Four times a week, I dress to train for the New York City Marathon: running tights, a racerback tank top, undergarments that wick away sweat — and my GPS watch.
I constantly glance at my left wrist to make sure I’m jogging at the right pace during each workout. But a new “smart” sports bra Montreal-based company OMsignal launched Monday ($169, $69 for additional bras; OMsignal.com) aims to change that whiplash-inducing habit.
While it looks and acts like a normal sports bra, there’s a small chargeable hub you snap into the sensor-lined band before each run. Its unique selling point is that it tracks both your heart rate and breathing rhythms (and claims to be the first to do so) via a free app the company created called OMrun. After five runs, it’s able to determine your fitness levels.
You’re meant to spend 80 percent of a run in what the app says is a low heart-rate zone, called “endurance,” and 20 percent of it in a fairly high zone, called “peak.” The ultimate goal is to run actual races in a middle zone. In essence, you run slower (while training) to run faster (when it counts).
During a weekend of trial runs with the OMbra, I learned to focus a little less on numbers — distance logged, miles per minute — and a little more on the big picture. Staying relaxed instead of hunching my shoulders. Breathing regularly instead of in fits and starts. Taking smaller steps, not long strides.
It’s not all holistic hooey: The app interrupts your Zen (or your Tiësto Pandora station) every half-mile, telling you your speed, heart rate, number of steps (called “cadence”) and other vitals. After, you can check the app and the firm’s site for a detailed analysis of everything from stride length to calories burned, as well as a neat chart that shows how pace, heart rate, breathing, distance and elevation levels all correlate.
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Before the OMbra, runners — we’re talking Olympians here, not a piddly 12-minute-mile doofus like me — would have to go to a lab to get tested for their ideal take-it-easy (80 percent), push-it-to-the-max (20 percent) and race-pace benchmarks. Now, even amateurs can try a professional running philosophy on for size — and add a solid sports bra to their collections.