Not best known as a fan of faff I dubiously set up the Mi Coach on my laptop. Id say my computer knowledge is of an average standard, perhaps my patience is slightly lower than average….however this task in itself presented me a few difficulties. The instructions that come with the product are vauge and assumptive, but with the help of someone a little more patient and a couple of huffs later I managed to acomplish the synchronisation.
My first run with it was what Mi Coach calls a free run where i was able to specify what data from a list of about 8 variables i wanted to collect. The foot pod is based on a stride sensor rather than a GPS and although I didnt have to enter my stride length it seemed to record the overall distance impressively accurately when I checked it on google maps later.
I noticed whilst running was that even though I didnt have a narrative in my headphones I knew my run data was being collected which in itself somehow pushed me on pace wise! It inspired me to program the thing for a coaching run.
Navigating the Mi Coach site was testing and there didnt seem to be a comprehensive nor user friendly help section, what i decided to do was use on of the pre programed race plans to work on my 5k time. The structure of the plan was brilliant I really really liked it.
Mi Coach bases either or in combination (I havent sussed this yet) your heart rate and stride rate on coloured zones. You go from blue to green to yellow to red zones with incresing intensity. Each run has a variable proportion of colour in it depending on your program specifics. You choose the narrative voice from a list of about 10 (too cute for my liking) and plug your MP3 player into it and off you go.
The narrative fades your music to zero when you need to change your pace and commands “speed up to green zone” for example or “slow down to blue zone” and then your music continues. You get a notification at a quater, half, three quaters and 5 mins before the end of your run.
I thouroghly enjoyed running like this, I never once had to look at a watch on my wrist, which I often find distracting as it seems to break my concentration plus I have to make some sort of mental calculation with the data. Having a simple “speed up”, “slow down” or “maintain” command really worked for me.
Synching the unit with the laptop post run couldnt be easier…you just plug it into the USB on your computer and it engages automatically, and directs you to the Mi Coach site where the data you can view is presented either graphically or numerically. Although once again finding what you need on the site is challenging I thought. I managed to stick to the plan for 97% of the time which Mi Coach told me was excellent…I hope i dont let her down next time! 😉
In short its great having someone in your ear pacing you, Mi Coach is light, small, portable and im very much a fan of the coloured zones rather than the raw data being the parameters to work within. Where I would suggest this product could do with improvement is the site navigation and useability
