Adidas miCoach, miLast CES Post

For my last CES 2010 post, we’re going off-topic. Being a bit early for my Hauppauge briefing, I took the opportunity to crash Adidas’ meeting room next door. Prior to the show, I had caught some blog coverage of Adidas’ new miCoach line of training gadgetry. In fact, the Firefox tab was still up, as I intended to dig deeper after Vegas. Instead, I was able to go straight to the source.

As a former (slow) runner, I’m periodically motivated to reclaim at least a semblance of fitness. I’ve done time with a Garmin Forerunner and later the Nike+ pedometer solution – it worked out OK with an iPod nano, other than being unable to record weight, along with runs, on Nike’s site. But Nike’s pod was unusable with my original iPhone. And Runkeeper is far superior, anyhow, when installed on a GPS-enabled iPhone. Yet I haven’t found the ideal training iPhone case or band and have felt somewhat uneasy trucking one of my most prized possessions around in that manner — I assume it’s only a matter of time until I launch my 3GS into the pavement.

Adidas miCoach comes in two flavors, neither of which requires an iPhone. You give up Runkeeper’s GPS tracking, but you gain heart-rate training capabilities. The lower-end model (miCoach Zone, $70) color codes heart rate zones to guide your workout. But the higher-end model (miCoach Pacer, $140) is probably what most folks will want as it tracks more data (including distance and pace via footpod), provides audio cues (with or without a MP3 player in the mix), and syncs it all up to the Adidas portal. The three components (Pacer proper, Stride Sensor footpod, and heart rate monitor) communicate over 2.4Ghz RF using the ANT+ protocol (which may be familiar to current Garmin runners).

Back in the day, I never got into heart rate training – didn’t think it was necessary. I pushed myself hard (through 3 marathons via sheer force of will, not any sort of athletic prowess). And my recovery runs were not much different than races. However, being older and less fit, heart rate training would probably help me maximize my workouts while also acting as a safety net in providing balance and avoiding disaster. Although, I’ve yet to see the Adidas miCoach website. Which needs to offer weight check-ins (with graph overlays) before I’m willing to give it a shot.