Archive for Gadgets
August 14, 2010 at 11:04 pm · Filed under Equipment, Gadgets, Running, Software
I had a Wandle Trail run penciled in for today.
I would have very much liked to rub that plan out considering I’ve barely recovered from last weekends 10 mile hair cut run but dedicated half marathoners can’t relax on long slow run day.
You won’t know anything about that 10 mile haircut run as I’ve been too idle to blog about it but basically I went to get my hair cut at my old local, ran home along the Capital Ring, it rained heavily, it was a long way and it hurt, a lot. There it’s blogged.
Today’s challenge was to find the start of the Wandle Trail and run along it until I found a Rose and Crown pub where I could sit and phone for a recovery vehicle. I also wanted to try out and review the new offering from Adidas miCoach – the Adidas miCoach mobile, a free GPS powered app for the iPhone.
I’ve already tried the Adidas miCoach Pacer and was really impressed with the gadget and the associated website with its highly sophisticated training plans. It’s the training plans that set this gadget apart from the competition such as Garmin and Nike+ and the great thing about the miCoach mobile is that it piggy backs all this existing technology.
So you download the free app from iTunes, and link it to your Adidas miCoach account. If you haven’t got one of those yet then go online and get one – it’s free. There’s a little bit of set up to work through and you then get to select your training plan and coaching method. The coaching method is either heart rate based or pace based, I have both options as I have the mobile app and the pacer gadget but mobile only users can only use the pace option.
Back to the iPhone. Having set up your online account and chosen your training plan you can connect to your account via the app and then sync. All of your scheduled workouts will be available along with any custom workouts you’ve set up.
Ideally you would start with an assessment run that will enable the system to accurately assign your pace ranges to the 4 coloured zones used by the miCoach. I’ve found that the assessment is most accurate if you can attempt it on a treadmill, mainly because it is so hilly in my location that its hard to organise a gradual progression in effort. You can also set your pace zones manually which is the option I went for.
The training plans are brilliant but the race related plans aren’t quite geared up for the slow pokes like me. I initially opted for the “Run a Race – 1/2 Marathon Plan” but the longest run never got beyond 90mins which would only just got me over the 6 mile mark. I fiddled the system by selecting the Full Marathon plan and then jiggling the schedule around in the calendar (all carried out online). This has proved perfect for me and today’s run neatly fitted in with the 2:45 scheduled workout.
Having selected the workout you then get to fine tune the coaching environment.
I selected the voice coaching to be Instructional, which is the minimal option, only guiding me into the appropriate zone at the start of each section. The Full option would alert me every time the pace fell outside the desired zone and as it says in the guide this isn’t recommended in built up areas where the GPS accuracy can be a bit patchy.
If you want to listen to your iPod while running you have to select a playlist. I was initially disappointed by this as I like to listen to audiobooks and it didn’t seem to want to let me choose one of these. Then I discovered that you can now create your own playlists directly though the iPod app – this has probably been allowed for ages but I’d never noticed and yet it had always been high on my wishlist. Anyway I digress. Point is, I set up a new playlist with my chosen book – in this case the last hour of The Whole Day Through by Patrick Gale and then the start of The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.
So, I found the start of the Wandle Trail, actually the end of the River Wandle at the point it meets the Thames, and pressed go on the Adidas miCoach mobile app and the Garmin Forerunner 310XT. The next 3 miles were fairly uninspiring as I wiggled across fairly built up streets, zigzagging across the Wandle but rarely along it.
The miCoach mobile performed well and matched the Forerunner fairly closely but all that stopped when we reached Colliers Wood and the route started along the river proper. Here the tree cover became dappled and then dense. The miCoach lady got a bit wobbly and started informing me of my km splits every 4 minutes or so. The Forerunner stuck to the truth – a regular but pitiful 8:30 min/km pace.
So unfortunately that miCoach mobile proved to be somewhat inaccurate for me. By the time I reached the fabled Rose & Crown 2hrs 18 mins later the Forerunner read 14.79km while the miCoach suggested I’d run a whopping 18.48km. I’m not going to hold this against the app though. It must surely be a feature of the less robust GPS gadgetry of the iPhone and maybe wouldn’t be a problem for people who run in less built up or covered areas.
Did I mention that miCoach mobile is free? I think it’s a remarkable offering from Adidas, they’ve taken a very accomplished gadget/website combination and done away with the need to buy the £100+ gadget (ie the miCoach Pacer). Generous or nuts?
Either way it’s a winner and I highly recommend it.
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Tags: Adidas miCoach, Adidas miCoach mobile, garmin forerunner 310XT, London, review, wandle trail
July 7, 2010 at 9:48 pm · Filed under Cycling, Equipment, Gadgets, Running, Swimming
Having abandoned treadmill running in favour of the great outdoors it wasn’t long before I began to bemoan the loss of my preferred running watch the Garmin Forerunner 305. I long for pretty maps to illustrate my outdoor running routes and spur me on to explore my surroundings and for that you need GPS.
Fortunately for me I am spoilt, and my good lady wife didn’t listen to my moans for long before coming home with a beautiful orange gift – the Garmin Forerunner 310XT.
The Forerunner 310XT has been the long awaited upgrade to the Forerunner 305. The Forerunner 405 (reviewed here) let us down with it’s silly bevel features that went haywire at the first hint of moisture, so the Forerunner 310XT marks a back to basics approach, stick with the tried, tested and much loved functionality of the 305 but add the long called for water resistance that should mark this as the triathletes choice.
Not of course that I can call myself a triathlete having done only one sprint event about 3 whole years ago. I am occasionally known to dabble in open water swimming though, or at least I have done twice, but I don’t think one should limit oneself, who knows when I may decide to pull on the wetsuit and explore the local waterways.
So the biggest change between the Forerunner 305 and the Forerunner 310XT is that Garmin have made the 310XT waterproof and therefore suitable for the swim. Having looked into the watches swim capabilities though I think I understand why Garmin took their time to introduce the feature and make a truly triathlon oriented GPS watch.
If you wear the watch on your wrist, as most people do, the watch will be plunged under water with each stroke reducing and possibly even removing its connection with the satellites and the stroke action will have the wrist unit moving forwards and back and effectively mapping out a greater distance than the rest of your body. The result is a very messy GPS trail and a wildly overestimated swim distance. A firmware release has added open-swim functionality to the Forerunner 310XT which averages out the missed points and gives a smoother GPS and distance closer to the truth but still not what you could call accurate.
DC Rainmaker has written an excellent review of the Forerunner 310XT as it performs in open water and compared the results with that of the Forerunner 305 worn underneath the swim cap.
I recommend you check out his analysis if you intend to use the watch for swimming or triathlon. The point I’ve taken away is that the 310XT really needs to be worn under your swim cap if you want to be able to trust the data and get a pretty map. It doesn’t show any improvements over the Forerunner 305 which you can shove in a sandwich bag and also pop under your swim cap but I suppose it does offer some peace of mind in case you drop it and it gets waterlogged.
Another major change is related to battery life. You can now run or swim or bike for around 20 hours vs the 10 hrs quoted for the 305. This is great news for endurance athletes or indeed anyone who can’t be bothered to charge the unit after each use. I have noticed a reduction in the data recording options though and wonder if this has gone someway to improving the battery life. With the 305 you could select the data recording option to every second or every 4 seconds with the “Smart Recording” option. With the 310XT the option has gone and now you only have smart recording. This isn’t really a problem for me although I do notice the charted data is a little less granular than it was in the 305 and it’s always nice to have the choice.
As with the Forerunner 405, the 310Xt is ANT enabled which means you get the automatic upload of workout data using the ANT stick and it means that the watch is compatible with assorted ANT devices such as cycle power meters. I don’t have one of these but I’m sure if you did, you’d be very happy with the enhancement. If you want to use the watch as your main cycle computer it is worth investing in the optional quick release kit, which is relatively cheap.
I’ve paired my unit with the ANT footpod that came with my Garmin FR60 but you could also pair it with the Adidas footpod that comes with the miCoach if you happen to have one. You can set the 310XT to use the footpod for distance measurements if you are running inside or on a treadmill or leave it set on GPS in which case the footpod will be used to measure cadence only.
I’ve been using mine mostly on the run and have noticed a few other improvements:
Physically the wrist unit is smaller and sleeker and is of course orange. It picks up GPS signals very quickly and seems to hold onto them, so despite running in wooded areas I haven’t noticed any spurious results on my map output. The unit is easier to use with less delving into menu systems required. For example if I want to switch from bike to run I just press and hold the mode button for about 3 seconds and it pops up the option to select the sport.
The multisport function has been improved as well. You can set up in advance the different stages of your race eg. Swim, T1, Bike 1, T2, Run and then when you press the lap button it automatically moves you into the next sport mode.
As with the 405 you can change the pace of your Virtual Partner on the fly. Press the up or down for a second and then you can slow the little stick man down long enough for you to be able to overtake him. Perfect, but perhaps shouldn’t be used too often.
A number of features are common to both the 305 and 310XT but I’ve noticed improvements to the “Back to Start” and the alert features.
If you want alerts you can choose to have sound or vibration or both. The vibration is particularly strong and sends ripples up your arm to ensure you don’t miss your lap times or interval notifications.
The Back to Start feature is very useful if you run on unfamiliar routes. It effectively lays out a bread crumb trail for you to retrace your steps with. When I used it the other weekend, I was trying to get back to my car which was who knows where. I’d gone a little bit around the houses and didn’t want to literally retrace my steps so I ignored the first turn off and headed back to an earlier point in the route. I was impressed to note that the watch forgave me and soon started picking up its directional instructions, buzzing at me when it was time to left or right. I don’t remember this being a feature of the 305.
So here’s my assessment.
Pro’s and Con’s
Pros
1. Small, pretty and new
2. Waterproof
3. Longer battery life – 20 hrs vs 10 hrs
4. Better GPS reception
5. ANT enabled which allows for wireless syncing, footpod pairing and power sensor compatibility
6. Back to start routing available – Included with 305 but not 405
Cons
1. Not really a swim watch – it still needs to sit in the swim cap
2. A lot more expensive than the 305 which currently retails at amazon for less than £140: Garmin Forerunner 305 with Heart Rate Monitor
I’ve got a lot of pro’s there but then I like shiny new things and I didn’t have to pay for it. I have to say though that I am a bit disappointed about the swim functionality, I can see that it’s a tricky concept to engineer but I’m paying a lot for it over and above the price of the 305.
If you are a cyclist and want to use the power meter features then I think you would be happy with the 310XT, if you are a regular swimmer you may settle for the safety aspect of having a waterproof item even if you do have to wear it in your swim cap.
If you are a runner and don’t have need to record workouts in excess of 10 hours, I think you may want to take advantage of the reduction in price of the Forerunner 305 and spend the money you save on a swanky pair of Vibram Five Fingers or some such.
The Garmin Forerunner 310XT with Heart Rate Monitor currently retails at Amazon for just under £265.
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Tags: asics, Forerunner, Forerunner 310XT, gadget, Garmin, Garmin Forerunner, Garmin Forerunner 305, Garmin Forerunner 405, Garmin FR60, GPS, review, running gadget, Sporttracks, Swimming, Triathlon
May 9, 2010 at 4:02 pm · Filed under Equipment, Event, Gadgets, Running
I didn’t entirely swallow it, mores the pity. It lodged in my throat and wriggled or fluttered as semi-masticated flies have a tendency to do.
This was 4k into the “5k Your Way” event for council and PCT employees. It had gone fairly well up til that point, I had pootled along in a resolutely non-walking fashion for the whole distance until the fly dragged me coughing and retching to my knees. I hate 5k events, they always drive me to nausea.
Work organised events are a bit dangerous I think. Six of us signed up for the event but by D-Day 50% had succumbed to some kind of lurgey or injury and had called in sick. It came very close to being a 66.67% sick rate but I needed to test the calibration of the miCoach.
I’d programmed the miCoach to maintain green zone for the 5k distance. I set off a little too keenly trying to keep up with my colleagues and despite dropping back to my usual crawl within the first minute, my heart obviously never recovered. The little pacer just repeated “slow down to green zone” for the duration. That’s quite a satisfying phrase when you’re racing.
The km markers were a little off towards the end of the race but as the parkrun team were involved in the organisation I can only assume the overall route was an accurately marked 5k distance.
The Nike+ sportband recorded an optimistic 5.35km but the miCoach recorded 4.99km and came out the winner in the first head to head test over a known distance. I’m still harbouring doubts but I think I will put them away and just enjoy the running until I find another opportunity to challenge the gadgets.
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Tags: 5km, 5kyourway, Adidas miCoach, Nike+ Sportband
April 28, 2010 at 12:01 pm · Filed under Equipment, Gadgets, Running
Since I’ve shifted to the iPhone I’ve always struggled for places to secrete it while out on my run. It has a tendency to yank my shorts down if I put it in my pocket and so I’ve resorted to wearing a huge Salomon bum bag – tres trendy!
I was sent an iPhone sports band around the same time as I found myself kitted out with the Adidas miCoach which proved to be perfect timing. The miCoach pacer needs to be held within about 2 inches of your mp3 player and it clips perfectly to the sports band.
iPhone accessories vary widely in their quality but I was really pleased this item. The strap was big enough to fit even my substantial arm (not pictured), the iPod touch screen worked beneath the plastic screen protector and the strap includes a perfect cable tidy to stop the headphone wrapping itself around my elbow. It’s very good quality and I’ve been out in the April showers and so far no harm has befallen my beloved phone.
I do have some concerns about the new iPhone carrier though, the other evening while running past the local “Enterprise” college, the strap came loose and I was left gasping and clutching at my heart. I was readying myself to scream pathetically until I realised there had been a temporary velcro failure and I wasn’t being mugged by a gang of iPhone coveters. It’s a serious concern though, I read in the paper last week that a local guy was killed for his Blackberry, which makes me think it’s probably not the best neighbourhood for running around with £400 of swanky gadgetry strapped provocatively to your arm.
I suppose I could wear baggier t-shirts to cover it up or go back to the bumbag style.
**There is a link to my other product reviews on sidebar. Please contact me at angela@warriorwomen.co.uk if you have a product you would like me to review.
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Tags: accessory, gadget, iPhone, ipod, review, sportsband
April 5, 2010 at 8:39 pm · Filed under Equipment, Gadgets, Running
I’ve tried out a few of the gadgets head to head but have now come to the conclusion that my Adidas foot pod does not respond well when it is in the heel recess of the specially adapted Adidas shoes.
Yesterday I headed to the incredibly soggy climes of Mitcham Common for my run and had to move the foot pod to my sturdy Salomon GTX trainers, using the lace clip. This time the pacer recorded a much lower distance than the Nike+ but at least the pace chart proved to be realistic.
As both Adidas and the Garmin FR60 use ANT technology I was able to pair the miCoach pacer with the Garmin foot pod, which is great news as at least I know this one works and it means I can get the best of both worlds – instant visual feedback of pace, distance and time from my wrist watch and the vocal instruction and motivation from the miCoach pacer. The heart rate monitors are interchangeable as well as they also use ANT.
Today I took the Adidas miCoach and Garmin FR60 combination out on a familiar old haunt around the Chiswick and Barnes Bridge loop of the Thames. I wish I’d stuck with the off-roading trainers – my shiny white Adidas shoes haven’t been enhanced by their trip through the Thames.
I’m fairly sure this is a 3.5 km loop give or take a few metres, according to many GPS recordings taken over the years and both gadgets came close enough to keep me happy without the need to calibrate.
Now I’m happy with the accuracy and the set-up, I can just concentrate on picking up for my fitness for the Great North Run.
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Tags: adidas, Adidas miCoach, ANT, footpod, Garmin, Garmin FR60
April 2, 2010 at 12:30 pm · Filed under Equipment, Gadgets, Running
It was closer to dusk but the effect was similar – one large, brightly coloured woman trogging down the street with three foot pods attached to her shoes, two watch-like gadgets on her wrists and an iPhone and miCoach pacer bound to her upper arm. I probably looked like a heavily wired suicide bomber, good job I kept clear of the tube stations.
The miCoach pacer has given my running a whole new lease of life, I’ve been out 5 times this week and I’ve even canceled my gym membership as I seem happy enough to run outside now that I have some audible support. If I keep up this level of enthusiasm for two months it would have paid for itself already.
So my feelings are strong for this new gadget but I can’t help feeling a little disgruntled with its accuracy. Hence the head to head foot pod test, pitting the Nike+ Footpod against the Garmin Forerunner FR60 and the Adidas miCoach Pacer.
Here’s the Adidas miCoach output, which is very pleasing to the eye. This particular chart is showing my heart rate against time with the scheduled HR zones overlaid. I was supposed to stay in blue zone for the first and last 5 minutes with a 30 minute stint in green zone. Blue is such a hard zone to stick to, it’s a tiny bit too high for walking but too low for running so I end up running for a minute then walking – hence the zig zags. Green is a lot more comfortable.
The middle dip in the chart occurs because the pacer declared it had temporarily lost contact with the footpod. Although she encouraged me to carry on while she re-scanned I decided to dither on the spot, I was in the middle of a controlled experiment afterall.
The final results from Adidas suggest I completed 5.38 km in 42 mins which is extraordinarily unlikely given that it included 10 mins walking time. The pace image at the top of the chart says 05:36 min/km which must also be tosh. I never run at that pace and it also doesn’t equate to 5.38 km over 42 mins. So something wrong here. Still, I don’t know why I’m complaining, the doobury wotsit tells me to slow down with every step and then declares that I’ve set a blistering pb pace – result!
The Nike+ Sportand is a no-nonsense beast. It consistently performs, it’s cheap and I can’t help thinking its pretty accurate as well. Shame the stats are so painfully naff. How awful is that chart? The axes aren’t labeled, its been smoothed beyond recognition and its ugly.
The Nike+ recorded a distance of 4.76 km over the 42 min run.
Here’s the pace output from the Garminn Forerunner FR60. You would normally also have heart rate info overlaid but I thought it would be a bit overkill to have two heart rate straps on.
The Garmin footpod recorded the shortest distance of the bunch at 4.41 km.
So there was a huge variation in distance recorded:
Garmin FR60 – 4.41 km
Nike+ Sportband – 4.76 km
Adidas miCoach – 5.38 km
Without testing this on a defined route I can’t be sure which is the most accurate but my suspicions based on the fact that I am at my heaviest in ages and also my unfittest is that it won’t be the miCoach. I did map my route on google maps and it came out at 5.22 km which I also don’t believe.
If I needed any more evidence that the miCoach pacer was a little unreliable, here’s the pacer chart from the same run. It looks like a bar code and bears no resemblance to how the run felt to me. It should be directly comparable to the Garmin offering above but obviously isn’t. Perhaps its just teething problems or perhaps I have a dodgy footpod. The miCoach offering is still in its early days and I would expect their to be software enhancements that may improve this sort of output, perhaps it requires a tiny bit more smoothing?
There’s nothing else left to do so I’ve gone and signed myself up for a 5 km race in Regents Park. I’ll take all 3 gadgets out on another outing and calibrate them properly.
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Tags: Adidas miCoach, Garmin Forerunner, Garmin FR60, miCoach, Nike+ Sportband
March 28, 2010 at 10:45 pm · Filed under Equipment, Gadgets, Running
I step out of my door and find myself mid way up the Col du Norbury. The hill has already wrecked my bike and now it has scuppered my first miCoach assessment.
The assessment requires you to start walking and then gradually work your way up the effort scale from 4 to 9. 9 being just shy of a myocardial infarction. With this hill I have to pop glyceryl trinitrate under my tongue within about 10 secs and my heart rate profile shows the undesired angina spike.
So the assessment was unsuccessful in amending my heart rate zones and I had to stick with the default settings for Day 1 of the “Be Fit” plan.
This was an interval session, requiring me to move through Blue, Green and Yellow zones. As you can see from the workout chart I really struggled to hit the easy effort blue zone. The hill broke me to start with but even on the flat I found I had to walk quite slowly to get my heart rate low enough to keep the posh lady happy.
Yesterday I went to the gym to work through a second assessment workout under the controlled conditions of the treadmill. That resulted in a successful output and my zones have now been amended to something more useful. Blue zone has been increased by about 10 bpm and hopefully that will enable me to actually run in my next workout – we’ll see tomorrow.
Both Garmin and Adidas claim that the foot pod sensor is somewhere close to 97 – 98% accurate out of the box.
I’m wearing the miCoach pod within a specially designed cavity in the Adidas Ride shoe which should ensure it is optimally placed for accuracy, but something is going wrong somewhere. The treadmill recorded a distance of 1.2km versus the miCoach pacer recorded distance of 1.6km. That is a huge discrepancy but as yet I don’t know if the treadmill is dodgy or the miCoach sensor.
I have 3 other foot pod running gadgets available (Garmin Forerunner FR60 and Nike+ Sportband) so tomorrow I put them head to head in a distance comparison. Of course that won’t enable to see which is the most accurate unless I run them on a reliably known distance (like one of those grotty running tracks) but it will give me an idea of the variation. Perhaps then I can schedule in a long overdue visit to the Wimbledon Park Run to calibrate it against the 5km route.
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Tags: Adidas miCoach, Garmin, Nike+ Sportband, running gadget
March 28, 2010 at 9:45 pm · Filed under Equipment, Gadgets, Running
Adidas invited me and a few other bloggers (Big Runner and Running Matters) to try out their recent entrant into the sports gadget market – the miCoach pacer. On Thursday evening I arrived at the Millenium Arena in Battersea Park ready for the presentation. I began to sweat almost immediately as I spotted the running track and sporty types. I haven’t been near a running track since the humiliation of 1984 – where I was the pitiful fat kid in the schools sports day and found myself lapped umpteen times, over the 1500m distance – I don’t like running tracks.
Back to miCoach though, I heard of it a while ago in connection with a Samsung mobile phone but they’ve now branched out and produced a very capable standalone system. In brief its a coaching system based on heart rate zones. They appear to have two systems on offer, the miCoach zone at £70 and the miCoach pacer at £120. The zone offering consists of a heart rate monitor and a bracelet that displays the coloured zone you are in, I haven’t tried this out but it seems pretty pointless to me. The miCoach pacer on the other hand is very interesting. It consists of a foot pod, heart rate monitor and a little electronic “thingy” for want of a better word. The thingy or pacer stores your workout details, both scheduled and completed and relays a series of instructions via the included headphones.
It’s the verbal instructions that set the adidas system apart from its competitors (ie. Garmin and Nike+). While Garmin and Nike offer systems that record workout details, Adidas have opted to focus on the training plan. The miCoach is aimed at the recreational runner who isn’t fortunate enough to have a personal running coach.
The Adidas website is very accomplished and offers a wide range of training plans, such as preparing to race, improving race time, losing weight etc. I’m quite a way off my next planned event – the Great North Run in Sept so I’ve set myself off on the “Be Fit” plan and will progress to the half marathon schedule in early summer.
The idea of the pacer is that it syncs with your online training plan and stores your scheduled workouts in its memory ready to relay to you on your run. The instructions are based around four coloured heart rate zones:
Blue – Easy Effort
Green – Medium Effort
Yellow – Hard Effort
Red – Maximal Effort
So a typical session might see the pacer instructing you to run in Blue zone for 2 mins before increasing to green zone for the duration and then ending in a cool down back in blue.
I have a very well spoken English lady talking to me and I think she has the level of interruption to my general thought process sorted. She gives me my instruction clearly then only butts back in to tell me that I’ve hit the relevant zone and need to maintain or to encourage me to either up or decrease the pace as appropriate. If I need more feedback I can press the central button on the pacer and she will inform me of pace, heart rate, distance etc.
The actual presentation event from Adidas was fairly disastrous. There were probably 15 people trying out the kit and almost all of us had a problem with the sensors failing to pick up. Seriously embarrassing for a product launch but I was decidedly grateful. I did one lap of the dreaded track and then got to quit as the gadget wasn’t working – result!
I had another go the next evening but the sensors still wouldn’t pick up. I have a feeling that the assorted parts got muddled up during setup and paired with the wrong pacers for the presentation day because it worked absolutely fine after I re-paired the sensors and pacer.
Part of the set up process required me to enter personal details such as height and weight. The weighing scales have been out of action for about a month so I haven’t been keeping an eye on myself. Hunting out new batteries revealed the full horror of a month long slide – 6 whole lbs of bad news.
The shock was so great that despite me being two cans of Stella down and it being just past bed time, I strapped the new gadget on and went out for the 12 minute assessment run round the mean streets of SW London.
**There is a link to my other product reviews on sidebar. Please contact me at angela@warriorwomen.co.uk if you have a product you would like me to review.
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March 24, 2010 at 12:03 am · Filed under Apparel, Equipment, Gadgets, Running, Triathlon
I was sent a goody bag of sporting delights to try out a few weeks ago by a guy who is in the process of setting up a UK distribution for items with a valid sporting provenance. I have to say that I was impressed by quite a few of the items.
Hoo Haa Ride Glide”, a skin cream designed for lady’s delicate bits and pieces by those that know about such things.
Every time I step near the Brompton and its vicious but highly desirable Brooks saddle I stagger away longing for chaffing relief and even the Triumph Bonneville leaves it’s mark in the Hoo Haa region after a long ride. I’ve tested the product out on a few occasions now and each time it’s left an odd, relieved, then panicked expression on my face. Quite unusually they decided to pack a creme designed for the nether regions with something like menthol or peppermint. This cools at first but quickly tips over into a burning sensation as you begin to wonder if you accidentally applied deep heat to your gentle parts. It eases off again though, leaving you with a tingling sensation and an altogether more satisfied expression.
I think I like it but I’m not sure if it’s quite decent.
It stays put for your ride, it’s got a great name and I find myself looking forward to an excuse to use it – try it.
Reflect Sports was set up by a couple of women who were frustrated by the lack of women specific sports products and so decided to plug a gap in the market. They also have some great swim ranges – REFLECT H2OTM Swimming Conditioner, REFLECT H2OTM Sulfate Free Swim Shampoo and REFLECT H2OTM Pre-Swim and Sun Protecting Gel. I’ve been lucky enough to try out all these products and they do a good job of reviving your hair after a session in a chlorine pool.
Also in the goody bag were a pair of novelty pink feet, otherwise known as StuffIts.
They may look a little comical but they are stuffed with cedar and perform wonders with damp, ever so slightly pongy shoes.
There was a vast selection of Lip Balm flavours by Joshua Tree, and I made sure I nabbed the lavendar tube before the kids dived in.
I’ve also been asked to try out a fuel injection system from zerogoo. Having had bad experiences with nasty, sticky gel packs I’m quite taken with the notion of a self contained system that will release my energy source of choice into my hydration system. I haven’t got round to trying it out as I’m not quite up to gel standards yet. I’ll update you over the summer.
All the products were sourced from small businesses who have been founded by sportsmen and women who went on to develop a solution to the problems they encountered while doing what they loved.
Dave from
Joshua Tree is a climber, Mike from
StuffIts was sick of having damp, smelly cycling shoes and trainers, Laurie and Jena from
Reflect Sports are triathletes. Trent from
Zerogoo is an avid mountain biker.
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Tags: GNR, Hoo Haa, products, review, Swimming
December 16, 2009 at 11:16 am · Filed under Equipment, Gadgets, Swimming
Entries for next years Great Swim series are open already. Christmas is not a great time to start contemplating squeezing into an overly snug wetsuit, the annual quality street box is already half empty and the strawberry creams are not improving my silhouette.
Christmas is a time for trying out new gadgets though so it’s time I reviewed my latest toy.
I was sent a swimming watch from Swimovate to try out for a week. It promised to count all my laps for me, freeing my mind to concentrate on higher level issues such as “what should I cook for tea?” and “did I remember to put any Stella in the fridge?”
It does more than that of course, storing my lap history and providing historical data such as distance, stroke rate, calories and efficiency.
It was the counting bit that appealed most to me though. I am always surprised at how inept I am at counting lengths. I start well enough, reciting 1, 1, 1 in my head til I reach the end and turn. Of course I then move on to 2, 2, 2 cos I’m bright and can count but I’m also easily bored so I start adding variety like 2, 2 and the next lap will be 3, next is 3, next is 3. If course when I get to 3 I think blimey that number is familiar I’ve already counted it. Then I have to go through the odd even calculation and match it to the direction of my travel. Basically I never get as far as 10 laps before I’ve stressed myself out and felt the need to re-enrole in kindergarten.
So it’s a lap counter, but a pretty good one. Beyond the first button press you don’t have to bother again until it’s time to get out of the pool. The motion sensors apparently pick up on the drift portion of the stroke at the change round. It will pick up tumble turns and your more sedate stop and turn technique. Provided you don’t change strokes within a length it will supposedly maintain accuracy.
I did my best to fool it but it was 100% accurate up to 16 lengths, beyond that I’m sure the watch maintained its accuracy but I didn’t and decided to just free my mind of the counting. Swimming with a blank mind is really rather freeing, it feels so much more like running.
It’s given me an efficiency rating of 73 which equates to below average which I suppose will be about right. They measure efficiency in terms of distance covered per stroke and I’ve always felt that I swim on the spot anyway.
It would be quite useful to monitor efficiency gains if you were trying to work on your stroke but I didn’t get to play with it long enough to see how responsive it was to minor improvements.
The battery is supposed to last for 1 year after which you have to send it back to the company to be replaced. I suppose that shouldn’t be a big problem provided they have a quick turnaround.
You can’t currently use it as a distance monitor for outdoor swims because it multiplies pool length by laps but I have picked up on some internet murmurings that suggest that might be about to change.
It could do with an overhaul of the user interface, moving through the history screens required me to pull out the instruction leaflet twice but all in all it’s a pretty good adition to the sporting gadgetry world and costs around £69 from Swimovate.
**There is a link to my other product reviews on sidebar. Please contact me at angela@warriorwomen.co.uk if you have a product you would like me to review.
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Tags: review, Stella, Swimming, swimovate, watch
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I had a Wandle Trail run penciled in for today.
So you download the free app from iTunes, and link it to your Adidas miCoach account. If you haven’t got one of those yet then go online and get one – it’s free. There’s a little bit of set up to work through and you then get to select your training plan and coaching method. The coaching method is either heart rate based or pace based, I have both options as I have the mobile app and the pacer gadget but mobile only users can only use the pace option.
The training plans are brilliant but the race related plans aren’t quite geared up for the slow pokes like me. I initially opted for the “Run a Race – 1/2 Marathon Plan” but the longest run never got beyond 90mins which would only just got me over the 6 mile mark. I fiddled the system by selecting the Full Marathon plan and then jiggling the schedule around in the calendar (all carried out online). This has proved perfect for me and today’s run neatly fitted in with the 2:45 scheduled workout.
So, I found the start of the Wandle Trail, actually the end of the River Wandle at the point it meets the Thames, and pressed go on the Adidas miCoach mobile app and the Garmin Forerunner 310XT. The next 3 miles were fairly uninspiring as I wiggled across fairly built up streets, zigzagging across the Wandle but rarely along it.
