Computer program to track mileage/workouts

if you'd read the posts you'd know the program is free..

I agree that it is a nice program. My only suggestions would be the same as some of the others. You shouldn't have to put in so much mandatory stuff. Shoes, course, decimal places on mileage, etc. Overall a very nice program though. I run Windows 98 and have no problems with it.

Hey, I am one of the ones that asked for printing. I think that any of the summaries would be nice. I like how it groups all of my runs in a certain location and then gives me the average. My coach likes to know which of my days were hard, hills, and fartlek days, ect. I would love it if I could sort those out individually as groups and then print them. Also, I am the worlds worst speller. I am not sure how easy it would be but a spell check would be awesome for the descriptions. Thanks for the hard work.

Clint

Hi it is me again. I think that an option for a day off would be cool. Some times I am forced into them and I want to record why and not just leave the day blank. Like if I am injured or on a vacation or something.

Clint

I'll reiterate that the mandatory only feature is the most annoying aspect of the program. Today, I entered yesterday's cycle only to find at the end that I had forgotten to enter my cycling shoes. (Like, who cares about cycling shoe wear!) So I had to start the entry all over.

This program will have a limited audience until it can cater to varying levels of anality when it comes to training logs.

One more thing. I think you should be able to edit your locations, shoes, races and their descriptions. Thanks

Clint

Hey,

Ok, it sounds like the evidence is overwhelming for reducing the mandatory parts of the data entry. I guess I have no choice :) So what should be mandatory? Like, should I require miles to be entered for a running workout, or should everything be hands off? And if, say, you don't enter anything in the "distance" part of the dialog, should I count that as 0.0 miles or no data at all? Because certainly if you don't enter a weight, you don't want that to count as 0.0... you want to count that as no weight entered. So give me some input as to how you would like the empty ones to be handled/counted. And I will have printing in version 4, too... I'm thinking that the main window will be printable (without the next/prev month buttons showing), and also something with a bunch of columns that just lists all the data (with options for filters saying what types of workouts you want to include, which dates to include between, etc). Does that sound good, do you guys want more/different/etc? I'm going to get working on the updates tomorrow. The big ones I have are:

1. copy/paste

2. less anal

3. printing

4. metric unit options

These require some fairly major code changes, and I have school coming up, so you might need to give it some time... I'm the only programmer for this, so big changes take a while :) I should at least be able to get one and maybe two of the above before school starts. Thanks for your patience, and thanks again for using the program!

Kevin

Oh, and Idaho Runner: you can edit races, because you can edit all workouts. After you've entered a workout, just right click on the day and do view day summary. this brings up a dialog, and you can changed the values in all the fields. just make sure to hit the save button when you're done... as far as changing shoes, it wouldn't be much work to put in, but is that something you actually need to do often? :) I guess changing information about a location could be useful... ok, consider that stuff added to the list.

Kevin

I'd say enter it as "no data at all." (You could check a slot to see if data or nodata and then only graph the data slots.) The best thing you could do would be to enable the user to choose which slots they want to be mandatory or not, perhaps with little check boxes next to them? I'll UI up to you. Everybody has their own little hang-ups. Some people might obsess about weight whereas others, perhaps someone who is more injury prone, might obsess about mileage on their shoes. As it stands now, the most annoying feature of the program is when you make an entry and then get stuck because you forgot to enter a pair of shoes or a location.

I'll have to re-read the thread because I think I did see something about editing. It would also be great if you could edit a location to change its name or distance or whatever, later on.

By the way I like the program but am I the only one who is not able to view graphs? When I click on the graph size nothing happens. I am running Windows 98.

Do you have microsoft excel on your computer? The graphing tools use the same graphing components as microsoft excel does (they actually come with excel, i think)... back when I was starting to write this for me and a friend, I knew both of us had excel and so it was an easy solution. If more people are using it and they don't have excel, I can probably find another graphing tool to use. so yeah, do you have excel? if so, then something else is going wrong, and we can probably get your graphs working. if not.. do lots of people not have excel, and so can't use the graphs?

kevin

caveat emptor, your plan sounds good. i think ideally you would have be able to set which things you want to make mandatory and which you wouldn't. that's an elegant solution for all types of anality (to steal a word from earlier in the thread). i think i'll do that.

do you guys think a full blown help file would be useful? like the windows help things that come up when you use a real application? because right now there's only the little dialog that says what the menu commands do, and i'm not sure it's so helpful. i can make a more comprehensive help system... i just can't promise that it'll be pretty because i'm no good with art-type stuff. (if someone is experienced with the program WinHelp and wants to help me out, that would be awesome). what do you guys think, would it be a good edition? and generally, is the program's learning curve fairly steep, or was it easy to start using it and figuring things out?

kevin

I've got excel 97 on my computer and I am able to create and display graphs.

Another thing that would be nice would be the option of choosing a location or a course for your everyday runs. I usually run the same half a dozen routes for 90% of my runs so it would be better if you could choose the course and just fill in the time. By the way I like the way you can track multiple runs in the same day and also the warm up and cooldown times for tempo runs and races. You should be able to make money with this program since it's better than most of the other ones I have seen.

hey, i have a question for any of you who are trying out the program. are there any other types of workouts that you'd like to have added? not like other sports, but other workouts... such as in the running section we already have tempo, intervals, easy, hills, among others, but don't yet have a fartlek option. if you can think of any more that we missed, that would be great. thanks.

A quick update: I'm hard at work adding two major things right now for you guys who requested them. I'm changing it around so that you can fully customize which fields are mandatory when you enter workouts (you can have different settings for each of run, bike, swim, strength work, and different settings for each type of race), and I'm adding support for metric units. You can enter height in cm, weight in kg, and choose whether run, bike, swim distance is in miles or km. You can choose a different setting for each if you really want. Does the way I'm doing this sound ok to everyone that asked for these features? Speak now or forever hold your peace :)

Kevin

How about the ability to export the data into a text file.

I'm a statistician of sorts and it would be a nice feature with the flexibility to put the data into a statistical application for some in-depth analysis of the data over a long period of time.

Just a thought. . . .and yes I'm anal .

This is really cool, just wanted to say thanks for the hard work and for posting it for us! :-)

You asked for new types of work out options. How about Negative split runs. You could have an out time and a back time. I love the program, thanks for the hard work.

OK, so now I've added the stuff to allow for metric units (and switching back and forth between them, so those of you who have been suffering through American units can just change a thing in the options dialog and evrything will be automatically converted). You can also specify different formats for the paces in various sports. I think that stuff is all working, but I need to test it some more. If anybody has a variety of data entered and would try to test it for me, please let me know -- more beta testers can only help. I'm also going to finish that thing about changing what is mandatory and what isn't, and possibly implement cut, copy, and paste (since that was a *great* idea) before I put out the new version. I'm waiting a bit just so I don't have 75 versions hanging around, beacuse then everyone including myself would be confused about which was which and who had the newest, etc. I don't know how long this will take me, but I will put out the new release before I go to school in early September. Depending on how many nights I stay up late programming, it might be ready in a week :) Just keep checking back if you're looking for any of these new features.

Thanks for the support!

Kevin