Thursday, April 08, 2010
Adidas miCoach Review: Week 4
This is week 4 of my four week review of Adidas miCoach. Read the whole series here.
After my rant last week about the inability to create custom interval workouts on miCoach, I got a nice little comment on the post to checkout a new custom workout builder "next" week. Well well, come this week and I got this and more:
- a brand new forum
- add/edit routes
- an "achievements" page
Custom workout builder
One of the two most useful additions to the miCoach website, this one completely fixes my issues with the interval workouts from last week. Here's a quick rundown on building a custom interval workout:
Select your workout type
Then you define your interval workout. You can set the warmup/cooldown sections and upto 8 different kinds of interval sections. You also need to set the number of repetitions for the interval sections.
An overview of what your heart rate zones for the workout will look like, and you are done.
This is almost perfect for my needs. One thing which will make it even better is that if one could also set the "duration" for the interval sections in terms of distance and not just time. But overall, its a job well done and its dead easy to define your own interval workouts.
Forum
Another welcome addition is the brand new forum. There's the "help" section and then there's the "talk" section -- the former to seek help regarding the device or the website (presumably there would be some admins there), and the latter for general discussion around running and the device (I am sure there will soon be a few bragging contests around people's running "achievements" :P )
Achievments
A novelty feature, mostly. But certainly makes you feel good!
Add/edit routes
Another new addition is that you can pin your routes on a map (via Google Maps). You can supposedly add ratings, notes, etc. This is something I haven't really used much yet, so can't say much about it. I guess I'll add some of my running routes in Gurgaon and Jalandhar at some point of time.
Conclusion
I was a little low on running mileage this week -- managed only a short interval workout on one of the weekdays and then an 18K run on Sunday. All in all, I've put in nearly 90 km worth of outdoor running (not counting treadmill runs in the gym) in the last four weeks (I know its not much -- will have to gradually increase my mileage again), and I have come away quite impressed with the product. Some of the more useful things for me have been:
- Getting an accurate idea about the distance run when running on the road
- The coaching system is really useful for interval based workouts
- Love the way running stats are presented on the site
Another way I benefited from this device was that I picked up my running momentum again. Since I had no major upcoming events to run in since the Mumbai marathon in Jan, I had slacked off quite a bit on running in February. Thanks to the obligations placed by the miCoach contract, running is back on track :) Hopefully things will continue to get better.
Labels: micoach, micoach-review, running
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