Experiencing adidas miCoach: Working Out and Sharing Results

So my first workout was supposed to be redoing the Assessment Workout on Saturday – but the weather was frigid for outdoor running in Boston so it didn’t happen. I figured I couldn’t have deteriorated that much and my previous results were probably fine.

I created a public view of my latest Assessment Workout using the Share functionality, so you can see the full workout screen shot with the coach’s feedback too.

Armed with my existing assessment, I proceeded with doing the first plan workout that was scheduled for Monday morning.

I was still on east coast time, so woke up early enough to do a run before starting the day. I put on my heart rate monitor, clipped the stride sensor onto my shoe, and headed down to the hotel treadmill with my iPod and Pacer. I forgot that I had previously left Pacer on Mandarin, so was pleasantly surprised by a female Mandarin speaking coach welcoming me to miCoach. I did a short 7 min free workout first because I found in the past that the heart rate signal is best after I start sweating. After finishing that workout I started up workout #1 of my lose weight plan.

It was a fun workout actually, and wasn’t too long either so I had time to sync the data to my account before jumping in the shower. I remembered that I wanted to hear my coaching in English next time so I changed that on the web first.

Then I plugged Pacer into my computer via the USB cable and synced via the miCoach Manager.

When that was done I went back to my Dashboard to see that it updated with my latest data.

That’s when I noticed I had a new achievement!

Turns out I had reached my first 10,000 calories since I started using miCoach! That’s pretty sweet. :-)

Clicking on the big 10000 took me to my workout results that gave me this achievement.

I overlaid my pace info on top of the heart rate info before using the Share functionality to create the public page of workout #1, which also shows my notes and ratings too.

First workout done, and 32 more to go! According to the plan tracker at the bottom of my dashboard I’ve completed 3% of my plan. Feels good!

Experiencing adidas miCoach: Setting Up

As a designer on a project we don’t always get the luxury of actually experiencing the products we have worked countless hours, sweat blood and tears to help create. I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to use the product (and no, not just in testing) after all the hustle and bustle around launching a new phase. I figured it would provide an interesting perspective to  share my experiences actually using the adidas miCoach training platform for all to see, so here goes!

I’ll be traveling on Sunday, so I’m figuring I should set my plan up before I go. It’s almost summer, so it’s time to shed some of the winter layers and go for that lose weight plan. It says it’s about 9 weeks long, ~35 workouts, so if I start now I’ll be done just in time for 4th of July.

I set up the new plan and the calendar shows me what my schedule looks like for this plan.

The first run is an assessment workout, which will determine what my heart rate zones should be during the training. Although I’ve done one before, I think the last few weeks of cold and rain in Boston plus perhaps some adding on of winter layers probably contributed to my lack of fitness, so I’m going to do a new and fresh one to see if I’m still up to snuff.

Here’s hoping the weather holds tomorrow when this all starts. Stay tuned!

Life with miCoach

So I'm going to start writing some posts on the company blog. It's my attempt to ever so subtly re-establish my existence on the web. I'll be re-posting my posts here for good old archival reasons. I've had my computer kill itself twice within 6 months, so I don't trust stuff to stick around without multiple backup copies.

Welcome to 30 and Counting

30.

It's a milestone. I can't check the 20-29 check box anymore, and that makes me a bit sad. But hey, I'm told 30 is the new 20, so here's seeing how that goes.