Climbing, Trail/Ultra running with an Apple Watch (i.e. how's battery life?)
This post came about after a struggle to find much useful information prior to purchasing an Apple Watch, with my primary sports being rock climbing and ultra/trail running. I was involved in a post on the Strava community forums where the common theme being discussed was battery life issues in particular. Here are my notes, enjoy :)
Firstly, there’s lots of articles online about doing sports with an Apple Watch (here’s the latest one from DCrainmaker on the Apple Watch Series 5 and here’s the Apple Watch Series 3) that go into various amounts of details around using it for ‘standard’ activity tracking (i.e. walks, hikes, runs, and the gym). This won’t delve into those topics, although there will be slight mentions, so I suggest the previous links if you want that sort of thing.
I’ll start out by explaining where and how I was using the watch. It was a present for my wife in July 2019, and I’ve effectively borrowed it for a month of testing. I got to use the Apple Watch while out in Spain and climbing for a few weeks. You’ll find several examples of the records I got on this page where I produce the Strava logs for attempts while projecting a route. Firstly, the main pieces to note:
What Device Was I Using?
I was using the 38mm Apple Watch Series 3 - that’s the smallest of their models (which means smallest screen and smallest battery). This particular device was around 5 months old when I started using it (so the battery is still in very good condition), and I had it connected to my own phone, an iPhone XR (for anyone interested, I’ve also discussed here why a modern smartphone is amazing for tracking trail/ultra runs).
I’m a regular user of Apple Pay already so this was set up on the watch also.
At the outset, I kept the device relatively clean of external apps also with the only additions originally being:
Overcast (for podcasts)
Strava (for logging sports activities as I usually use that on my phone - although that app didn’t last long on the phone for which I’ll explain)
Yr.no (as a supplement to the stock weather app on the device).
After realising that the Strava app is quite weak and erratic (that’s putting it mildly, and there’s a lot of complaints around the Internet about it), I ended up moving to the stock Workouts app on the Watch, and using the app Healthfit ( a couple of Euros to purchase and worth every cent) whenever I needed to export an activity to Strava. As it turns out, many activities don’t need to go to Strava so I only ever export the major ones I want to chat about which was an interesting insight: in many ways, it turns Strava into the active-sports social network they’ve always wanted to be! For those who are wondering why I even record everything, a) I’m a nerd who likes that sort of thing ;) and b) it’s the difference between ‘exercise’ and ‘training’.
When in Spain on Christmas Day, climbing occurs (while wearing an Apple Watch of course ;)
Rock Climbing with the Apple Watch: battery life
Starting with my primary sport, what really surprised me with the Workout app was that it doesn’t record height gained! I’m still amazed at that, although rationally I can see a plausible reason. Indoors, I suspect it’s quite hard to get accurate measurements with just the accelerometer of how much vertical height has been gained so Apple has just taken the safe approach and just records time and heart rate. Outdoors, I wonder if it’s recognising that standing beside steep cliffs, or even in big overhangs means that the GPS signal would be rubbish anyway.
Still, it’s a bit surprising, to say the least. I’m sure if I thought about it, it’s not necessarily critical, however, the data nerd in me would love to know how much vertical distance I cover in any one year.
For indoor climbing, there is a new app, Redpoint, where it’s possible to track vertical height gained using the accelerometer: I’ll update this post later this week once I have tested it properly.
As for the key question, battery life, the watch is only having to make use of its GPS for an initial location pinpoint so there is a low drain from this, and for the rest, it’s recording heart rate using the onboard tracking. I can’t confirm exactly however expect to hit the Apple designated specs for a workout of:
Fat Wrists while climbing
One thing I hadn’t considered was what happens when you’re doing sport: with the increased bloodflow as your body is working harder, limbs get slightly fatter. And it turns out the standard watch strap of the Apple Watch is rigid so I find that I’m having to loosen it before I start climbing. What I’d do long-term is swap the strap for something like these stretchy straps you can get on Amazon.
Ultra/Trail running with the Apple Watch: battery life
This is the most contentious one. On Apple’s website, using the same data page as above for climbing, they give for an Apple Watch Series 3:
Up to 10 hours indoor workout
Up to 5 hours outdoor workout with GPS
and the Series 5:
Up to 10 hours indoor workout
Up to 6 hours outdoor workout with GPS
Note, however, one piece. All of these are taken when there is not a phone nearby. However, personally, I find that whenever I’m out for a long run (or any run for that matter), I always bring my phone as I want to be able to call someone in the even to an emergency. And therefore the battery life metrics above start to become inaccurate. Firstly, I’ve mentioned this before when I wrote about our three-day run from Courmayeur to Chamonix: I solely used an iphone for this whole run,my post discussing this topic is here). Many worry about battery life with smartphones, however, my own personal experience is if you leave the phone in ‘Airplane Mode’ (so it’s not connected to any mobile network) and ‘Do Not Disturb’ (so the screen - the most battery-intensive component - isn’t turning on), you can easily go 24-30 hours recording activities on an iPhone.
Here’s the critical piece that is relevant to an Apple Watch: when an iPhone is in ‘Airplane Mode’, it still leaves on Bluetooth which means the connection to the watch is still available.
And when an iPhone is in ‘Airplane Mode’, you can still use the GPS chip (that only receives not transmits so it’s not an issue).
And when your iPhone is near your Apple Watch, it makes use of the iPhone to supply the GPS location because GPS is quite intensive for a watch battery, however, in a phone battery, isn’t significant. As Bluetooth is also ultra-low-power, it’s a much better choice for power savings for the watch.
And anecdotally, I’ve found the impact to the phone battery is insignificant: I’d suspect it only loses a couple of hours. However, the watch gains a lot more. Instead of the 5-6 hours using GPS, it becomes more like 10-12 hours! I verified this with a hike while out in Spain that ended up recording for 6 hours total: using slightly less than 50%).
So, my own experience is for those people doing trail runs that are in the range of 10 hours running time (covering a lot of events), an Apple Watch is more than sufficient to get a full track. Not only that, you have to carry a phone on these types of events anyway so it’s not like you’re being forced to carry the phone just to help the watch battery :)
The non-sports-living-day-to-day with the watch: ‘normal’ life (hint: it’s all about Apple Integration)
Probably the slickest piece of work is, as ever, Apple’s integrations between its various devices. If you use an iPhone and a MacBook, for example, it’s trivially easy to ‘Airdrop’ link/files/photos between them, and they also have the great ‘superpower’ where if you copy something on one device, it’s possible to paste it on the other!
And then there are the neat touches such as Apple Pay directly from the watch (a superpower that is rarely used in Ireland from chats to various shopkeepers while using it myself although they do report, as most will have seen, a lot of people making use of their phones to buy items). I also look forward to the time when the watch and phone can take over for the Leap Card allowing access to trains, buses and Dublin Bikes, however, that’s a distant dream at present with the tender only released in late 2017 and things moving at a glacial pace…… Ireland doesn’t move fast unfortunately for those technological steps!
Probably the neatest benefit I’ve found with the Watch is something so simple and yet, such a lovely trick of integration between their devices. In the same way that moving from typing in a pin code to unlock your phone was removed by the introduction of fingerprint and facial recognition tools (although as far as I can see, Apple devices are still best in class here also) and you find the simple benefits of avoiding this step, finding out that you can enable an option where your watch allows you to unlock your Macbook is, well, wow! I must type in my password at least several times a day and not having to do this anymore is the worth the price alone of the watch.
Outside of those ‘Apple Integration’s, the watch has turned out be to be surprisingly useful for basic items such as little reminders to get up and move around! I’m one of those people that gets sucked deeply into work and thus find it challenging to get up and move around. So the ‘stand’ reminders have come in use alongside the odd ‘get active’ reminder. As I’m on the Apple Watch Series 3, I don’t have the always-on display so it’s infrequently not ideal to have to tilt my wrist to just the right angle to get the display to turn on and see the time, however it’s not a complete deal-breaker. In addition, from reports with the Series 5 and the impact to battery life (just about making it through the day), I’d prefer to know I have the extra battery life for now. Perhaps in another generation or so, battery life will have improved to the point, there’s that extra buffer.
Battery Life
Speaking in detail of battery life in a day to day aspect (in comparison to my descriptions above related to long-distance running), with the Series 3, I regularly get almost two full days from a charge. Right now, at 3 pm as I write this post and after putting on the watch at 8 am this morning, the battery shows 78%. I.e. it will easily get through the whole day. The arguments over having to charge nightly remind me of the complaints when we moved from the crappy Nokia’s to proper smartphones (i.e. after the iPhone came out): sure, it would be nice if the battery lasted all week however that also brings its own issues. At least nightly, it becomes part of your daily routine to charge the device whereas if it’s every week or so, it’s easy to forget - I remember many people’s whose phones would just die unexpectedly as they couldn’t remember when they’d last charged it!
So, in short, for myself, who has only a limited number of notifications coming in and usually logs activities for 1-2 hours daily, the battery life is more than perfect.
Straps
At present, the watch has the standard rubber strap on the wrist which I’d likely replace for my own watch. I’m finding that my own (skinny) wrist is somewhere in between two of the closing notches so it’s either too tight or too loose. In addition, as I rock climb, one of the side effects is your arms get a bit fatter when doing the exercise and as this strap is non-flexible, it is cutting off blood flow! I’d be looking at some sort of strap that has a bit of stretch I think.
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