[dspillett]

I walk and run on trails a fair bit¹ so my watch is mostly a route planning/tracking/recording tool.

When training for something I will often at least consider its recommendations and those are based partly on the health readings as well as the training load it has tracked from treks/runs. Though TBH other than that the health tracking is unimportant compared to it being a GPS device that can track for a day or more constantly without needing to talk to a phone (which sits in my pack/pocket in low-power mode to conserve battery unless/until I need it for something). A don't even tend to pay attention to the heart-rate stats (though I do know people who use those features to directly guide their training).

I know a few people whose use pattern is very similar to mine, near identical in fact, so I think it is fairly common amongst people who walk and/or run more than the average person.

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[1] Less than I'd like ATM, the rest of life like ill family and my own burn-out² are getting in the way, but I'm getting myself back into it

[2] The key reason I'm trying to get back at it: herfing myself around the green stuff³, is something I find beneficial to my mental state as well as physical.

[3] or even the “mostly brown stuff” as it can be this time of year.

[coryfklein]

Can you unpack a little more by what you mean when you say you use the watch to plan your route? Do you mean to say you're using the watch – with that tiny display – to choose whether you run over hill A or around town B?

And what is the point of the tracking? Do you take time out of your day to review your past runs for some reason? My completely uninformed self is imagining a person sitting at their desk thinking, "Oh yeah, that was a good run. Look at that part where I turned the corner onto Market Street! Hah, I remember that, good times." And realize this sounds so ridiculous I must certainly be misunderstanding the point of the tracking.

[BigGreenJorts]

I cycle and I'm certainly taking time to review past bike rides. Especially the fixed routes I have. I'm seeing the speed overall, but also reviewing segments that are hard, address specific skills/challenges, or where I hit my top speed typically. I try to compare this to sleep and diet changes between specific rides, but am also keeping track of general trends (typically my goal is faster over time, but there are some nuances to that.)

[coryfklein]

Okay that makes sense. I can see how the tracking features would be really valuable to you, or really anyone that is very fitness minded. Probably folks like you make up a minority – though significant – market segment? Of my friends, many of them are fit, but I suspect only a few are engaging with their fitness data on the level you are.

I think some aspect of it must be aspirational. Man sees the advanced fitness features and thinks, "this is the thing that will get me looking like Vin Diesel!" and it feels productive to hit that Record Workout button and so the watch makes you feel more athletic in the same way that chatting on Slack can feel like you're being productive when you're not actually changing your behavior on a fundamental level.

[dspillett]

> with that tiny display – to choose whether you run over hill A or around town B?

Previous devices I've had only did breadcrumb mapping, though you can match the trace you are making or the pre-programmed trace you are following with a paper map to make such decisions. I upgraded a while back to one that has actual map data so what you suggest is actually possible, though I use it to augment my paper map with accurate positioning rather than to replace it for navigation decision-making.

> … what you mean when you say you use the watch to plan your route?

“Plan” is probably overstating it. Most of the time I'm following a route and using it to make sure I don't go too far off course, or if I deliberately take a detour (“ooh, I bet the view from over there is pretty”…) to help me get back on course afterwards.

The watch does have enough map data and enough brains to plot a simple route to a waypoint, it can certainly reverse a trace to make a track “home”, but I don't use any of that. If I'm somewhere where I have a few relevant routes already in the watch I can switch mid-outing if I decide to do something longer/shorter, and if I go off my beaten track I can use it (possibly along with my paper map to make decisions about doing direct or around bits of landscape) to roughly guide me to a known place.

I do sometimes use the traces to plan future routes though, especially when I've been out exploring new routes or a completely fresh area. For example if I spun 180⁰ somewhere there is a good chance there was an obstacle at that point I might want to avoid in future, which may not be obvious on the paper map, but I remember when I see the past trace. Route traces can be nice to share too: I can hand send friend a route that I particularly enjoyed, and they can do the same back.

These days most trail runs hand out a GPX trace for you to more-or-less follow (allowing for number-of-points resolution issues on any given watch & such), but back when I started events would often just give a description. I would go out to do a recce of parts of the route following the description and paper map, maybe getting lost a few times due to missing a turn, and back home I could edit the trace to cut out those deviations so on event day I had a reasonably accurate path to follow (the watch vibrates if I go beyond a certain distance off-course, which I might do intentionally to avoid a temporary blockage like an angry looking bull in a field but don't want to do accidentally by, say, missing a somewhat hidden turning).

Some people use the location & speed tracking data in conjunction with heart rate, temperature, and such, to tweak their training plan, but I don't go into that detail.

> imagining a person […] thinking, "Oh yeah, that was a good run. Look at that part where I turned the corner onto Market Street! Hah, I remember that, good times."

I do have a plan at some point to make a big map of the moors & dales for my wall, with my favourite routes (from events or personal outings) marked on, the tracking data will be useful for that if it can be made to integrate nicely with whatever I end up using to draw the main map. Like the world maps people have on which they mark which countries/cities they've visited. I've had a fair number of good times out in the green. Less so for city outings or other road/pavement routes.