My Forum

Details of the race are available at http://www.redbridge10k.com/. It is two laps of Fairlop Waters, attractive parkland with a lake in Redbridge. The start line is about 5 mins from Fairlop Station on the Central Line.

Previous races organised by the Tessa Sanderson Foundation and Academy (i.e. the Newham Classic 10k) have been great, with a really good atmosphere, so I have high hopes of this race. Hope it becomes a permanent fixture.

I've had the Micoach pacer for about a month. I had been running for just over year but found my motivation slipping after some injuries and the heat of the summer. I am not a running club person but needed something to encourage me to get back out there before I gave up running altogether.

So far the micoach is helping me. I found it relatively easy to set up (although the set up guide could have been more informative). You can train either using the included heart rate monitor or the pacer that you attach to your shoe. I chose heart rate, which is recommended for beginners and those not chasing a particular race time. You can then select from a variety of different training programmes. I chose a 'run a race' programme to help me run a 5k.  

You start with an assessment workout which asks you to run at various levels of effort, from 4 out of 10 to 9 out of 10. This is used to establish your heart rate zones (blue is warm up/cool down, green is aerobic, yellow is anaerobic, red is max effort).

The programe consists of a number of separate workouts, all of which start and end with five minutes in the blue zone, and various intervals of blue, green and yellow inbetween. Some workouts are 'recovery' workouts and are all in the blue zone. The micoach tells you to speed up, slow down or maintain effort as you go along (you can select the voice that is used - I have a robotic gentleman!).

I am up to workout 12 in the programme and I have found that having the audible coaching really does encourage me to keep going when otherwise I would have given up. So far the workouts for my programme are 20-25 mins max, but you can carry on running, and recording data, after the workout has finished and I usually find I am inspired to do just that little bit more.

I still wear my Garmin 405 so I can glance at my time/pace/distance between audible coaching updates from the micoach. There is a noticable difference in the data from the two devices but, at my level, I am more interested in knowing I am progressing in the right direction rather than twhether the absolute figures are accurate.  

Micoach probably isn't the thing for experienced runners or those with a club or friends to train with, but for the beginner/intermediate runner who trains alone, I think it's a great motivator.