And, and I, I loved it for all the other reasons. Like I remember seeing when I would go to races, seeing People who were more seasoned, runners have a paper notebook of their, the date and the location and all that.It’s like, yeah, you can’t do that. I guess that’s the traditional way, the classic way. But, but for me, an app. That does so much of it automatically is, you know, that’s leveraging technology and without tempo, I’m not sure that there’s a thing like it, that would exist. So it’s, that was really glad that somebody turned me on to tempo.\”\nRahul: \”Yeah, I’m thankful for that person, whoever you are out there. Thank you. Please reach out. I’ll make it special for you for some special feature and tempo for you or something.\”\nZac: \”Yeah, but it was, it was meant to be though.\”\nRahul: \”Yeah. Yeah. I, I think overall I think the way you discover temple and you know, how it has helped you train and kept you motivated is exactly how I hope a lot more runners discover hopefully at a faster pace than it does right now.But yeah, I, I think just to comment on a couple of things here I think the idea of like, you know, how we see our progress in terms of like our fitness improvements. When we first start running to me, that is so amazing. And that’s one of the reasons why I try to run a marathon once a year. It sounds kind of like backwards, but it’s not because every time you run a marathon, you have to take some time off from running just to recover from all the breakdown in your body.And next thing you know is like, you go out for like a 30 minute, 45 minute run a month or two down the road, you feel like, so. Out of shape and you have to like, we build you know, your entire routine from scratch because now you’re like just, you know, lazy. And I really enjoy that initial ramp-up.I’m actually in that mode right now. So it’s kind of amazing. And the other thing that you mentioned about the handwritten training log it’s kind of interesting to me because a lot of runners, even now who are. You know, using Tempo all the time have requested for like being able to export the training log into a PDF.And I think part of their goal is to be able to print it because there’s something about the fact that you have like something in your hand with your. You know, years worth of data somehow, or a month’s worth of play card effort and just going over it. So at some point, I do want to do that, like, you know, just create like a training album, kind of a thing. It’s on the list.\”\nZac: \”Yep. And, and I also want to talk about the current status of tempo and also highlight a couple more things. So one thing, if you haven’t tried tempo before. One of the things I love about it is that it does let you, I mean, it works best when you use the built-in workout app on your Apple Watch and you run that way.It can work with other apps, but you just get the best data from the workout app and it’s, it’s the most consistent. And but, but then, and also when you start using tempo, You don’t have to start using tempo to start getting data in it. It’s, it reads all your data that you’ve already collected with your watch.So that, that’s awesome because the experience could be in another circumstance that you haveto begin using it from day one to start adding data to it. But the, but the way it works is that you just, you know, you download it and you, you dig through it and you’ve already got the record of all your data.That’s already been collected from the watch. So those, those two things are really useful. The other thing I wanna talk about is, is the status of tempo, just. Feature-wise and like design-wise, you know, you say version 3.3 and that sounds fairly new. It feels like it’s leaps and bounds ahead of a version three, anything.There are so many nice tweaks to the user interface and you know, customization how intuitive it is. How, how, how well you take feature requests, like, Hey, I think you should be able to share it this way, and that would be nice if it had this information on that share sheet, you know, and, and the image that it puts out.So you’ve been very responsive, both to my feature requests and fair based on what I’m seeing. Other users as well, because it seems to be a pretty vocal community that uses your app. And it shows because not to offend devel developers, but I think it’s often true that developers are not the best designers and designers don’t necessarily develop. So you’ve got a good balance, whatever you’re doing over there.\”\nRahul: \”Yeah. So it’s, it’s been a journey for me in terms of sharpening the design aesthetics. Personally, I still am not there. I feel there’s a lot more I can learn and I’m actually thankful for all the great developers, indie developers, and designers out there who share their work in different forms, but it’s an app or just throwing it on, you know, on online anywhere.It helps me You know I mean, I, I kind of steal from almost everybody from that perspective. So Tempo three for that matter was like a huge lift for me because it’s, it’s something that I originally had a custom font in Tempo and I had been just sitting on and not wanting to change for the longest time.Well, partly because it looked okay. It w it worked out okay. Nobody complained about it, but partly because. It was a lot of work and as iOS 14 happened and I started looking into implementing widgets and whatnot. I was like, well, there’s just no way I’m using this custom plan and throwing it on everybody’s home screen.Just because they want to use tempo visit. And that just started the journey of like, you know, okay, let’s start changing the font. And as soon as you start, you know going down that rabbit hole, it was like all sorts of UI changes that I wanted to do that I’d been just sitting on for the longest time.And next thing you know is like that release. Or recently I wanted to time it with obviously the iOS 14 launch date. But Apple just like ripping the band-aid on us by just saying it’s coming out in two days or whatever that 24-hour timeframe was, was just perfect for me, because I was like, yeah, it’s just not going to happen.So I might as well take my sweet time here. And continue with my quality focus work. And that’s what I did. And I released, like, I think mid-October, which was about around the time. I think it was right on time with like when the new phones were launched. So it worked out well. But in the process, pretty much the entire app was redundant.It’s almost like a brand new app. I could have just released it as a completely different app for that matter behind the scenes. It’s it has a lot of like things that you can change, like in terms of colors, there’s like I’m giving us secrets here, but there’s a feature that I’m slowly building in the app where you will be able to like even configure the colors.So a lot of folks have asked for like, Hey, is the orange is getting a little kind of like old. We want to be able to configure it, have more color schemes. So there’s that too. And you know, everything got became configurable. Originally when we started, it was, everything was being read from the health kit and everything was, you know, there there’s a lot of things that temple does.Which is based on your training data and your general training patterns and Using that as a lifetime worth of data for input is just, it just started feeling like we are because there are times spend your data from five years ago is not relevant anymore. There are times when you know one of the runners he had been he has been a temple for since day one, I think reached out, said I rum at varying paces.Some of those runs are like out in the trails where. I run super slow because it’s super steep and it’s in the trail on a trail and whatnot. So it kind of resonated with me. And I had been waiting on like being able to do that. So there are things now where you can configure. What your training pattern should be for something like an intensity calendar in tempo.And as we started doing that, there were like trends that tempo supported, which was only based on lifetime data. Again, it was comparing your current data with your lifetime data. Folks had asked for like, things like you know, let me compare trends over custom periods. I want to compare my last four weeks with the last 12 weeks of this year versus last year.So it does that now. And of course, just to do all this, I wanted to release a whole bunch of new features, which I had to just postpone until recently just to release three just tempo three and Fast forward to the current day, along the way we actually I was able to release a heart rate zones, which is also very configurable, what I wanted to do there, which I finally was able to overtime is being able to configure.The thresholds for each heartbeat zone. Most of the training apps will just say, Hey, we are going to take your max heart rate. And we could just be going to say 50 to 60% of zone one, 60 to 70% is zone two, and so on. Or they would just give it some hard-coded names which works overall.You know, it’s like a very generalized approach. But you know, I just. Comparing looking at my own data, my threshold for like, you know, doing something like a temple heart rate zone is very different than like, you know a usual, I think it’s like in the 70% zone. So I wanted to configure that for myself and I know folks.Would want to do that for their own training styles. And, you know, obviously, as soon as I put it out there and into, on TestFlight, like everybody was like, yeah, this is perfect. This is exactly what we wanted. You can name the zones differently. You can change the percentage is differently. So it really works out well.And then there was like this highlights section, which I wanted to build in 3.0 I kind of parked it away. I was like, well, I’ll come back to it later. It had been actually something that I wanted to do the last year-end of 2019. And I couldn’t do it in time for the year-end review. So it was like, okay, I’ll get to it.Sometime during 2020 and 2020 has been, you know, we all know how that went. So about a week before the end of the year one of the original founding tempo users as we started, was like, Hey, do you remember that feature? You talked about last year. It would be really nice if he did that. If you did something like that, now I’m like, okay, I’m going to.And this is like I’m in the midst of implementing personal bests. And so I was like, I’m going to park that for like, you know, just three days I was not planning to work starting like Christmas through the end of the year. So I’m going to before we go for a break, I’m going to take three days and just implement whatever I can with the highlights and see how well, how fast I can go and how far I can go.And because of all the work that had been done over, you know, for the 3.0 release and all the again, thanks to Swift UI, to be able to crank out so many so much of the UI so quickly I was able to like to build a basic 2020 highlights feature and. That feature just took off on its own because as soon as folks saw it, they loved it.And folks reached out with like, you know, we want to see it as like, you know, for the past training years too. So. That’s what we ended up doing. I mean, with the recent release, with 3.3 I added like, you know, just being able to switch the years across you know, your training data. So we have like now annual highlights.We have heart rate zones in addition to the 3.0, which was a brand new full rebranding design and UI and whatnot. And then on top of all that we have personal bests, which was kind of built-in. With every detail that I really wanted in there, starting from like what happens at the workout level? I don’t want to take this data to the server.There’s a lot of details I can keep going. Maybe we should focus personal bests on sure.\”\nZac: \”That’s that’s fair. Yeah. I will say, I know about you that the orange and the theme, it comes from your original Apple watch band. Is that right?\”\nRahul: \”Absolutely. Yep.\”\nZac: \”Yeah. Around in my life. There’s not a whole lot of orange, but the fee, the few things that in my life that are orange, I deeply admire, I have an orange branded orange guitar amp.I have a model rocket of NASA’s space launch system and it is very much orange. The space shuttle fuel thing is orange and I have a LaSalle Lacy. And I say it, but the external drive that I, that I rely on and it is orange. And so I associate very few things with orange, but all of them, I like a lot and tempo is one of them.\”\nRahul: \”Thank you.\”\nSponsored by Pillow: \”9to5Mac Watch Time is sponsored this week by Pillow. Getting a good night’s sleep is underrated, but with a little help, it can be life-changing. Pillow is an all-in-one sleep tracking solution. To help you be more aware of your sleep patterns and discover what might be affecting your sleep quality.If you have an Apple Watch tracking your sleep is as easy as wearing your Apple Watch during sleep pillow will track and analyze your sleep automatically. One of Pillow’s most loved features is the ability to get a detailed heart rate diagram of every sleep session. And you can even compare your sleep quality with your weight.Steps caffeine consumption and many more health metrics to discover how they might be affecting our sleep pillow. Can optionally record sounds you make during sleep from sleep, talking to sleep apnea or snoring, or other unexpected noises that might be affecting your sleep. A lot of users have been surprised by these results.Pillow is also very privacy-minded. All of your sleep and audio data is encrypted and stored on your device and your iCloud storage account. Using an end-to-end encryption pillow does not have the user accounts so you can use it anonymously and it doesn’t collect or send your personal data anywhere else.Naps boost your focus, creativity, and overall wellbeing. If you’re working from home, you can also take naps using pillows, power, nap, mode. If you need an alarm, Pillow can wake you up using your iPhone, Apple Watch, or iPad. And a pillow uses a feature called extended run time. That minimizes battery consumption on the Apple watch.Pillow is available on the app store for iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad. Discover all the pillows features at neybox.com\/pillow that’s N E Y B O X dot com slash P I L L O W. Sleep well and stay safe. My thanks to Pillow for sponsoring 9to5Mac Watch Time.\”\nZac: \”So let’s, let’s, let’s talk some more this week about. Some, some just tips of the Apple watch. Well, we’ll do about once a week over the next six weeks. The thing I wanted to mention this week is AppleWatch SOS emergency SOS. And this feature is one of the things that when you see stories on the news about how the Apple Watch has saved someone’s life you know, been credited with being, being, you know, very useful in that regard.SOS has one of those features where. You just hold the side button down the big, long button on the side of your watch down for several seconds and your watch will call emergency services wherever you live. So in the US, it’s 911. And, and that’s all I have to do. And it’ll notify your emergency contact that something’s happened.It’ll send a text message and it’ll even send you a location. And for a period of time, it’ll update your location. With your emergency contact. And this feature is neat. It’s one that if you haven’t set it up before, it’s a good one to set up on your Apple watch. And the thing that made me think of it for this week is I saw some ads online.For products that do this and that’s all they do is, you know, they, they called 911, not even, you know, where’s your emergency contact from your family or friends and share location and all those nice things, but they, they just call 911 and they were, they were designed to be disguised like wristbands or you know, part of your hat, something that you wear.And, and they were pricey as well. I was just thinking, I wonder how many people know about the Apple Watch SOS feature? You know, that would, that would, that have enough watch, but see that and they think, Oh, I need that product. That’s being marketed to me when in reality, the Apple watch can do it and probably better, you know, definitely better.It’s another one of those things where it’s, it’s, you know if you have your phone with you, then, then it’s going to use. Your phone service does it, but it’s, it’s one of the big reasons to have a cellular app watch and keep the service active. Because if you’re not with your phone, then you can’t do the phone call for yourself.And, and there’s. You know, and it, there’s definitely you know an approach to going out and running that you want to also maintain your safety. And just knowing that there’s SOS as an, in any circumstances is so useful, you know, whether it’s being harassed by someone. Or you’re out for a run and you get hit by a car even going at a slow speed.I mean, it’s not good. And having SOS on board is, is, you know, Apple calls, these features kind of guardian health features. And this is one of my favorites. So SOS for this, for this week.\”\nRahul: \”Yeah, absolutely. I love that feature. And I think one of the key things that I appreciate about it is I think taking it further, it’s also part of the fallback the fall detection feature, right?Where if you had, you know, it’s funny because I’ve said this to my wife before. A few times where she started appreciating that I wear an Apple watch because it’s winter here. You know, like I wake up the only times I can go for a run is in the mornings when it’s still dark outside. And sometimes, you know, if it’s snowed in or whatever, it’s a little icy outside and she’s like, be careful out there, you know, don’t, don’t get hit by something, and nobody knows where you are.I’m like, don’t worry about it, man. I’m watching, we’ll call you. And that’s, that’s that right? I mean, because. The way I believe the fall detection feature works is you if it detects that you just fell and you don’t respond to a notification, it would call all your emergency contacts on your watch. So, yeah.\”\nZac: \”Yep. And, and to get into your tip, I want to, I have a memory of an early run where when I, when I first got into running, I would, I would do, initially it was, let me just see if I can run a mile. And it was like you know, a quarter-mile and I’m done and I’ll walk it out until I felt better than I run.And eventually, I could do a whole mile without losing my breath like that. When I got into 5k is I would do a 5k each Sunday. It started out with, and it would be on this bridge that has a very steep incline and then a steep decline and a little bit of flat, and then the other way around to return. And I would go rain or shine and there was one day where I went.And it very much was not shine. It was like a torrential downfall you know, just, just crazy rain. And I was almost back to the starting point, which would be completing the 5k. And I had a streak going that I was very proud of and the rain droplets stopped the workout on my watch and God man.That’s de-motivating. So what is your tip this week?\”\nRahul: \”Yes, my tip is exactly that it’s called water lock and I think some folks have called it a lock, but essentially what it is is it locks your screen and. For me, this is something that has turned into like you know, like second nature.Like I immediately, as soon as I started running you know, that whole circle, like one, two, three, ready go starts. I just swipe. Right. And there is you know, I locked the screen and I go for it. So the way it works is it will lock your screen. And you get to it by when you start a workout, we just swipe right.There is a water droplet kind of an icon on a button. You just tap that it’s labeled as lock. And it’s meant for essentially what you just described. If it’s raining or something you know, whether it’s raining or if it is super humid, I’ve had conditions where, you know, just my own sweat, just. You know, did something to the screen and yeah, it, it either created a new segment and during my run or something, and even during winter, you know, you’re wearing a full sleeve shirt or a glove or something, and it’s covering the face of the watch.I’ve had issues in the past where I forgot to do it once in it wasn’t that the watch stops the workout. But somehow the battery just drained. And my theory there is, it was just like activating this queen. This was like before the time, like when we had like all ways on. So it was just like, you know, it’s something that, again, it’s also saved you from the battery because it’s always.It stays, the screen stays locked, so it’s not trying to do anything else. And it just works for perfectly, you know, all you have to do is like, you know, to unlock it, just turn into digital crown and you’re back to what it was.\”\nZac: \”That’s right. My experience was before it was series, it was the first generation.This is before the series too. And, and I, you know, I guess it was from tracking when they first added the feature because not just the fact that, you know, what we talk about with, with rain and sweat, but An underwater, any, anything can, you know, all those taps, the water droplets can feel can, can simulate the finger taps.So it’s necessary and it’s, I guess it’s automatic, for those swim workouts. So that’s a wonderful tip, to know I’ve had people ask me, do I need to hit the water button? To make my watch what are resistant because it’s just intuitive. You associate that icon. Would that feature you know, your watch is the button that just locks the screen, just like we talked about.The watch is always as water-resistant, as it is. So the differentiation next week I want to talk about some high-level fitness goals that we have. So we’ll skip that for this week. Unless…\”\nRahul: \”Oh no we have to get into that.\”\nZac: \”We will, we will, we will. But, but, but let’s, let’s, let’s talk about health homework before we wrap up for this week.So you assigned me a homework assignment. W w what has he assigned me?\”\nRahul: \”So the way this worked out for me was, you know, you’re pinging me about like, Hey, would I be interested in doing this podcast co-hosting thing with you? And I was like, well okay. It’s, you know, for me, this is something that, you know, not being a podcaster or I was kind of like pushing me out of my comfort zone.And I was like, well, that’s fine. I think I need to do that from time to time. So I was all out for it, but this was my opportunity for like, you know, Turning it around because I know that you’ve been trying to run on and off and like trying to get back into the rhythm. So it was like, okay, well, here’s the deal.You have to do a weekly, like, you know, three times a day, three times a week, you have to go for a run for five minutes or more. That was your assignment. I, what I left out there was like, I think we have to keep optimizing and tuning that further. So it’s not. Three times five minutes.\”\nZac: \”Yeah. Yeah. That’s fair. Now I procrastinated on this and I even pushed back the first recording together by a week. So I had two weeks to do my homework and, it was recording day and I was not going to show up empty-handed. So what I did was I went on a single run and I did five minutes segments. I would do. I did five minutes of running.And then five minutes of walking, five minutes of running five minutes walking, repeat, and ended up doing, I think it was the three, five-minute segments with, with my generous interpretation. I think there were, there were four, five-minute walking segments, and then there was a two and a half minute run just to get back to home.And, and even though it wasn’t kind of the nature of the instructions I did, I did. Really enjoy it. And what I got of it was, it was just kind of taking mental notes as I went along. And the first segment was, was really when it was easy because I was motivated to run. You know, it was in the right mindset and everything.I had my gear on, I was all ready to go. It was I’m in Orlando, Florida. It was 80, it was 73 degrees. You know, right around lunchtime. And I, I recall thinking, Oh, it was nice to stop running it well, for one, it was nice to get a halfway point alert on the watch. At two and a half minutes, it’s just like this started, I’m halfway to my goal for this first segment.And then once I got to five minutes, it was like, oh, I’m starting to feel it, but that was easy. And it’s really nice too, to be able to, you know, quote-unquote finished the goal before You know, the first mile or even third mile, that kind of thing. For, for just kind of the minimum thing here.And then I walked for five minutes and then on the next segment, it’s kind of that feeling I know when I go for a 5k, the second mile tends to feel better than the first mile. You feel stronger. And you kind of gets your stride. That’s kinda how I fell. I, at the very end, I started to have that, that pain in my side where I’m just out of practice and that’s what comes with it.And I did a walk and then in the last five minutes segment, there was no more pain in my side. I felt amazing. And in the last. I want to say like 30 seconds, maybe it was more, but there were people walking on the path and I didn’t want to walk past or, you know, go past them slowly. So even I was, I was running.So I really pick up the pace and I felt just, you know, the way it feels is like flying and it was, it was also good because it was like, this is the last five minutes segment of before I’ve finished with my quote-unquote homework and It’s it, it always feels good to finish strong because you tend to leave some gas into the tank.And then at the end, if you, you see the finish line, then, you know, let me just give it all I have, because I’m not going to lose it. I’m not going to run out of energy between now and then. And you really, you really do something that you didn’t know you could do, or they, you know, you couldn’t just say the whole time.And it felt really good and. Then, then I shared on Twitter the story for the fleets feature because I like, I like the idea of it going away and not always being there. Just the strategy of breaking it up and everything. And I, I realize and writing that, that before when I really got and running and I felt like I was making a lot of progress, it was because running was a form of escapism for me, where there were.Stresses in life problems in life, whatever. And running was literally, I was getting it. I was physically away, from the problems. And then mentally I was, I was in a different zone. And then I was motivated by improving and in 2020 I started riding motorcycles and that really became that for me, where You know, I’d go for a ride and you can’t look at your phone just like on a run.You know you can’t, you can’t be distracted by all these things because you’re just focusing on the thing that you’re doing, whether it’s running or riding a motorcycle. And I realized that I, now I associate that kind of adrenaline rush and sense of just, just, you know, decompression and being at ease with riding my motorcycle.And so. To enjoy running again. I need to have a different reason for it. And it’s obvious it’s health. It’s for my long-term health. And by making that association, it’s like, I’m no longer chasing a feeling I’m burning you, chase a feeling I’m running, you know, for the obvious health reason. And just to have a reason at all, it makes it.That much better, because you know, you have a reason to show up whether it’s your homework you know, or, or a bigger picture health goal. So I quite enjoyed it.\”\nRahul: \”Yeah. That’s, that’s fantastic to hear. I, I want to say it’s great. You did your homework, but unfortunately, you did not really finish your homework.It was five or more minutes. So you essentially did five or more minutes once instead of three times. I, so I’ll give you a little bit of a background on why I selected that kind of a set as homework. I mean, it’s, it’s essentially based on the concept of a, I believe it’s called gateway habit.Which was described by James clear in his book, atomic habits and the way the concept is described, I think he, he based it off of the two-minute rule by David Allen, which is, you know, getting things done, which essentially says that if it takes less than two minutes to just do it now, you don’t have to wait for it or put it on your task list or something like that.Sure. And the gateway habit, the way that works is. It to start a new habit. What do you do is you basically elaborate like you, you think of that habit as like, from the easiest to the hardest. So his example is actually used running, which I think what he describes is like The easiest part is put on your shoes.And the hardest is you want to run. Your goal is like running a marathon. And then in between there, it’s like, you know, go run, go walk for five minutes or run like a 5k. And it kind of gets harder and harder. So my goal here for you was essentially like, you know if you’re going to go for a five-minute run, And three times a week.Hopefully, that becomes your gateway habit, right? It’s really just like a ritual for you. Once you have your shoes on, you’re going to be out there for five minutes and that’s exactly what you did for today’s workout, right? I mean, you were out there and you’re like, well, the five minutes are already done.I can keep going. So it’s kind of a hack, but at the same time, if you just promise yourself that you’re just going to go for five minutes and from there on it doesn’t matter. And you do it like. You know, a few times a week, at some point it would just click as like, you know, as soon as you put on your shoes or go out for a walk.You would be like, yes, I can keep doing it for like, you know, at a continuous pace and, you know, for the longest time. So that’s where this whole concept came from. It was yeah.\”\nZac: \”I like it. So, what do I do next week? What’s your take on what I do next week?\”\nRahul: \”I would say repeat the homework, but do it this time.\”\nZac: \”Okay. I will. Okay. For you what is 2:00 PM Eastern time on Tuesdays? Like, are you busy then?\”\nRahul: \”2:00 PM Eastern on Tuesdays. I don’t think so.\”\nZac: \”Okay. Hmm. I’m going to do two versions of this, and I think that that listener can, can, can do this as well. There’s a, there’s a, well, the big picture is, is to well question, do you run with media or do you run like no music or anything? Just, just run?\”\nRahul: \”I just run.\”\nZac: \”Okay, cool.Yeah. I envy that. I can’t do it. Maybe when we, one day I’ll try it, but yeah.\”\nRahul: \”I think for me, it’s a combination of the two things. I kind of have the ability to be running in the middle of the street because I run like at five, six in the morning. So sometimes it’s kind of tricky to do that.But the other times I just enjoy being outside and, you know, just appreciate nature and not worry about anything else. It’s one of those, the whole concept of getting disconnected from everything when you’re out on a run. If I bring something with me, just takes me back into like, what’s back at home or work or whatever I’m listening to.\”\nZac: \”Yeah. Do you have fitness plus?\”\nRahul: \”Yes, I do.\”\nZac: \”Okay. So I’ll make this easy then. Do you do a Fitness+ Time To Walk exercise, any length. They, I think they go from 25 to 40 minutes, but that’s just walking. But do you want to those in and report back on what your experience is in interacting with media and doing a walk.\”\nRahul: \”Okay, so fitness plus walk exercise for what, 20 to 25 minutes?\”\nZac: \”Well it’s the Time To Walk a category and, and their, their time. So it’s, it’s storytelling, it’s someone sharing a story. And, and there’s a little bit of music involved, but it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, a couple of songs and a lot of storytelling. So, so do one of those and we’ll discuss that next week.And then also on my birthday last year, you gifted me with a book. And I want to. Share that I haven’t gotten to it yet. But, but I certainly am looking forward to it. And I want to use this, this podcast and our, our weekly discussions now as, as the time to, to definitely get to this. So the book is called why we sleep by Matthew Walker and the audiobook is 13 hours and 15 minutes to practically 14 hours.So what I will do is in addition to my runs, I will progress through the book and in a couple of weeks, just so I want to discuss sleep with you. So, and, and you’ve obviously read the book and so we’ll be on the same page there. Sound good?\”\nRahul: \”Yes. Yeah, that sounds fantastic. Actually. I think sleep is super important for health.And I learned a lot from that book, so I think it’s. It’s fascinating. It’s I think it, it, it unlocks everything else to me. It’s like, you know, one of the things I always say at Tempo the tagline originally and still is in parts of the app is run, recover. Repeat the recovery part is the most important part of any regiment. I think that it’s mental or physical, so.\”\nZac: \”I love it. Well, I will, I will complete my homework to the full intent. And then your homework is just to do a time to walk, exercise with fitness+ and and and then also in the background for listeners and myself, I will be progressing through the book.So, and we’ll discuss that in a few weeks. And that again is why we sleep by Matthew Walker. So. All right. That is 9to5Mac Watch Time. Rahul, I really enjoyed doing this with you.\”\nRahul: \”Likewise.\”\nZac: \”I can’t wait to do more and we will see everybody next week. Bye guys.\”\nTranscribed using Descript”,”description_html”:”
This week on Watch Time join 9to5Mac’s Zac Hall for his first week of run coaching with Tempo developer Rahul Matta.\n
9to5Mac Watch Time is a podcast series hosted by Zac Hall. In this series, we talk to real people about how Apple Watch is affecting their lives. Subscribe now to catch up with each episode and automatically hear new episodes as soon as they\u2019re released every two weeks:\u00a0\ud83d\udfe3 Apple Podcasts\u00a0| \ud83d\udfe0 Overcast\u00a0|\u00a0\ud83d\udfe2 Spotify\n
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Transcript\n
Zac Hall: \”Welcome to 9to5Mac Watch Time a podcast series exploring the world of Apple Watch and how it changes people’s lives this week. I am introducing a new six-week episode format with my good friend Raho Matta, how are you doing Rahul?\”\n
Rahul Matta: \”I’m doing great Zac. It’s exciting. Excited to be here.\”\n
Zac: \”I think, I think this is your third appearance and then that means we should end up at like seven for you in total, by the time this is over.\”\n
Rahul: \”Yeah, we’ll see. Yeah, this is my third official podcast. There is a podcast that I recorded with a friend that we never released so we can count that as a half.\”\n
Zac: \”Okay. This is good though because I’m sure as listeners know, I’ve, I’ve had a hard time making watch time, my priority. And then also, you know, 2020 was a little bit weird. I don’t know if anybody else noticed, but it was a little bit weird. And so things that normally motivate me to do this, like training for races and participating in runs with, with friends.
It didn’t really happen. And so what I want to do is, is the six-episode series where we can just kinda kind of talk about you know, our habits and, and things that we’re working on. And you develop tempo for runners, which is hugely motivational for me. And it’s. It has to be the best Runkeeper app for runners that I’ve seen and knowing how much work you put into it.
I want to discuss that every week too. And just talk about the development of that and, and what’s new and tempo.\”\n
Rahul: \”Yeah, absolutely. I mean I love talking about running. I love to talk about Tempo and, you know, I can go on and on for a long time, I know VB going to keep it short which is a good idea. So Let’s go for it.\”\n
Zac: \”Yeah. Yeah. And also I plan on talking about the future, some Apple Watch news and we’ll include a tip each week, from each of us. And there will also be a segment in which you well, we assign each other homework. W w we’ve already begun part of that, that we’ll talk about in this episode.
So what, let’s kick it off with talking about our background kind of our, our origin story of how we met. So. You know, I know my version of it, but I’m curious from your perspective how we began to interact with each other.\”\n
Rahul: \”Yeah. So I think back in the day I want to say that my very first interaction, which was just one-sided was actually an email to you about Tempo when I launched it.
And Fast-forward that too, by the way, you never responded, which I was hurt by, but so bad. I don’t think you were running much at that point, but that’s, that’s fine. I think that’s a completely understandable add in yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, it, it, it was, it was kind of like something that I was just like, I did not know as an app developer, as an indie developer, how do you focus on reaching out to reviewers?\”\n
Zac: \”Sure\”\n
Rahul: \”So I just blasted out emails to everybody and expected that everybody should write about my, this fancy little app that I wrote. Right. I mean, yeah. But I think it matters you want folks to write about your app with like the care and attention as in like an interest in the app, not just like, okay, I’ll cover your app for whatever reason.\”\n
Zac: \”Yeah. From, from, from the other side, it’s like, you. If, if resources were infinite, you know, we had infinite hours in the day, infinite amount of energy. There’s definitely maybe about 400% more stuff that I like to do myself, that I just have to plan for in the future. And you have to make decisions.
What are you going? What is the thing that you are going to do? And what are the things that you’re going to say, I’ll do this later. If I can. And if I can’t get to them, I can’t get to them. Not to mention, you know, every single day there’s a stream of incoming. You know, pitches and things like that.
And so that’s certainly my approach in narrowing down things is, am I actually interested in this as this fits in one of my existing categories of interest? Or is it something that someone else is interested in that’s on the team? Or is this something that, that we couldn’t do justice of covering, you know, it’s just not, not in the cards.
So I don’t recall that first pitch. But I, I D I do like that, where it went after that, which is\”\n
Rahul: \”Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think and I’m actually, you know, not to give you any hard time, but I’m glad that the way things worked out over time, because, you know, you started running and then you found Tempo.
All by yourself, I had stopped emailing everybody just for the sake of it. And here I was just like randomly, like one day looking at like I don’t even know if I was looking at the websites, traffic or just downloads on Tempo. I saw a spike and I was like, what’s going on? And. Then I realized, Oh there was a mention of temple and 9to5Mac.
And next thing I know, you know, it was like, you know, I found the tweet very, you had mentioned about it and I was like, okay. And this was, I think early 2019 and That was our first interaction where what you had posted was a feature request for Tempo asking for personal bests and you have come a full circle because I recently released Tempo 3.3, where personal bests got launched.
So, yeah that’s a that’s what I recall.\”\n
Zac: \”Yeah, absolutely. So so again, I mean, my inbox, as of like the past couple of days, there have been things that if I had more time and energy I would have written about and just, just can’t do them justice. But yeah, I w w I remember I was talking with my cohost on 9to5Mac Happy Hour Benjamin Mayo about just my experience with writing and everything and how it was being motivated by you know, when you’re first starting out, especially.
Seeing this run on this 5k on this Sunday was a few seconds faster than the one, the previous Sunday. And I remember talking to my partner at the time that you know, Hey, last week’s record. And then it became like, guess what? And it’s like, what? You’d be lesson record. And I’m like, yeah, this is like, you’re going to keep doing that.
But it was very motivational. And, and then when I would do. Do races, tint, 5k 10k, etc. I was using the Nike run club app, to do that. And it had the feature, you know, with personal records where it would, it would give you an award for your you know, whatever your fastest time was. So if you only ran one 10K, that was your fastest.
And and that was, that was really useful. And by Nike run club, you know, it’s a great app, it’s, it has a great community built into it, you know, a whole social network some really great guided Ryans for getting you motivated. But it’s often been, it’s often been buggy on the Apple watch because Apple isn’t the one developing it.
And even though it’s like, pre-installed on some versions of the Apple watch and are really, really pushed heavily it just it’s. It’s not as feature-heavy as the built-in workout app even for running, which is kind of surprising you know, that apples and I were looking at the feature request he talks about that was a while ago and things are still true now that Apple’s workout app is the best-run tracking app that I, in my opinion, just for the different things that it can offer and, and, and w we had the discussion on happy hour.
And I mentioned that I didn’t want to use the Nike run club app, but I wanted to keep having that feature. And you couldn’t just put your runs in Nike run club and get the same results. So. Some podcasts listeners said I think is what happened, but a podcast listener, I think he recommended tempo as an alternative run tracker, just for record-keeping basically, and seeing your stats.
And I checked it out. And just these, this, this is, you know, conceptually really cool. Doesn’t quite do the thing I wanted to do with, in terms of, you know, personal records, but. Fast forward to now and it does. And, and I, I loved it for all the other reasons. Like I remember seeing when I would go to races, seeing People who were more seasoned, runners have a paper notebook of their, the date and the location and all that.
It’s like, yeah, you can’t do that. I guess that’s the traditional way, the classic way. But, but for me, an app. That does so much of it automatically is, you know, that’s leveraging technology and without tempo, I’m not sure that there’s a thing like it, that would exist. So it’s, that was really glad that somebody turned me on to tempo.\”\n
Rahul: \”Yeah, I’m thankful for that person, whoever you are out there. Thank you. Please reach out. I’ll make it special for you for some special feature and tempo for you or something.\”\n
Zac: \”Yeah, but it was, it was meant to be though.\”\n
Rahul: \”Yeah. Yeah. I, I think overall I think the way you discover temple and you know, how it has helped you train and kept you motivated is exactly how I hope a lot more runners discover hopefully at a faster pace than it does right now.
But yeah, I, I think just to comment on a couple of things here I think the idea of like, you know, how we see our progress in terms of like our fitness improvements. When we first start running to me, that is so amazing. And that’s one of the reasons why I try to run a marathon once a year. It sounds kind of like backwards, but it’s not because every time you run a marathon, you have to take some time off from running just to recover from all the breakdown in your body.
And next thing you know is like, you go out for like a 30 minute, 45 minute run a month or two down the road, you feel like, so. Out of shape and you have to like, we build you know, your entire routine from scratch because now you’re like just, you know, lazy. And I really enjoy that initial ramp-up.
I’m actually in that mode right now. So it’s kind of amazing. And the other thing that you mentioned about the handwritten training log it’s kind of interesting to me because a lot of runners, even now who are. You know, using Tempo all the time have requested for like being able to export the training log into a PDF.
And I think part of their goal is to be able to print it because there’s something about the fact that you have like something in your hand with your. You know, years worth of data somehow, or a month’s worth of play card effort and just going over it. So at some point, I do want to do that, like, you know, just create like a training album, kind of a thing. It’s on the list.\”\n
Zac: \”Yep. And, and I also want to talk about the current status of tempo and also highlight a couple more things. So one thing, if you haven’t tried tempo before. One of the things I love about it is that it does let you, I mean, it works best when you use the built-in workout app on your Apple Watch and you run that way.
It can work with other apps, but you just get the best data from the workout app and it’s, it’s the most consistent. And but, but then, and also when you start using tempo, You don’t have to start using tempo to start getting data in it. It’s, it reads all your data that you’ve already collected with your watch.
So that, that’s awesome because the experience could be in another circumstance that you have
to begin using it from day one to start adding data to it. But the, but the way it works is that you just, you know, you download it and you, you dig through it and you’ve already got the record of all your data.
That’s already been collected from the watch. So those, those two things are really useful. The other thing I wanna talk about is, is the status of tempo, just. Feature-wise and like design-wise, you know, you say version 3.3 and that sounds fairly new. It feels like it’s leaps and bounds ahead of a version three, anything.
There are so many nice tweaks to the user interface and you know, customization how intuitive it is. How, how, how well you take feature requests, like, Hey, I think you should be able to share it this way, and that would be nice if it had this information on that share sheet, you know, and, and the image that it puts out.
So you’ve been very responsive, both to my feature requests and fair based on what I’m seeing. Other users as well, because it seems to be a pretty vocal community that uses your app. And it shows because not to offend devel developers, but I think it’s often true that developers are not the best designers and designers don’t necessarily develop. So you’ve got a good balance, whatever you’re doing over there.\”\n
Rahul: \”Yeah. So it’s, it’s been a journey for me in terms of sharpening the design aesthetics. Personally, I still am not there. I feel there’s a lot more I can learn and I’m actually thankful for all the great developers, indie developers, and designers out there who share their work in different forms, but it’s an app or just throwing it on, you know, on online anywhere.
It helps me You know I mean, I, I kind of steal from almost everybody from that perspective. So Tempo three for that matter was like a huge lift for me because it’s, it’s something that I originally had a custom font in Tempo and I had been just sitting on and not wanting to change for the longest time.
Well, partly because it looked okay. It w it worked out okay. Nobody complained about it, but partly because. It was a lot of work and as iOS 14 happened and I started looking into implementing widgets and whatnot. I was like, well, there’s just no way I’m using this custom plan and throwing it on everybody’s home screen.
Just because they want to use tempo visit. And that just started the journey of like, you know, okay, let’s start changing the font. And as soon as you start, you know going down that rabbit hole, it was like all sorts of UI changes that I wanted to do that I’d been just sitting on for the longest time.
And next thing you know is like that release. Or recently I wanted to time it with obviously the iOS 14 launch date. But Apple just like ripping the band-aid on us by just saying it’s coming out in two days or whatever that 24-hour timeframe was, was just perfect for me, because I was like, yeah, it’s just not going to happen.
So I might as well take my sweet time here. And continue with my quality focus work. And that’s what I did. And I released, like, I think mid-October, which was about around the time. I think it was right on time with like when the new phones were launched. So it worked out well. But in the process, pretty much the entire app was redundant.
It’s almost like a brand new app. I could have just released it as a completely different app for that matter behind the scenes. It’s it has a lot of like things that you can change, like in terms of colors, there’s like I’m giving us secrets here, but there’s a feature that I’m slowly building in the app where you will be able to like even configure the colors.
So a lot of folks have asked for like, Hey, is the orange is getting a little kind of like old. We want to be able to configure it, have more color schemes. So there’s that too. And you know, everything got became configurable. Originally when we started, it was, everything was being read from the health kit and everything was, you know, there there’s a lot of things that temple does.
Which is based on your training data and your general training patterns and Using that as a lifetime worth of data for input is just, it just started feeling like we are because there are times spend your data from five years ago is not relevant anymore. There are times when you know one of the runners he had been he has been a temple for since day one, I think reached out, said I rum at varying paces.
Some of those runs are like out in the trails where. I run super slow because it’s super steep and it’s in the trail on a trail and whatnot. So it kind of resonated with me. And I had been waiting on like being able to do that. So there are things now where you can configure. What your training pattern should be for something like an intensity calendar in tempo.
And as we started doing that, there were like trends that tempo supported, which was only based on lifetime data. Again, it was comparing your current data with your lifetime data. Folks had asked for like, things like you know, let me compare trends over custom periods. I want to compare my last four weeks with the last 12 weeks of this year versus last year.
So it does that now. And of course, just to do all this, I wanted to release a whole bunch of new features, which I had to just postpone until recently just to release three just tempo three and Fast forward to the current day, along the way we actually I was able to release a heart rate zones, which is also very configurable, what I wanted to do there, which I finally was able to overtime is being able to configure.
The thresholds for each heartbeat zone. Most of the training apps will just say, Hey, we are going to take your max heart rate. And we could just be going to say 50 to 60% of zone one, 60 to 70% is zone two, and so on. Or they would just give it some hard-coded names which works overall.
You know, it’s like a very generalized approach. But you know, I just. Comparing looking at my own data, my threshold for like, you know, doing something like a temple heart rate zone is very different than like, you know a usual, I think it’s like in the 70% zone. So I wanted to configure that for myself and I know folks.
Would want to do that for their own training styles. And, you know, obviously, as soon as I put it out there and into, on TestFlight, like everybody was like, yeah, this is perfect. This is exactly what we wanted. You can name the zones differently. You can change the percentage is differently. So it really works out well.
And then there was like this highlights section, which I wanted to build in 3.0 I kind of parked it away. I was like, well, I’ll come back to it later. It had been actually something that I wanted to do the last year-end of 2019. And I couldn’t do it in time for the year-end review. So it was like, okay, I’ll get to it.
Sometime during 2020 and 2020 has been, you know, we all know how that went. So about a week before the end of the year one of the original founding tempo users as we started, was like, Hey, do you remember that feature? You talked about last year. It would be really nice if he did that. If you did something like that, now I’m like, okay, I’m going to.
And this is like I’m in the midst of implementing personal bests. And so I was like, I’m going to park that for like, you know, just three days I was not planning to work starting like Christmas through the end of the year. So I’m going to before we go for a break, I’m going to take three days and just implement whatever I can with the highlights and see how well, how fast I can go and how far I can go.
And because of all the work that had been done over, you know, for the 3.0 release and all the again, thanks to Swift UI, to be able to crank out so many so much of the UI so quickly I was able to like to build a basic 2020 highlights feature and. That feature just took off on its own because as soon as folks saw it, they loved it.
And folks reached out with like, you know, we want to see it as like, you know, for the past training years too. So. That’s what we ended up doing. I mean, with the recent release, with 3.3 I added like, you know, just being able to switch the years across you know, your training data. So we have like now annual highlights.
We have heart rate zones in addition to the 3.0, which was a brand new full rebranding design and UI and whatnot. And then on top of all that we have personal bests, which was kind of built-in. With every detail that I really wanted in there, starting from like what happens at the workout level? I don’t want to take this data to the server.
There’s a lot of details I can keep going. Maybe we should focus personal bests on sure.\”\n
Zac: \”That’s that’s fair. Yeah. I will say, I know about you that the orange and the theme, it comes from your original Apple watch band. Is that right?\”\n
Rahul: \”Absolutely. Yep.\”\n
Zac: \”Yeah. Around in my life. There’s not a whole lot of orange, but the fee, the few things that in my life that are orange, I deeply admire, I have an orange branded orange guitar amp.
I have a model rocket of NASA’s space launch system and it is very much orange. The space shuttle fuel thing is orange and I have a LaSalle Lacy. And I say it, but the external drive that I, that I rely on and it is orange. And so I associate very few things with orange, but all of them, I like a lot and tempo is one of them.\”\n
Rahul: \”Thank you.\”\n
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Zac: \”So let’s, let’s, let’s talk some more this week about. Some, some just tips of the Apple watch. Well, we’ll do about once a week over the next six weeks. The thing I wanted to mention this week is AppleWatch SOS emergency SOS. And this feature is one of the things that when you see stories on the news about how the Apple Watch has saved someone’s life you know, been credited with being, being, you know, very useful in that regard.
SOS has one of those features where. You just hold the side button down the big, long button on the side of your watch down for several seconds and your watch will call emergency services wherever you live. So in the US, it’s 911. And, and that’s all I have to do. And it’ll notify your emergency contact that something’s happened.
It’ll send a text message and it’ll even send you a location. And for a period of time, it’ll update your location. With your emergency contact. And this feature is neat. It’s one that if you haven’t set it up before, it’s a good one to set up on your Apple watch. And the thing that made me think of it for this week is I saw some ads online.
For products that do this and that’s all they do is, you know, they, they called 911, not even, you know, where’s your emergency contact from your family or friends and share location and all those nice things, but they, they just call 911 and they were, they were designed to be disguised like wristbands or you know, part of your hat, something that you wear.
And, and they were pricey as well. I was just thinking, I wonder how many people know about the Apple Watch SOS feature? You know, that would, that would, that have enough watch, but see that and they think, Oh, I need that product. That’s being marketed to me when in reality, the Apple watch can do it and probably better, you know, definitely better.
It’s another one of those things where it’s, it’s, you know if you have your phone with you, then, then it’s going to use. Your phone service does it, but it’s, it’s one of the big reasons to have a cellular app watch and keep the service active. Because if you’re not with your phone, then you can’t do the phone call for yourself.
And, and there’s. You know, and it, there’s definitely you know an approach to going out and running that you want to also maintain your safety. And just knowing that there’s SOS as an, in any circumstances is so useful, you know, whether it’s being harassed by someone. Or you’re out for a run and you get hit by a car even going at a slow speed.
I mean, it’s not good. And having SOS on board is, is, you know, Apple calls, these features kind of guardian health features. And this is one of my favorites. So SOS for this, for this week.\”\n
Rahul: \”Yeah, absolutely. I love that feature. And I think one of the key things that I appreciate about it is I think taking it further, it’s also part of the fallback the fall detection feature, right?
Where if you had, you know, it’s funny because I’ve said this to my wife before. A few times where she started appreciating that I wear an Apple watch because it’s winter here. You know, like I wake up the only times I can go for a run is in the mornings when it’s still dark outside. And sometimes, you know, if it’s snowed in or whatever, it’s a little icy outside and she’s like, be careful out there, you know, don’t, don’t get hit by something, and nobody knows where you are.
I’m like, don’t worry about it, man. I’m watching, we’ll call you. And that’s, that’s that right? I mean, because. The way I believe the fall detection feature works is you if it detects that you just fell and you don’t respond to a notification, it would call all your emergency contacts on your watch. So, yeah.\”\n
Zac: \”Yep. And, and to get into your tip, I want to, I have a memory of an early run where when I, when I first got into running, I would, I would do, initially it was, let me just see if I can run a mile. And it was like you know, a quarter-mile and I’m done and I’ll walk it out until I felt better than I run.
And eventually, I could do a whole mile without losing my breath like that. When I got into 5k is I would do a 5k each Sunday. It started out with, and it would be on this bridge that has a very steep incline and then a steep decline and a little bit of flat, and then the other way around to return. And I would go rain or shine and there was one day where I went.
And it very much was not shine. It was like a torrential downfall you know, just, just crazy rain. And I was almost back to the starting point, which would be completing the 5k. And I had a streak going that I was very proud of and the rain droplets stopped the workout on my watch and God man.
That’s de-motivating. So what is your tip this week?\”\n
Rahul: \”Yes, my tip is exactly that it’s called water lock and I think some folks have called it a lock, but essentially what it is is it locks your screen and. For me, this is something that has turned into like you know, like second nature.
Like I immediately, as soon as I started running you know, that whole circle, like one, two, three, ready go starts. I just swipe. Right. And there is you know, I locked the screen and I go for it. So the way it works is it will lock your screen. And you get to it by when you start a workout, we just swipe right.
There is a water droplet kind of an icon on a button. You just tap that it’s labeled as lock. And it’s meant for essentially what you just described. If it’s raining or something you know, whether it’s raining or if it is super humid, I’ve had conditions where, you know, just my own sweat, just. You know, did something to the screen and yeah, it, it either created a new segment and during my run or something, and even during winter, you know, you’re wearing a full sleeve shirt or a glove or something, and it’s covering the face of the watch.
I’ve had issues in the past where I forgot to do it once in it wasn’t that the watch stops the workout. But somehow the battery just drained. And my theory there is, it was just like activating this queen. This was like before the time, like when we had like all ways on. So it was just like, you know, it’s something that, again, it’s also saved you from the battery because it’s always.
It stays, the screen stays locked, so it’s not trying to do anything else. And it just works for perfectly, you know, all you have to do is like, you know, to unlock it, just turn into digital crown and you’re back to what it was.\”\n
Zac: \”That’s right. My experience was before it was series, it was the first generation.
This is before the series too. And, and I, you know, I guess it was from tracking when they first added the feature because not just the fact that, you know, what we talk about with, with rain and sweat, but An underwater, any, anything can, you know, all those taps, the water droplets can feel can, can simulate the finger taps.
So it’s necessary and it’s, I guess it’s automatic, for those swim workouts. So that’s a wonderful tip, to know I’ve had people ask me, do I need to hit the water button? To make my watch what are resistant because it’s just intuitive. You associate that icon. Would that feature you know, your watch is the button that just locks the screen, just like we talked about.
The watch is always as water-resistant, as it is. So the differentiation next week I want to talk about some high-level fitness goals that we have. So we’ll skip that for this week. Unless…\”\n
Rahul: \”Oh no we have to get into that.\”\n
Zac: \”We will, we will, we will. But, but, but let’s, let’s, let’s talk about health homework before we wrap up for this week.
So you assigned me a homework assignment. W w what has he assigned me?\”\n
Rahul: \”So the way this worked out for me was, you know, you’re pinging me about like, Hey, would I be interested in doing this podcast co-hosting thing with you? And I was like, well okay. It’s, you know, for me, this is something that, you know, not being a podcaster or I was kind of like pushing me out of my comfort zone.
And I was like, well, that’s fine. I think I need to do that from time to time. So I was all out for it, but this was my opportunity for like, you know, Turning it around because I know that you’ve been trying to run on and off and like trying to get back into the rhythm. So it was like, okay, well, here’s the deal.
You have to do a weekly, like, you know, three times a day, three times a week, you have to go for a run for five minutes or more. That was your assignment. I, what I left out there was like, I think we have to keep optimizing and tuning that further. So it’s not. Three times five minutes.\”\n
Zac: \”Yeah. Yeah. That’s fair. Now I procrastinated on this and I even pushed back the first recording together by a week. So I had two weeks to do my homework and, it was recording day and I was not going to show up empty-handed. So what I did was I went on a single run and I did five minutes segments. I would do. I did five minutes of running.
And then five minutes of walking, five minutes of running five minutes walking, repeat, and ended up doing, I think it was the three, five-minute segments with, with my generous interpretation. I think there were, there were four, five-minute walking segments, and then there was a two and a half minute run just to get back to home.
And, and even though it wasn’t kind of the nature of the instructions I did, I did. Really enjoy it. And what I got of it was, it was just kind of taking mental notes as I went along. And the first segment was, was really when it was easy because I was motivated to run. You know, it was in the right mindset and everything.
I had my gear on, I was all ready to go. It was I’m in Orlando, Florida. It was 80, it was 73 degrees. You know, right around lunchtime. And I, I recall thinking, Oh, it was nice to stop running it well, for one, it was nice to get a halfway point alert on the watch. At two and a half minutes, it’s just like this started, I’m halfway to my goal for this first segment.
And then once I got to five minutes, it was like, oh, I’m starting to feel it, but that was easy. And it’s really nice too, to be able to, you know, quote-unquote finished the goal before You know, the first mile or even third mile, that kind of thing. For, for just kind of the minimum thing here.
And then I walked for five minutes and then on the next segment, it’s kind of that feeling I know when I go for a 5k, the second mile tends to feel better than the first mile. You feel stronger. And you kind of gets your stride. That’s kinda how I fell. I, at the very end, I started to have that, that pain in my side where I’m just out of practice and that’s what comes with it.
And I did a walk and then in the last five minutes segment, there was no more pain in my side. I felt amazing. And in the last. I want to say like 30 seconds, maybe it was more, but there were people walking on the path and I didn’t want to walk past or, you know, go past them slowly. So even I was, I was running.
So I really pick up the pace and I felt just, you know, the way it feels is like flying and it was, it was also good because it was like, this is the last five minutes segment of before I’ve finished with my quote-unquote homework and It’s it, it always feels good to finish strong because you tend to leave some gas into the tank.
And then at the end, if you, you see the finish line, then, you know, let me just give it all I have, because I’m not going to lose it. I’m not going to run out of energy between now and then. And you really, you really do something that you didn’t know you could do, or they, you know, you couldn’t just say the whole time.
And it felt really good and. Then, then I shared on Twitter the story for the fleets feature because I like, I like the idea of it going away and not always being there. Just the strategy of breaking it up and everything. And I, I realize and writing that, that before when I really got and running and I felt like I was making a lot of progress, it was because running was a form of escapism for me, where there were.
Stresses in life problems in life, whatever. And running was literally, I was getting it. I was physically away, from the problems. And then mentally I was, I was in a different zone. And then I was motivated by improving and in 2020 I started riding motorcycles and that really became that for me, where You know, I’d go for a ride and you can’t look at your phone just like on a run.
You know you can’t, you can’t be distracted by all these things because you’re just focusing on the thing that you’re doing, whether it’s running or riding a motorcycle. And I realized that I, now I associate that kind of adrenaline rush and sense of just, just, you know, decompression and being at ease with riding my motorcycle.
And so. To enjoy running again. I need to have a different reason for it. And it’s obvious it’s health. It’s for my long-term health. And by making that association, it’s like, I’m no longer chasing a feeling I’m burning you, chase a feeling I’m running, you know, for the obvious health reason. And just to have a reason at all, it makes it.
That much better, because you know, you have a reason to show up whether it’s your homework you know, or, or a bigger picture health goal. So I quite enjoyed it.\”\n
Rahul: \”Yeah. That’s, that’s fantastic to hear. I, I want to say it’s great. You did your homework, but unfortunately, you did not really finish your homework.
It was five or more minutes. So you essentially did five or more minutes once instead of three times. I, so I’ll give you a little bit of a background on why I selected that kind of a set as homework. I mean, it’s, it’s essentially based on the concept of a, I believe it’s called gateway habit.
Which was described by James clear in his book, atomic habits and the way the concept is described, I think he, he based it off of the two-minute rule by David Allen, which is, you know, getting things done, which essentially says that if it takes less than two minutes to just do it now, you don’t have to wait for it or put it on your task list or something like that.
Sure. And the gateway habit, the way that works is. It to start a new habit. What do you do is you basically elaborate like you, you think of that habit as like, from the easiest to the hardest. So his example is actually used running, which I think what he describes is like The easiest part is put on your shoes.
And the hardest is you want to run. Your goal is like running a marathon. And then in between there, it’s like, you know, go run, go walk for five minutes or run like a 5k. And it kind of gets harder and harder. So my goal here for you was essentially like, you know if you’re going to go for a five-minute run, And three times a week.
Hopefully, that becomes your gateway habit, right? It’s really just like a ritual for you. Once you have your shoes on, you’re going to be out there for five minutes and that’s exactly what you did for today’s workout, right? I mean, you were out there and you’re like, well, the five minutes are already done.
I can keep going. So it’s kind of a hack, but at the same time, if you just promise yourself that you’re just going to go for five minutes and from there on it doesn’t matter. And you do it like. You know, a few times a week, at some point it would just click as like, you know, as soon as you put on your shoes or go out for a walk.
You would be like, yes, I can keep doing it for like, you know, at a continuous pace and, you know, for the longest time. So that’s where this whole concept came from. It was yeah.\”\n
Zac: \”I like it. So, what do I do next week? What’s your take on what I do next week?\”\n
Rahul: \”I would say repeat the homework, but do it this time.\”\n
Zac: \”Okay. I will. Okay. For you what is 2:00 PM Eastern time on Tuesdays? Like, are you busy then?\”\n
Rahul: \”2:00 PM Eastern on Tuesdays. I don’t think so.\”\n
Zac: \”Okay. Hmm. I’m going to do two versions of this, and I think that that listener can, can, can do this as well. There’s a, there’s a, well, the big picture is, is to well question, do you run with media or do you run like no music or anything? Just, just run?\”\n
Rahul: \”I just run.\”\n
Zac: \”Okay, cool.Yeah. I envy that. I can’t do it. Maybe when we, one day I’ll try it, but yeah.\”\n
Rahul: \”I think for me, it’s a combination of the two things. I kind of have the ability to be running in the middle of the street because I run like at five, six in the morning. So sometimes it’s kind of tricky to do that.
But the other times I just enjoy being outside and, you know, just appreciate nature and not worry about anything else. It’s one of those, the whole concept of getting disconnected from everything when you’re out on a run. If I bring something with me, just takes me back into like, what’s back at home or work or whatever I’m listening to.\”\n
Zac: \”Yeah. Do you have fitness plus?\”\n
Rahul: \”Yes, I do.\”\n
Zac: \”Okay. So I’ll make this easy then. Do you do a Fitness+ Time To Walk exercise, any length. They, I think they go from 25 to 40 minutes, but that’s just walking. But do you want to those in and report back on what your experience is in interacting with media and doing a walk.\”\n
Rahul: \”Okay, so fitness plus walk exercise for what, 20 to 25 minutes?\”\n
Zac: \”Well it’s the Time To Walk a category and, and their, their time. So it’s, it’s storytelling, it’s someone sharing a story. And, and there’s a little bit of music involved, but it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, a couple of songs and a lot of storytelling. So, so do one of those and we’ll discuss that next week.
And then also on my birthday last year, you gifted me with a book. And I want to. Share that I haven’t gotten to it yet. But, but I certainly am looking forward to it. And I want to use this, this podcast and our, our weekly discussions now as, as the time to, to definitely get to this. So the book is called why we sleep by Matthew Walker and the audiobook is 13 hours and 15 minutes to practically 14 hours.
So what I will do is in addition to my runs, I will progress through the book and in a couple of weeks, just so I want to discuss sleep with you. So, and, and you’ve obviously read the book and so we’ll be on the same page there. Sound good?\”\n
Rahul: \”Yes. Yeah, that sounds fantastic. Actually. I think sleep is super important for health.
And I learned a lot from that book, so I think it’s. It’s fascinating. It’s I think it, it, it unlocks everything else to me. It’s like, you know, one of the things I always say at Tempo the tagline originally and still is in parts of the app is run, recover. Repeat the recovery part is the most important part of any regiment. I think that it’s mental or physical, so.\”\n
Zac: \”I love it. Well, I will, I will complete my homework to the full intent. And then your homework is just to do a time to walk, exercise with fitness+ and and and then also in the background for listeners and myself, I will be progressing through the book.
So, and we’ll discuss that in a few weeks. And that again is why we sleep by Matthew Walker. So. All right. That is 9to5Mac Watch Time. Rahul, I really enjoyed doing this with you.\”\n
Rahul: \”Likewise.\”\n
Zac: \”I can’t wait to do more and we will see everybody next week. Bye guys.\”\n
Transcribed using Descript “,”title”:”Week 1″,”image”:”http:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/06\/Watch-Time-Wide.jpeg?quality=82&strip=all&w=1000″,”guid”:”https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/?p=696580″,”publish_date”:”2021-02-11T03:45:07+00:00″,”duration”:”45:34″}],”playerId”:”jetpack-podcast-player-block-707312-2″}
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