Distance Totals in Summary

Mark Attwood writes:

I love the ease of use of the site, however one suggestion, would it be possible to add the distance in each discipline so it self calculates the totals for week, month etc - similar to the hours?

Base2race now includes distance totals for Run, Bike and Swim workouts in the week view summary. To support this we've added "distance units" to the Workout form.

To be included in the totals, workouts must have a simple numeric value in the distance field along with valid units (meters, kilometres, yards or miles). You can mix and match units in the week view (e.g. a 10k run and a 10 mile run).

As the distance field until now has been a free text field, there is also text option. When text is selected you can type anything you want in there. I currently (and intend to continue to) abuse the distance field all the time, with the majority of my current bike workouts at the moment having a distance of either "Spin" or "Turbo". I also put "Pilates", "Yoga", and a whole load of other things in there.

Where units are set to "text", workouts are not included in the summary. Note: In order to preserve existing data, existing workouts have distance units currently set to "text". As such these workouts will not appear in the distance summary until they are modified. An exclamation mark is shown in the totals to highlight that the total distance may not accurately reflect the weeks true effort.

New Swim workouts have a default distance units of meters. Run and Bike workouts have a default distance units of km. Other workouts have a default distance unit of text.

The bad news...

To calculate totals for existing workouts, they must be modified from something:
Distance: "4 miles", Units: "text"
to:
Distance: "4", Units: "miles"

Not a big deal, but not too much fun if you've got a lot of workouts. So....


The good news...

I am looking to create a script to do change for you for most cases. As I don't want to change your data without your explicit permission this will be an "opt in" script (i.e. you need to request to be included in the run).

Don't worry about it just now. I will provide a mechanism up to easily request an “opt in”, and will run the script a few times over the next few weeks. More details to follow in the next few days...

Workouts now allow a "Race" focus

John Levison writes:

Hi Craig,

Discovered the facility recently - so far, really like it, especially
the ease of use - nice an clear, simple with no need to spend hours
working out how to work it. The sharing function is great too. Haven't
used it yet, but can well imagine I will. Excellent work.

Pleased to see the new ability to edit 'times' function - it's nice to
be able to but in accurate times, rather than be limited to the drop
downs.

One other suggestion - in the training type box (long interval / short
interval etc), could 'Race' be added? Currently, though your races show
up from the 'plan', they don't add into your summary (e.g. in workout
number of duration). So, I currently add in a new session, in order for
it to add the race effort to my overall hours. Currently, I put that in
as 'tempo' (nearest), but perhaps a new category could be used?

Cheers
John

We think this is a great idea, so we've added a workout focus called "Race".
Since we treat Time Trials as a category of Race this is probably a good workout focus to use for Time Trials too.

The Planned Hours column in the Annual Plan

Craig Goldie writes:

"On my Base2Race training plan it seems to (almost) always show the
planned hours as "0". Any ideas why this is?

For example if I add a workout for the 21/1/2008 and then view the 2008
Summary page then it still shows "0" in the planned hours column for
that week.

Cheers,

Craig

P.S. I really like Base2Race - really nice - especially the use of Ajax
to do the drag & drop of workouts accross the weeks. Cool!

There have been a few questions from users around Planned Hours in the annual plan. It is probably the most (unnecessarily) complex thing in base2race at the moment.

The planned hours, as specified in the annual plan are intended to be worked out as part of meso-cycle (periodization) planning and used as a feed into weekly workout planning.

What???

In the annual plan once you have worked out your training periods, you may choose to consider how best to increase load without over-training. e.g.
7/1/2008 (BASE 1) 1/4 -> 7hours
14/1/2008 (BASE 1) 2/4 -> 8hours (increasing endurance)
21/1/2008 (BASE 1) 3/4 -> 9hours (overreaching?)
281/2008 (BASE 1) 4/4 -> 5hours (recovery week)

To do this in base2race you click on the week in Planned Hours column. Doing this gives you a textbox to enter the total planned hours for that week. These planned hours show up in training week view.

The aim here is something along the lines of "okay I wanted to hit 7 hours this week, what workouts will I do to make that up?".

Craig G came up with some great thoughts on how to make this clearer. Much of these are very subtle but illuminate how the features can be used. We've started to implement some of these...

So what have we changed?

In the annual plan where no hours have been set, we used to have the number ZERO. We've change that to show "set planned hours". Additionally we automatically give keyboard focus to the textbox that appears. Very subtle, but I really like it - thanks Craig for the great ideas!

Time trials

With base2race, we want things fast and easy. This is why we use lots of drop down pick lists rather typing too much. With Time trials, however, you want to be really accurate.

Time trials tell us to the second how well we are performing. I want to keep a long term record of these. I normally add them as Category C Races so they show up on the annual plan. Unfortunately, doing this obscures the real races. So we've added a new race category specifically for time trials.

To add a time trial just add a race to your annual plan. Set the Race category as TT and you've got a time trial.

Your time trials will appear both in your annual plan and in your week view, but are distinct from real races.

Workout Durations

Paul writes:

"
Hi love the prog,
any chance you can make the session times a bit more user defineable,
ie i have a 1hr 45 min run to do but can only choose 1.5 or 2.hrs
keep up the good work.
Paul

Absolutely!

We've added more flexibility around entering workout durations. You can now type your workout's duration rather than having to select one from a pick list.

To do this, just click the "Type It" button on the right hand side of the duration drop down pick list. You can now enter the workout's duration in minutes.

If you decide you'd rather just pick one of the values, click the "Pick It" button and you'll get the drop down pick list back.

Base2race updates

Base2race now allows includes capturing and display of body weight. This along with resting HR is also now shown (when entered) in the week view.

Also base2race now remembers how you have configured your week view:
- Whether to focus this week around today or start with Monday.
- Whether to display workout details.

Thanks Paul, Darren and David for the suggestions.

If there is something you would like to see in base2race send me an email at craig@facedowndog.com.