Forgive me for cross-posting, I already appealed to r/Shortcuts on this yesterday but haven’t gotten any replies.
Context: I built a custom running tracker that leverages the Workouts app on Apple Watch, Shortcuts on iPhone, and Google Sheets because I’ve found that mileage / distance calculations on the watch and phone are usually 10-15% underestimated when running on a treadmill (not sure about outdoor runs with GPS though) – I’ve tested this on 6 different treadmills at my gym and found comparable variance on all of them between how far the treadmill says I’ve gone vs how far my watch and/or phone say I’ve gone.
Basic functionality: I tap the shortcut icon on my phone and manually enter values for distance, duration, setting (treadmill, outdoors, or track), and “notes”. The shortcut then passes all of this data into my Google sheet where it gets reformatted and incorporated automatically into several data visualizations I have set up within Sheets (see attached image, does not include graphs or URLs because they’re not relevant to my question).
Problem: I’d like to expand on the data set that is incorporated into Sheets. I know that Apple Watch is collecting data during my runs that I am not currently taking advantage of - specifically heart rate. I feel like it shouldn’t be difficult to extract this data from Workouts via Shortcuts and pass it to Sheets along with the data I’ve entered manually, but I’m struggling with this. It is not clear how Workouts on the watch integrates with the Health app on the phone – the only 2 Shortcuts actions that can control Workouts and are accessible by default are “Start Workout” and “End Workout”. So I assume any data collected during my run would be saved in, or at least accessible from, the Health app. Health is not available for the watch so I also assume iPhone is sucking up data from Workouts, therefore my runs should be indirectly accessible from Health on iPhone. But Health does not differentiate biometrics collected during regular everyday activity from designated exercise sessions.
What I’ve tried:
- “Get Details of Health Sample” - the “detail” item you can select here displays a list of metrics you can filter by but this list does not include anything useful that I haven’t already entered manually.
- “Find Health Samples” - does let you filter by “Type”, but “Workout” is not a type you can choose. Neither is “Run”, but you can select “Running Power”, “Running Speed”, and “Running Stride Length”, all of which I’d be interested in… also “Heart Rate”. However, these metrics in Health reflect ALL of my everyday activity, I am interested ONLY in the data collected during my run, as tracked by the watch.
- Toolbox Pro - does provide additional Shortcuts actions including “Get Workouts” that presumably pulls workout-specific data from Health, but when you pass this data to the “Get Details of Health Sample” action you can still only choose from the same limited menu I described above… heart rate, for example, isn’t on the list.
I’m surprised this is not an easier problem to solve and can only assume I’m overlooking something due to a lack of understanding / inexperience with Shortcuts. I wouldn’t be opposed to downloading and/or purchasing additional Shortcuts helper apps if it could get me there. I’m very pleased with how well this tracker is working so far but I know it could be so much more with a little guidance. Thanks in advance for any help getting me un-stuck!
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