Released here two months ago, the miCoach is a revolutionary device that monitors both your stride (basically, a pedometer, like the Nike+iPod gizmos) and your heart rate. Due to that second function, and the training programs built around it, the miCoach is totally unique.

The good: A lot of thought has gone into the miCoach. Adidas worked with fitness experts to develop the online side of the gadget, where you can plan and track your runs. The miCoach doesn’t just record your heart and feet, it gives you live feedback on how fast you should be running based on the goals you established online. All this gets stored in your profile and allows you to complete month-long training programs that will take your performance to new heights.

The bad: With great geeky ambitions come massive techno-headaches. The miCoach involves three separate devices that all need to be attached to different parts of your body—not to mention two cables for synching or using an MP3 player. (Lose any one of these five elements and you’re going to have to buy a whole new set.) As for the software side, we’re not going to even begin describing it. There is a lot that can go wrong, and it does, as can be witnessed by the numerous cries for help by baffled users on the miCoach forums. (Tip: make sure your computer isn’t set to the Thai Buddhist Era date system or the miCoach won’t work properly.) Even when you do get things to work, it’s pretty tricky to master the core principles of the miCoach—the zone system—where one must run at a “seven out of ten” for example. In short, we ended up wishing we had a coach to help us with our miCoach.

The verdict: The miCoach isn’t a Wii Fit. It doesn’t magically turn running into some kind of fun video game. And it doesn’t have the intuitiveness of an Apple-designed device. What it does is allow you to establish very serious running goals and, with a solid dose of patience and skill, take your running to the next level. Definitely reserved for a very rare breed: athletic geeks.
Price: B4,990 at Adidas Concept Store, 1/F, Siam Center, 02-658-0000.