MiCoach!

I made a friend!

Her name is MiCoach and she’s a free app I downloaded on my phone to help with my running workouts. The MiCoach app is made by Adidas and has an online component you set up where you can make a workout schedule, say, plan to run a 5K, which syncs to your phone. Then you can open up the app on your phone, select the day’s workout (or any workout from the schedule) and go! It also works with the playlists you upload to the app, turning down the music when your coach tells you to speed up or slow down, depending on what your goal pace is at the moment. The GPS feature tracks you, updating you at every mile as to what your time and average pace were for that mile.

I love it so much. I may not be able to run without her anymore! I’m doing a 10K plan right now (a very ambitious plan that is supposed to have me running four times a week – yeah right) and I’ve found the interval training to be most beneficial. The longest I’ve ever been able to do sprint intervals on a treadmill is 15 minutes (counting the warm-up and cool-down), and they’ve been sprint-walk intervals at that. But using MiCoach, I’ve been able to double those interval workout times and improve my pace. One goal on my 100 List is to lower my mile average to 9 minutes, which I now see is quite lofty. I’m a slow runner, you see, and my fastest mile I’ve logged on MiCoach so far is 9:05. This may sound good, but that was the first mile on my run that day – the next mile took 10:19 minutes. Maintaining that nine-minute pace is hard! But that’s why I have a coach to tell me when I’ve fallen out of my target pace and to get my rear back in gear.

Another cool thing: all the pretty graphs! I’m a sucker for visual data and the website and app provide charts galore. I can analyze my stats and admire the pretty colors to my heart’s content. One thing I haven’t been able to figure out is how to easily view my mile splits on the website. The app gives you a simple table with the information but I haven’t been able to find it on the website yet.

The dips you see are when I had to slow down for lights and bridges,
then get back up to speed. I'm not sure how I got into the red zone
a few times - the music must've been good.

 One more thing: your workouts get graded. To some that may seem like a nightmare, but I always loved when grades were posted in school! How do you know how to improve if there’s no benchmark? I perform best under pressure. My best workout to date is a 95%, which was a huge improvement over my previous best of 86%. I’ve never failed a workout but I don’t think I’ve gotten above a C+ in interval runs… see, always room for improvement!

So if you need a little motivation, I completely recommend the app. And it’s not just for running; it can be used for biking, walking, and weight training, as well as give you personalized fitness plans to improve your tennis game or soccer physique. It’s pretty sweet. I swear they aren’t paying me to write this. So go get active!