Benefits of training with an Apple Watch
By pairing your Runna plan with your Apple Watch, you’ll be coached through your workouts live as you run. For example if you’re doing an intervals session, you no longer need to remember and track the specific distances, paces and rests. Instead, your watch will automatically tell you how much further is left to run, what your current pace is and how that compares to your target. It’ll notify you when you need to speed up/slow down and even count down your rests so you know when to start running again. Once you've completed your session, you can then compare your runs against what your Runna plan set you!
Pairing your Apple Watch with your Runna plan
To pair your Apple Watch with your Runna plan, click Connected Apps and turn on the Apple Watch connection. You’ll be prompted to accept some permissions and the workouts will be synced automatically to the Runna app on your Apple Watch. When you switch plan or edit your current plan, we’ll automatically update your workouts for you. And when you mark a workout as complete, we’ll remove it from your watch too. Please note that your Apple Watch workout will appear in the same unit of measurement as your Runna plan.
Our Apple Watch integration will automatically sync any future unlocked weeks to your Apple Watch app. For users on a free week, you'll get access to workouts from that week only. For Runna Premium users, we'll automatically sync the next two weeks of workouts to your Apple Watch app.
Audio Cues
Our Apple Watch app also supports audio prompts so that you can get coaching live as you run! To enable these, swipe right on the homescreen to access the settings menu and turn on Audio Cues. You can adjust the volume of these cues too.
The Audio Cues will play out of different places depending on how your Watch is connected:
Watch and phone are not connected to headphones - Audio Cues will play out of the Apple Watch speaker
Watch is connected to headphones - Audio Cues will play through the headphones, dimming the music
Phone is connected to headphones - Audio Cues will play through the speaker (this is an Apple limitation, sorry!). We recommend downloading any music/podcasts to your Apple Watch and connecting your headphones directly to get the best experience
Following workouts
Once you start your run on the Apple Watch app, you'll be guided through your workout live as you run, complete with Audio Cues, vibrations etc. There are also settings for Auto Pause (which will automatically pause your workout when you stop moving) and more.
Free run
If you press Free Run when opening the Apple Watch app, you'll have the option to record an Outdoor or Treadmill workout. During the Free run, if you double tap the watch screen, it'll automatically create a new lap for you which will be used for lap metrics (such as lap pace) and shown in the activity summary page.
Pausing and Auto-pausing
During the workout you can pause/resume the workout by either swiping right to access the control menu and press pause/resume, enabling auto-pause from the settings menu, or pressing both of the buttons of the Apple Watch (the digital crown and side button).
Double tap to end lap
If you enable double tap to end lap from inside the settings menu, this will allow you end workout steps (such as warm-ups, rests or sprints) early if you'd like and move you straight to the next section. This could be great if you're running to a track and have already arrived, want to end your rest early, or can't reach the end of that interval and want the rest to start now!
Action button
We also have enabled support for the Apple Watch Ultra action button - just set it to trigger a new lap and it will open your Runna app if it's not open already, then during a run it will automatically create a new lap for you, or end the current lap if you're following a workout.
Tracking your progress
After you’ve completed your run, your completed workout will then be stored in your Runna app, Apple Health profile and optionally synced to Strava if you have enabled the connection. You can then analyse your post-workout stats and compare them to the pace targets that you were set. If you’re consistently beating, or not making, your pace targets then we suggest editing them to make your targets challenging yet achievable.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about using your Apple Watch with your Runna plan then please don’t hesitate to contact us. If it’s a problem using your watch, including technical issues, we’ll try and help as much as we can, but you may be required to contact Apple directly to get support.