base2race

Base2race access difficulties

2008-03-31T10:40:00.005+01:00

If you have been having problems accessing base2race.com read on.

We have found an issue with users being routed through the internet via Tiscali routers and switches. The request being routed (through servers/routers/switches whatever) which are timing out.

We are working to rectify this. In the meantime you can access your acccount via our alternate service at http://www.base2race.net.

Reserve service at www.base2race.net

2008-03-30T09:27:00.001+01:00

If you experience technical difficulties accessing www.base2race.com, a service running on our reserve server is now available at www.base2race.net (but does not support email or pdf export).

This is a reserve service. We only recommend using it when you cannot access www.base2race.com.

Looking good one week into our new home

2008-03-02T23:15:00.005Z

On Sunday 23rd February we changed server hosts. We weren't getting the quality of service we expect from our older host. The move was fast and easy.

The service is running well and seems (to me anyway) to be slightly faster than our old one.

Base2race service resumed

2008-02-11T13:45:00.001Z

Base2race service has resumed. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused by the 2 hour outage.

Base2race service interuption

2008-02-11T12:09:00.000Z

Our service has been down since 11:10(GMT) this morning.

Our hosting service provider, the Positive Internet Company, has stopped our server to apply security patches.

They have assured us that we will be back up and running soon.

We will keep you informed.

Periodisation Planning: Mark Whetmore

2008-02-03T18:05:00.000Z

Mark Whetmore is the coach of the University of Colorado’s Cross Country Team. Teams season is featured in the book "Running With The Buffaloes" by Chris Lear which featured athlete Adam Goucher.

Heavily influenced by Arthur Lydiard, Chris’s book describes Whetmore’s plan as follows:

Period A: Ascending to Full Volume
The period lasts roughly six weeks, beginning when they resume training after taking a break at the end of outdoor track and lasting until the end of July. Each runner has a different goal volume depending on what he has done in the past. Whetmore recommends “no more than a tem percent increase from his last successful maximum volume.” In a letter he sent to the squad on June 24th, he wrote of this first period, “For the time being don’t attempt any hard work-outs. No intervals; no ATs [Tempo runs]; no fartlek; no races. Just steady medium-distance runs and a weekly long run that is 20 percent of your total week. Get your bodies ready for the sustained volume of September and thereafter.”

This period translates to the BASE1 period in base2race.

Period B: Aerobic Short Specificity
This phase lasts five weeks and is characterized by work done at task pace (be that mile pace for milers during track season or 10k pace during cross country since that is the distance run at NCAA’s) that is not anaerobic. This means that another interval is not started until the athlete is fully recovered from the previous one. An example of a workout in this period is a fartlek with one minute on, four minutes off. There is a complete recovery between each hard effort so that no significant oxygen debt is accrued. This is mainly a transitional phase where Whetmore’s runners get used to going fast again.

In base2race you could specify this period as BASE2.

Period C: Aerobic Long Specificity
This phase lasts 6 weeks and includes longer intervals than in Period B, while still avoiding anaerobic workouts. This phase is characterised by longer fartlek workouts, mile repeats, and long, hard aerobic efforts such as the ten-mile Dam Run. The rest between intervals will shorten toward the end of Period C as the runners advance their fitness. Because the intervals are much longer than in Period B, his athletes start Period C running intervals at paces that are slightly slower than they will be running November 23rd. The paces drop over time. It is important to emphasize that through Period C the Sunday long run is emphasized, using the rule of thumb that it should be twenty percent of an athlete’s weekly volume. As a rule, the steady runs on Wednesday afternoons through this phase are fifteen percent of an athlete’s weekly volume.

In base2race you could specify this period as BASE3.

Period D: Anaerobic Specificity
Now Whetmore introduces a heavy dose of traditional interval running: short, fast repeats with precious little recovery. The anaerobic work enables the runners to capitalize on the increase in their aerobic capacity while giving them what Lydiard calls “the vital edge” to race anaerobically. The Wednesday medium-distance run and the Sunday run are continued as aerobic maintenance, the difference being that with only six weeks until Nationals, the distance of the runs will decrease by 10 to 25 percent. The pace of the medium distance and long runs remains steady.

The shift in emphasis from distance to intensity characterises this cycle as a BUILD period. In base2race I would set this one up as BUILD1.

Period E: Anaerobic Speed
The season’s last phase is marked by training sessions designed to induce deep anaerobic stimulus. In laymen’s terms, this is when his runners puke and come back for more. The hard training sessions will include sprinting and intervals at paces substantially faster than race pace. The end result of these sessions is a feeling of sharpness – a power and fluidity of stride that causes a reversal of traditional mind-body communication. Up to now the mind is employed to overrule the unresponsiveness of the legs that is a result of the cumulative fatigue from an ungodly number of training sessions. Now it is the legs that start telling the mind: hey, you have the tools to raise some hell when it counts.

This final cycle would translate to the PEAK period in base2race.

Written as a journal, I found "Running With The Buffaloes" an eye opening and entertaining read, and would recommend it to anyone interested in endurance training. From a periodisation point of view, it provides a superb day by day illustration of athletes going through each meso-cycle.

Distance summary updates: Automatic workout update

2008-02-03T18:00:00.000Z

Recently we upgraded workout distances. This involved adding in a new item "distance units". This allows base2race to calculate totals for Swim, Bike and Run distances.

For workout distances to be included in totals, workouts should have distance units selected and distances should be simple numbers.

This is a fundamental change in how distances work in base2race!

In order to help you to change your existing workouts, we've created an update script that we will run over the data. Unless you choose to be included we will not modify your data. You can opt to have your account included in this script by clicking here.

Distance Totals in Summary

2008-01-28T10:21:00.000Z

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

2008-01-24T12:05:00.000Z

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

2008-01-21T15:10:00.000Z

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

2008-01-20T22:39:00.000Z

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

2008-01-20T22:11:00.000Z

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

2008-01-06T19:14:00.000Z

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.

Base2race now supports account sharing

2007-12-14T13:23:00.000Z

Base2race now allows you to share your account with other base2race users!

Share your account with your coach for ongoing support, monitoring and feedback.

Share your account with your friends and training partners to organise training sessions and motivate and support each other.

You can access sharing by clicking on the sharing link on the top right hand side of the screen:

This takes you to the sharing page where you can:

View accounts that have been shared with you

Share your account with others

When you access a shared account you can navigate it in the same way as your own, and leave comments that appear below the account holders day notes.

Welcome to base2race T1

2007-12-03T13:33:00.001Z

This is the place to get in-depth information on getting the most out of your training with base2race, including:

New base2race features
Tips and tricks
General triathlon and multisport training
The inside track on upcoming features
And more...

If there's anything you'd like to see here, any feature you are desperate for in base2race, if you've got training tips that others might enjoy, or just want to say hi, we'd love to hear from you.