My Son buys me a Galaxy Gear S3 Watch in an attempt to save my life.

Actually it’s an early birthday present as my birthday is not until the end of the month. But he wanted me to have it early to try and prevent me dying before the 29th June.

Now here is the thing; My son is a fully qualified personal trainer. He is a dietitan and a complete health and fitness freak. He trains some of Qatar’s elite in a gym appropriately named Q Gym Elite here in Doha. And that gym has very kindly given me completely free use of their facilities. But I don’t go to the gym, and my son is afraid that his constant nagging about my health will stress me to the point where the stress actually kills me.

So he cunningly bought me this watch to try and get me moving again. He knows I love data and information, and figured the watch would motivate me to at least walk.

It worked. I love the watch. And it is indeed motivating me to walk regularly and vigorously.

At present I am walking 4km a day at a fast pace. I am capable of more, but don’t want to pick up an injury from over doing it. So I am being sensible. I know if I push, something will get strained or torn or worse. And I don’t want to have to rest because of injury and never start again. Which is what happened when I injured my ankle back in 2014: 3 months after injuring my foot it’s still agony and now it’s starting to go numb in places, so off to @HMC_Qatar I go

I’m loving the data/feed back from the watch. I love the maps, the graphs and the motivating messages. And apart from my poor aching legs, I’m loving getting out there.

One of the nice things about the Samsung Health APP, is it encourages you to grab a photo of your workout. So recently while out walking I have used my phone to grab shots of stuff that will help me remember the route I was taking.

Soon enough you will learn from me if this latest fitness effort is just a fad or a long term commitment. Obviously my son wants it to be long term to try and keep me alive as long as he can. And I hope the technology keeps me motivated by showing me improvements as they happen. I will report back again in a month.