Computer program to track mileage/workouts

one other thing. i'm in canada. we northerners love kilometers. it would be great if i didn't have to convert them everytime.

picky--i know

Thank you very much. This has solved the problems that I had. I look forward to using the program.

cut and paste would be helpful. i accidentally put a workout on the wrong day? any easy way to get it to the right day?

Hey,

Yeah, definitely no hidden spyware, that wouldn't be cool at all. As far as the supported OS's, I'm not totally sure to be honest. I developed on 2000 last summer and then on XP Pro this summer, so at least things work for those two. I don't use any new-fangled API calls (for example, the gradient in the background is done in my own function, even though there's a new-for-win2000 function to draw a gradient), so I would think you could extend it at least back to 98 and possibly 95. But I don't have any computers running those, so I can't check it. It was a low-budget dev process; I don't have any money to buy test machines :) If people have those OS's and would like to verify that things work (or tell me if certain components fail so that I can fix them to be less version-dependent), that would be great. As for MFC, I originally was just writing this for a friend and I. I know C++ and MFC way better than I know Java, and we both use windows, so it seemed ok at the time. The more I've worked on it, though, the more it's grown and so I figure if other people want to use it, great. But yeah, now things like having a windows-specific program and certain US-specific data values is becoming an issue! The source is available, though, and if anyone wants to port it to another OS/language, I'd give 100% support, and I'd help where I could.

Thanks for UI complement, by the way. I'm not so good at that stuff, so I'm glad people don't think it's really ugly. That was sort of why I made the UI so customizable; I really didn't want to count on people agreeing with what I thought looked right :)

If you want to talk more about the code or anything, feel free to email me too.

Kevin

Hey,

In response to a couple messages: you can delete a workout. There's an item in the menu for it (options menu i believe), or you can right click on the day, and get a menu with a delete item. then you select the workout you want to delete from the dialog that pops up, and it's gone. Cut and paste would be a *great* idea; I've entered a workout on the wrong day too, and it is a pain. I'll put that on my list of things to try for the next version. The same goes for adding support for kilometers. A couple people have emailed me about that too, so the deal on that is: I can make a quick fix that gives you the option to have the calendar display what you've entered in km. Actually making the various dialogs read in kilometers and stuff would require changing a lot of code, and I will do it, but that won't be a quick change. There is a button that says "converter" on (I think) every dialog that has a "miles" field, and so for now, open that, convert your km to miles, enter the miles, and I'll add a quick thing in the options dialog that will allow it to display km in the calendar. It won't fix everything for people used to km, because things like pace will still be min/mile, and miles will be used in all the dialogs... but the next big version update of TriathLog will have full support for switching between miles/km.

Keep the input coming :)

Kevin

hey, just letting you know that i downloaded your program, and what i've seen so far i like. thanks man.

Great program, super nice...BUT:

I don't like that you have to enter sleep and post-workout weight in order to enter a workout. Along the same lines, in other areas the same thing happens. For example, I want to enter a park for a course--well, it doesn't have a set distance as I just run wherever I feel like for a fartlek. It would be intensely swell if you didn't have to enter everything for a given dialog box.

Other than that, it looks great from what I see.

Hi,

I think what you want for those fartlek workouts is to enter a location rather than a course. The locations don't have any distance associated with them, and (at least the way I envisioned it) the locations are where you do your usual workouts (hills, intervals, fartleks, normal, easy, tempo, etc) and courses are reserved for actual races. All actual races should have a set distance (I guess besides some really rare ones like the hour race), so then it's not a problem. I think you want a location for your fartlek stuff -- the location itself could be the entire park, and the workout notes are where you put which parts of the park you ran, how you felt, etc.

And as for the having to enter sleep/weight stuff, I've also gotten some responses from people that are glad they have to enter that stuff, because it makes them be diligent about it (myself included). Looking back at my sleep over the course of a month and looking at how my performance went over the same time span can tell a lot of interesting things, including the correlation between injuries and little sleep. So yeah, I'm hearing both sides to this... and I guess I side with keeping it the way it is, but if most people disagree I can change it.

Thanks for trying it out!

Kevin

I can see the benefit of "mandatory" entering of weight and sleep. However, I do many runs where I don't know the exact mileage and just run for time. Obviously, I can plug in a guess but that seems of little real value when assessing training. Easy runs are really all about time spent. Plus, I know several very good runners (1:03:00 half-marathon types) who keep track of their running entirely in minutes, except for the hard workouts, where the know the mileage only because they are on a track. So couldn't you make the mileage entering optional. Certainly, when I look back at a week, I can tell that a week where I ran for 600 or 630 minutes or more is a good week. Seeing that as 100 miles, or whatever it would work out to be, seems pointless, particularly if it is all guesswork.

Thanks for the course/location info--apparently I just didn't play around with it enough to notice the difference. As far as the sleep/weight thing, I think it is good to know (I always track my sleep), but I don't have access after a lot of my runs to weigh myself--or I simply forget. That shouldn't mean that I can't enter a workout or have to make up a weight that I was in the neigborhood. Just a thought. Thanks again.

I think that it would be good if the program allowed you to print off the summaries. I have a coach that likes to see a hard copy of what I have been doing in the off season.

/

And as for the having to enter sleep/weight stuff, I've also gotten some responses from people that are glad they have to enter that stuff, because it makes them be diligent about it (myself included). Looking back at my sleep over the course of a month and looking at how my performance went over the same time span can tell a lot of interesting things, including the correlation between injuries and little sleep. So yeah, I'm hearing both sides to this... and I guess I side with keeping it the way it is, but if most people disagree I can change it.

/

Nice program (and free too ;-) . ..

Please change this aspect of the application, someone can

always come back and add it.

Just my $0.02.

hey idaho runner. i'm kevin's friend who helps him test and think of stuff for the program. i completely agree with you on the printing aspect. what exactly would you want/need printed? i'm trying to get kevin to make it so that you can print the month summary (like the calendar with everything on it) as well as a having the option to print up the workout summaries (you'd be able to enter the date range) in a user friendly and condensed manner. i have my preseason xc camp in a few weeks, so hopefully the print option could be completely by then so that i could turn my workouts into my coach as well.

thanks to everyone for their feedback and interest in this. it is cool to see the program being used by more than just kevin and me. keep the input coming in.

t.j.

akevdog wrote:

Hey,

In response to a couple messages: you can delete a workout. There's an item in the menu for it (options menu i believe), or you can right click on the day, and get a menu with a delete item. then you select the workout you want to delete from the dialog that pops up, and it's gone.

OK, maybe I'm retarded, but I can't delete a workout. I don't see a delete option in the options menu and the menu that comes up after right clicking doesn't have an option either. Any other suggestions?

I love the program though--way better than just Excel and free, too :)!

Checkout

http://www.running-journal.com

if you're using a MAC. It's a browser based application.

Enjoy

in response to deleting a workout, right click on the day for which you want to delete the workout, and click where it says delete workout. hope this helps. if you have any more questions or requests, just post them. thanks.

t.j.

Hi,

This thing about deleting workouts is totally my fault -- you guys are right, you can't delete a workout in the version you have. I don't understand how, but somehow the version on the website is a slightly older version that doesn't have the delete option (i think it was the last thing i added). I don't have my computer set up right now (just got home from summer in california), but I will tomorrow, and I'll upload the new one ASAP. I'll post a message in probably 12 hours or so saying when it's done. Again, I apologize for all the confusion. You'll be able to delete workouts when you download the new one tomorrow :) (and when you download the new one, you don't need to download the DLL version again, just the usual version)

Kevin

Also, people have said that printing would be nice. What kinds of things do people want to print, what do they want them to look like, etc? Let me know soon, because once I get back to school in early september, I won't have as much time :)

Kevin

Ok, I updated the files and now the version you download will have the delete workout option. I'm sorry for the confusion! If you've already downloaded the program before, just download the one without DLLs (they haven't changed, and you already have them if you were running it before) and replace your old TriathLog.exe with the new one. And keep sending ideas to improve the program! The input so far has been great, and I really appreciate it.

the download link is

www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~weil/code.html

Thanks,

Kevin