A couple of months back I was sent an adidas heart rate monitor and a miCoach bra from Numetrex. The bra eliminates the need to have a separate heart rate monitor strap wrapped around your chest along with the bra. It sounded great to me.

The heart rate device hooks into the bra in a little pocket that is on the inside of the bra. It snaps in easily and tucks out of the way. The bra is comfortable and it was supportive for me (small chest, larger chest ladies may need something different). The monitor also came with a strap so you can wear it the more typical way… with a separate strap, unless you wanted to do laundry all the time or wanted to wear the same bra day-in-day-out. (ew…)

It pairs with the miCoach app to track your heart rate.  The app can be used to track GPS for a workout, but I do like that it has the capability to turn off the GPS and just track heart rate monitor. (Or if you don’t have the HR monitor, just track GPS if you’re intersted in that!)

Here’s the thing I didn’t like about it… to get the HR monitor to pair you have to rub water on the sensors (this is typical with most chest straps) but I didn’t like rubbing water inside the bra, that seemed weird. Also, once I did that it paired effortlessly with the app but I never did get it to pair with my Garmin, via the bra or the strap. I’m not technically inept… but I am impatient when it is 5AM and cold/dark outside and I want to get running.

And honestly, I don’t want to use one more app. I’ll test them out, I love testing and experimenting with new apps, but unless something really blows me away I’m highly doubtful it will become my go-to tracking option for runs.

Also, since I got this right around the time of Ragnar, I got to thinking about putting on a HR monitor during a race like that. With a strap, you can loop it around your waist, hook it up and pull it into place, a little bit discreetly. With this you would have to pull up your shirt and fold up the bra. Now, true… people are changing all over the place on a relay race, but that’s something to think about!