I saw this phone on the net a few weeks ago and thought if that isn’t the perfect phone to run with I don’t know what is. If it can live up to what the marketers say it can then it is water resistant and also drop proof. It’s the first claim which really interests me.

I have said a number of times my major reservation as to why I don’t take my iPhone out is the fear of water damage be it rain, snow or most likely sweat. The phone is not a cheap device and to break it whilst running would set me back a few pennies and great annoyance. I have lost one (albeit cheap) phone at the marathon where my body overcooked and the sweat destroyed it. The defy however suggests my phone will be safe and tonight I took it out for a run.

I loaded up endomondo to see how good it was as a gps device and ran. Unfortunately it wasn’t an overly fair test, I let the phone off this time. It wasn’t raining or snowing and as I didn’t have any pockets I held onto it so it kept away from most moisture. During my next long run I will shove some audio on it, put it in my pocket and leave it. Hopefully a couple of hours later I will finish and it all be functioning as normal *hopefully*.

This is never going to be a fully fledged review of the defy – I’m sure you can find that elsewhere I just want to see if they are the perfect running device- Music/Phone/GPS/Smartphone everything you could need surely. I also noticed in endomondo a sync with Bluetooth HeartRateMonitor, not sure who supply those as I think both polar and gamin use proprietary transmission mechanisms.

Next time this puppy gets further testing and hopefully (for the phone testing part) it will rain!

This post is not one to review the unit, that will come in a few weeks time. Whilst I have had the device for at least a month now today’s treadmill run was the first time I really used it for it’s coaching powers.

miCoach offers real time audio coaching allowing sessions to be hooked into the device. The unit revolves around heartrate training (although I have read reviews to suggest pace based training will appear soon) and by specifying heart rate zones you can push your body accordingly. The sessions have audio to tell you to enter the zone and maintain that heart rate for a given duration.

Today I opted for the VO2 test, one that incorporates all zones. At it’s toughest the device wanted me to enter its ‘Red’ zone which is max heart rate for 2mins and at it’s easiest it was running at a pace just above walking. The session is designed to be tough and it sure was, my t-shirt resembled something straight from the washing machine and by the end of the red zone intervals I couldn’t have slowed the machine down any quicker!

I may have to play with the zones a bit though as I’m not sure it’s calibration is ideal – I suppose that’s fair enough considering I didn’t calibrate it! It was good fun though, reminded me of the Nike training tracks they did a while back which offered similar audio coaching.
» Continue reading “My first ‘proper’ miCoach run”

10miles scheduled for today and that meant the standard run to Ox Circus. Flicking through my diary now this is the last long midweek run and the last time I’ll have to run up the hill on lea bridge road for a while!

Following a restless night sleep I set off out of the flat at 730. I know the route now without even thinking about it, as usual the first mile sent my heart-rate through the roof and I questioned what I was doing (just to fill you in the first mile is a very slow incline but a bugger to start with!).

Right now I’m struggling to think of anything eventful during the run so can only assume that is a good thing as obv there was no pain or issues! I didn’t check what pace I should have been doing today at and after looking annoyingly I was down a little bit. Hopefully not an issue but that said I haven’t done a street speed session for a little while so need to consider going out and widening my stride a bit.

18M scheduled for this weekend need to slow it down on that one so as not to kill me for the following week!

Till then.

N

Having suffered from a bit of a dodgy tummy on Tues night and during the day weds I was slightly apprehensive about this run but as it turns out baring a moment about 1/2mile from home there was nothing to worry about.

Legs still feeling quite heavy I set off from Stratford to home which is 5 miles. Fortunately unlike the last time I did it the rain held off and the weather was quite nice – also following the clock changes a few weeks back it’s much nicer running at 7pm and it still being light. The sched said 6M in 58mins which I did. Guessing that’s a 9:30 pace and I certainly was under that.

Long soak in the bath following that and an early night. Thursday was the longer run of the week and it was going to have to be a morning run due to eve commitments.

Reasonable run, heart rate quite low – nothing overly challenging.

N

Having managed to get my hands on a miCoach pacer system one of the first things I tried to do was see if I could use the Heart Rate Monitor with both the pacer and my Garmin Forerunner 405. The micoach docs suggested that the devices communicates using ant+ so I suspected that it would work and it did! following this I also tried to sync the footpod which was also a success.

I have recently reviewed the MiCoach and am currently writing a post to review my Garmin 405 which should be up shortly.

The micoach heartrate monitor is compatible with the Garmin 405 (untested on any other Garmins – feedback would be useful)

The micoach footpod is compatible with the Garmin 405 (untested on any other Garmins – feedback would be useful)

I suspect there is very limited crossover as to why you would use both devices -from early inspection the micoach offers audio coaching and a nicer heartrate web display but obviously lacks the gps functionality of the Garmins. That said it would be interesting to compare prices of the Garmin HRM/footpod vs the Adidas equivalent to see which is cheaper…

Personally I find the Adidas HRM slightly nicer to use, it’s easier to store and cleans/dries a lot quicker than the Garmin counterpart.

Looking forward to getting to fully play with the rest of the micoach device when I can get it fully working.

Compatibility List

Footpod

• Garmin 305
• Garmin 405
• Garmin 50

Heart Rate Monitor

• Garmin 305
• Garmin 405
• Garmin 50

NB I have had (personally unconfirmed) reports that the Garmin 110 is not compatible with the MiCoach.

Throwing the schedule out of the window today and to try make up for the slow Sunday run I decided to run much further than required, the plan recommends 6miles slow (sub 47mins).

Following the same routine as last Wednesday I set off a tiny bit earlier on route to a tube stop on the central line, at the time Ox Circus was the plan. The first mile as always seemed quite tough and having a quick glance at my heartrate clearly my body wasn’t quite ready for getting out! From that point on the run seemed fine. I kept to the suggested pace without too much of an issue. This was my first (marathon) run with my camelbak – I did a few summer short distances but always put too much liquid in the pouch! Found it quite nice being able to take on liquid with the gels as I ran…

Decided to carry on a couple of tube stops and goto Marble Arch instead adding on a mile or so. All in all a good run, no issues or niggles, hopefully all is on target!

Till next time.

N