Technogym – the worlds largest retailer of commercial gym equipment have recently launched their ‘My Run’ treadmill, which brings with it an innovative companion app designed to make your running more efficient, less susceptible to injury and also more productive – with a range of features intended to make you run faster. The RUNNING MUSIC feature picks the tunes that best match your running tempo too, mimicking features found on other running apps from companies like Nike.
This running machine is designed with home use in mind. Whilst its light commercial grade, this is very much a ‘garage treadmill’. It boasts of best in class ratios between running deck to carrousel size, meaning minimal space is wasted on side trims and other such parts of the machine.
Last but not least when it comes to claims is the running surface on this treadmill. Technogym claim that it adapts to the way that you run. The issue with highly absorbing running surfaces is the impact that they have on your speed – or to be more precise, the way in which they can take momentum out of your stride. This has been negated by Technogym, allowing them to deliver a treadmill which runs smoothly, even at its full speed of 20KMH.
First Look Review
The Guardian featured the MyRun in a July 2015 roundup of the latest and greatest running gadgets. “The Myrun is a discreet, relatively quiet treadmill”, which accentuates the relative ordinariness of its exterior profile. As the Guardian point out, and as is abundantly evident with the MyRun – the app is where the magic happens. According to the Guardian “It tracks gait and analyses stride length and inconsistencies, allowing you to improve performance. It synchs with your heart rate monitor and your music and amends speed and elevation much faster than any gym equipment I’ve used.”
However, the MyRun is not without its downsides for the Guardian. They were quick to point out that watching the app is a little akin to watching paint dry – or in other words somewhat boring. Monitoring the app for them soon turned into the slightly more fun TV streaming. Of greater concern, and more relevant was their final point – “And I question the point in perfecting a treadmill stride when so much of running technique relies on negotiating uneven ground or other runners”. And here lies the core problem with optimising around a treadmill. Taking the learnings which were built up in a perfectly presented and streamlined environment and translating them into a race situation is neither practical nor likely to work in reality. That’s not to say that this form of practice is without merit, as clearly it is, but it will take a lot of serious practice in order to build up the muscle memory required to make the form learnings replicable.
In our opinion, this acts as a really solid home running machine. It is likely to only be the first step on the journey to a more integrated world of fitness apps, wearable technology and fitness machines – a good first step for sure – but our jury is still out as to whether its worth rushing to spend £2,500 on this machine. We will aim to get our hands on one and give it a thorough going over in the next few weeks