Mio Slice Review - Heart Rate Matters

I have always been motivated by counting steps and seeing my progress numbers light up on my wrist or an app - it can be incredibly motivating. On the same token, it can be incredibly frustrating when I'd do an intense cross or strength training routine and get little to no steps added to my daily total! I worked HARD for those efforts and dang it - I wanted them to COUNT!

This, combined with all of the recent buzz surrounding heart rate training throughout my friends in the running community, left me so excited to try out the Mio SLICE, a wearable heart rate and activity tracker. Slice technology is based off a PAI score. PAI stands for Personal Activity Intelligence, which is a revolutionary new way of tracking that turns your heart rate into a score. In a nutshell - it shows you how much activity you need to stay healthy.

Your goal is to maintain a PAI score over 100 for a 7 day rolling period. People with scores over 100 are said to live a longer and more healthy life.

Being a competitive person  by nature, there is no doubt in my mind that I had a more active then usual week while wearing my Slice, because heck, I knew I was going to write a post about this and I wanted an impressive score! I am just so visually motivated and having the PAI app to show me my results fueled my fire to fit in bonus activity whenever I could!

Ever had a workout that just FELT so much harder even though it's one you routinely do? Me too! In fact last week, I set our to do the same running workout that I had done the day before except that particular morning the temperature was soaring and the dew point was through the roof. I felt like my leg were just dragging the entire time! Guess what? My heart rate reflected that and even though my distance and pace were the same as the previous day, the higher temps and humidity made my EFFORTS greater and that gave me a higher PAI score for my workout. Pretty great to be rewarded for working harder. right?

The Mio SLICE gives you instant feedback on every workout and all day long. While running, I could glance down at my wrist and at any given moment know exactly what my heart rate was - I LOVE that. Open up the app and you will see it also tracks steps, distance, active calories burned, and sleep quality (how long you are in light vs deep sleep), all in pretty graph form (so easy to read and understand too!) It really helped me to have a well-rounded and overall picture of my health at a glance.

PAI tracks your heart rate intensity and shows you which activities and efforts have the greatest results on your overall health and fitness. For example, last week, we went on a road trip and stayed overnight in hotel off the beach, I got up early and ran along the shoreline solo that morning and then went back the hotel shower and got ready so that we could walk to breakfast.

I was shocked to see that I had medium - high efforts while leisurely pushing the stroller to the cute downtown breakfast joint! again, it was so NICE to see that all of my efforts were being ranked and counted, not just my running steps.

The Mio SLICE adapts to your unique growing and changing fitness level too, since it gives real time feedback, so it's not another fitness device that you'll eventually outgrow. The styling is great too and the fact that it's water resistant means I can wear (and track my PAI points) all day and night. I only take it off 1-2 times a week to charge while I'm showering and getting ready, and it charges up super quick and is ready to roll again!

I think I have finally found the best way for me to track my fitness goals and am so excite to continue using this (and maintain that PAI score!) as I train for my upcoming hilly half marathon in a couple months. Here's to reaching new levels of health with the Mio SLICE!