We've got great news for cyclists who use PeriPedal indoor training software: You can now enable Auto-Sync between the two programs — so when you complete a ride, your workout data will automatically upload to SportTracks. This is useful for gaining actionable insight by analyzing the details of individual PeriPedal workouts, and for understanding how these efforts impact your overall fitness, tapering strategies, and Training Load.

PeriPedal is a powerful, yet easy-to-use software application for athletes who utilize indoor trainers (which are also referred to as "Turbos" in other parts of the world). It syncs via ANT+ and displays live stats on your computer as you turn the crank (PeriPedal is only compatible with Windows). It's a budget-friendly solution for monitoring your Power, Heart Rate, Speed, Cadence, and more while you work out indoors on a bike.

If you have an indoor trainer but lack a power meter, PeriPedal can act as a virtual power meter (if you're unfamiliar with power-based training in cycling, you can learn about it in our Critical Power fundamentals post). PeriPedal also comes with structured workouts, training plans, and many other useful features, such as a media viewer that can pause a Netflix stream when you get off the bike, and automatically unpause it when you return and start pedaling again. Perfect for binge suffering!

How to set it up

In order to take advantage of this partnership, you need to enable the connection between SportTracks and PeriPedal. This requires an account on both platforms. If you're not yet a SportTracks user, you can easily sign up for a 45-day free trial to test this out. There are no obligations, and you won't be charged at the end of the trial.

1. In PeriPedal, click on "Edit Profiles" and scroll down to "SportTracks Settings." Click the button labeled "Connect with SportTracks."
2. Go ahead and turn off "Upload Workouts to TrainingPeaks." You won't be needing that any longer. ;)
3. Log into SportTracks, and authorize PeriPedal to access your account by clicking on the "My Account" link in the upper right corner of the SportTracks interface.
4. Click on "Sharing," and then click the "Connect" button.
5. Select the PeriPedal option from the menu.

That's it! This integration will add a new dimention of utility to the workout data that's generated from your PeriPedal sessions. Moxy Monitor users will be especially pleased because both PeriPedal and SportTracks feature blood oxygenation data integration.

Many ingredients are required to train for a marathon, and two of the bigger ones are willpower and ambition. While you can never have too much willpower, it is possible to overdo it with excess ambition. How can it get the best of you? When training for a 26.2 mile effort, you need to have a good idea of what your pace should be for the majority of the course. If you take off like a bolt of lightning and leave your normal pace behind in the dust, you can run out of gas long before you get anywhere near the finish line.

Without a doubt, pacing plays a major role in both marathon training and in the race itself. In this article, we go over the nuts and bolts of pace, and offer advice for finding the ideal marathon goal pace to suit your personal level of fitness.

Step 1: Nail the basics

Let’s review the basics of pace, so beginners get all of the information they need, and so experienced runners can confirm what they may already know. Pace is the amount of time it takes you to complete a mile or a kilometer. In SportTracks, pace is split up into three separate stats to give you a broader understanding of your fitness:

• Pace
• Max Pace
• Level Pace

The first one, Pace, is your average pace from the entire workout. Speeding up, slowing down, and taking breaks all impact this number. The second, Max Pace, is the fastest pace you recorded during your run. The last one, Level Pace, is a little more involved. This number gives you a theoretical idea of how fast you would have run if there had been no hills in the course. In fitness training, Level Pace is also often referred to as Grade Adjusted Pace (GAP).

Step 2: Track and monitor

When you begin training, it’s important to keep track of your pace as you’re running. To do so, using a GPS sports watch or a fitness tracking app is strongly recommended. It won’t take you long to find a comfortable pace for longer runs. As your training intensifies and the distances increase, knowing how fast of a pace you can sustain for long periods of time becomes crucially important.

Running a sub two-hour marathon is the ultimate goal of every endurance runner, but for most of us, it’s just good fodder for daydreaming.

Step 3: Set a time goal, and use pace to train for it

Running a sub two-hour marathon is the ultimate goal of every endurance runner, but for most of us, it’s just good fodder for daydreaming. Therefore, it’s advisable to set a realistic marathon time goal for yourself based on your current fitness. A free online running pace calculator can help you determine a good marathon time for yourself. The RunnerSpace calculator is one we recommend for it's simplicity.

In order to properly use a running pace calculator, you need to determine the appropriate Distance and Time to enter into it. You need stats from a recent race (or a race-like training run), or a recent PR. The idea is to enter your strongest recent effort near the target distance (for example: one that isn't over two years old), so the calculator can estimate your best possible marathon time based on your ability.

Here's how to determine the Distance and Time to enter into a running calculator:

1) Go to the Personal Records section of SportTracks

2) In the right corner, filter the sports type to display "Running"

3) Check out your records. If you have a recent PR, use it for the calculator. If not...

4) Click on "All dates" in the upper right corner, and filter by the current year 

5) If you still can't find an applicable workout, filter the dates again by the previous year

6) In the example above, the athlete ran a 24:03 5K as a part of an 8K race. This is the most applicable data we've found yet, but let's look a little more, just to be thorough.

7) Go to the Workouts page in SportTracks

8) Click the "Search By" box, select "Sport" from the menu, and click "Running"

9) Click the "Search By" box again, select "Text" from the menu, type "Race" and hit Enter

10) Sort the Distances by clicking on that column

11) Looking at the workout history, we confirm that the 24:03 5K is the most recent data

12) For this athlete, we enter a Distance of 5K and a Time of 24:03 into the RunnerSpace calculator

13) In the results, we scroll to the second to last row. The suggested average marathon time for this athlete is 3:54

Once you determine your time goal, you can establish a focused training plan leading all the way to race day. As you work to get there, understanding your pace is key. How fast you are as a long-distance runner should become more and more obvious as you train. Similar to your Lactate Threshold Heart Rate, you will begin to understand the thresholds of your pacing.

Step 4: Listen to your body and live in the moment

We all want to run the fastest race possible, but when we’re talking about a full marathon, what gets you to the finish line the fastest is how smartly you train, how carefully you pace yourself, and how strategic you are with your available energy.

If you check your pace early in the race and it’s much faster than normal, you need to be careful. Runners often pick up extra energy from being in an actual competition — and it can work to your advantage to go with it and use this energy for a faster run. But, if you still have a great distance to cover and you’re pushing too hard, you’re in danger of overdoing it, slowing down, walking or even dropping out.

The most common advice is to aim for a negative split in a race, meaning that you run more conservatively for the first half and faster for the second. This can make for a more enjoyable racing experience, because by strategically leveraging your energy reserves, you get to eventually pass many of the lightning bolts who darted off at the start and tuckered out sometime later.

But, who knows? Maybe the most common advice isn’t what suits you best. Either way, the key here is to use pacing and tracking to your advantage. Have a plan for race day, and strike a balance between how you’re feeling in the moment, and what you know you’re capable of from training.

Step 5: Get to work

The fresher your data is, the more accurate your pace and time goals can be. Hop into your Calendar in SportTracks and start planning some training runs that will give you clear idea of what you’re capable of. Hurry up, your next PR is waiting for you at the finish line with a free banana and a couple pints of beer.

This week we’re announcing several new features on the calendar page, two of which are explained in this post:

• A customization option lets you choose what data is visible
• Availability of five new metrics (including training load)

Read on for details of these exciting new features.

Data customization

You can now customize the data you want to see in your yearly, monthly and weekly views by clicking the “Customize” button in the upper right corner of the page.

When the customize dialog appears you’ll see two options:

• Totals
  Select which data you want to appear in the sidebar total blocks and any other places on the page where totals are summarized such as monthly and weekly totals within the calendar.
• Sport totals
  Select which data you want to see for totals summarized by sport. You can also choose whether you want to see “just the numbers” or a pie visualization.

For each of these options you can select the visible data by dragging the item into one of the first four spots. You can also choose the order by rearranging the top-four items.

Note that in some screen resolutions (tablet portrait/landscape and smartphone) certain data fields are hidden to ensure the calendar space is fully visible. You can customize exactly which you want to see by dragging around the items until the layout is exactly like you want.

New data metrics

With the ability to customize the data fields in the calendar, we’ve also added five new metrics:

• Elevation gain
  The total elevation gained during the period. Available as a period total or per-sport summary total.
• Effort
  The total effort put out during the period. Available as a period total or per-sport summary total.
• Performance
  Your performance level at the end of the period, including any future planned but uncompleted workouts, determined by the training load model.
• Fitness
  Your fitness level at the end of the period.
• Fatigue
  Your fatigue level at the end of the period.

Of course, you can also select from the previous metrics: Workout count, Distance, Time, and Calories.

For any of these metrics, click the totals block in the sidebar to view the trend chart for the metric. Metrics that are calculated as a total for the period are shown as a bar chart; the three training load metrics show the relevant daily chart for the trend period. The current period is highlighted in a darker color while past and future periods are shown in a lighter color.

You can also quickly navigate to a new period by clicking the segment in the chart. This makes jumping forward or backward as easy as one click.

Multi-period analysis

One final tip: You can perform analysis of your workout volume, training, and performance over multiple periods by using your browser’s “Open in New Tab” or “Open in New Window” option to bring up more than one view of different parts of your history. If you’ve got a large desktop display, this is a great way to plan future workout training plans while looking at data from past seasons.

One of our favorite techniques is to bring up today’s monthly view in one browser window, and last year’s calendar in another, then tile the windows side-by-side. You can plan your training session in the monthly browser, while referring to the yearly view next to it.

If you read our previous post on the new calendar customization features you probably also noticed the new option to show training load data. In this post we’re going to explain how and why you would want to see training load metrics within the calendar view.

Remind me what training load is again?

Training load is a mathematical model which crunches through your workout history and shows you three metrics over a time-based chart:

• Fitness: How trained your body is
• Fatigue: How tired your body is
• Performance: The difference between your fitness and fatigue

You can read much, much more about training load in our three part series, starting with Part 1: Science, History and Application. The TL;DR version is:

The Training Load model predicts your overall performance level at a point in time.

For historical time periods, the training load model is going to run off your actual, completed workouts – measuring the intensity of every second of your workout. For future time periods, the model will use any workouts you’ve planned, with an estimate of the duration and intensity.

A new, integrated view

Many solutions, including SportTracks, present training load data using a “One Big Chart” approach. In SportTracks you’ll find the Performance and combined Fitness/Fatigue charts on the Health page. These give you a quick holistic overview of your current body state, as well as historical trend lines, but are lacking context. You can graphically explore the charts to look at details for a particular time span, but in a sense… it’s not “integrated” with your workout details.

Moreover, since the predictive model works off future planned workouts, to get an accurate picture of where your performance will be in the months leading up to your race, you’ll need to add those planned workouts. And probably edit and tweak them as your plan progresses to reality. We’ve got rich features for adding planned workouts in the calendar – drag n drop, templates, repeating workouts – it made perfect sense to add an integrated training load chart.

Showing training load metrics

To show training load metrics in your calendar, go to the monthly view, click the “Customize” button, and drag any of the metrics to the top of the list: Effort, Fitness, Fatigue, or Performance.

Keen readers will note that this is the first time I’ve mentioned Effort. The training load model has three outputs and one primary input: Effort. So while you’re looking at the predicted values, you probably also want to see the total effort for each period. We won’t cover the details of effort in this post; think of it as a combination of workout duration and intensity, and if you want more details go read that 3-part series linked above.

Training load data appears on the monthly view in several places, described below:

Weekly totals

Below each week in the calendar you’ll see a weekly summary showing the total effort during the week and the values for fitness, fatigue and performance at the end of the week. Recall that for historical periods, these are modeled from actual completed workouts, and for future periods these are modeled from planned workouts.

Sidebar: Month totals

In the calendar sidebar you’ll see the total effort or training load values as they will be at the end of the month.

Sidebar: Sport totals

You can also see your total effort for the month by sport type if you’ve chosen this in the customization dialog.

Sidebar: Trend chart

The final place you can see training load data is in the trend chart which appears below the breakout by sport type. To view the chart for a particular metric simply click the total block in the sidebar. Since effort is a total you’ll see the accumulated data in a bar chart, whereas training load metrics will be a daily trend chart. The current period is highlighted in a darker color.

Using the charts within the calendar

If you’ve started playing with the features described above you’ve discovered the integrated training load charts work just like summary totals for distance, time, etc. You can navigate through different periods – to the past, or future, and select to view charts over year, month, or week. You can bring up multiple browser tabs or windows and navigate to different seasons to compare past performance. For weekly and monthly views, your charts appear right there alongside the actual completed workouts or planned workouts.

Speaking of planned workouts – if you start editing your calendar you may notice that the training load charts are not just integrated, they’re interactive too. Add, edit or delete a planned workout and the view will be refreshed to show the new trend lines and predicted ending values. Lay out your future workouts and watch the predicted performance raise to where it needs to be on race day.

With integrated planning and interactive training load charts, the SportTracks calendar view is nothing less than pure awesome.

This is our third blog post on the new features we’ve just released in the calendar view. If you missed the other two be sure to check them out: Calendar Customization and Monitoring Training Load.

New tools to monitor planned vs. actual

If you’ve added planned workouts to your calendar we now show the training volume as a shaded bar in the sidebar trend chart. Depending on which metric you select from the totals above, you can see planned time, distance, effort or number of workouts displayed in the chart.

You’ll quickly notice that this makes monitoring your training plan performance much easier. At a glance you can see if you’re over training or under training compared to your plan.

The trend chart also shows your upcoming workout volume, and you can easily compare this visually to previous periods in this season, or past season. Switch between the month and week view to show totals by month or week. It’s fast and easy.

Planned workout volume details

Along with planned workout trend charts, you can also see upcoming planned workout totals. And for multi-sport athletes you can also see a breakout of planned totals by sport.

You’ll automatically see these planned workout totals on future periods (next week, next month, etc). For past periods we show completed workout totals. If you’re viewing the current week or month you have the option to switch between by clicking the header

Our integrated charting tools in the calendar make sticking to your plan easier than ever. Let’s get to work!

SportTracks recently announced an integration with the innovative Moxy Monitor wearable device, which enables you to track muscle oxygenation data. This integration is big news, because it creates an entirely new way to track, analyze, and improve your fitness. In this post, we’ll explain how muscle oxygenation data can help you as an athlete, and how you can load data from the Moxy Monitor into SportTracks.

For existing Moxy users, the SportTracks integration is a breakthrough, because while this device has had ample support for real-time monitoring via specific sports watches and mobile apps, it lacked a tool for post-workout analysis. For the first time, SportTracks enables you to view muscle oxygenation data on a graph, and analyze how it interacts with other elements of a workout, such as pace, heart rate, and more.

What can muscle oxygenation data tell me?

Understanding blood oxygenation levels can benefit athletes and coaches in several ways. It enables you to determine which of your physiological systems is limiting your athletic performance (cardiac, respiratory, or muscular). Once you determine what’s impeding your performance, you can then use the Moxy to target, train, and improve that system.

The device itself isn't much larger than a typical heart rate monitor module. You attach it to your body before a workout, preferably adhering it with tape in order to avoid exposing its sensor to light (to get the most accurate readings). The Moxy is waterproof, so it can be worn by competitive swimmers — a perfect match for the advanced swimming analytics provided by SportTracks.

How does the Moxy Monitor work?

Have you ever held the flashlight up to your hand and marveled at the sight of the light shining through in a somewhat eerie, blood-red hue? Of course you have! In a way, this is how the Moxy Monitor works. It uses infrared light diodes to detect changes in the color of your blood, which is indicative of its oxygen content.

How to use the Moxy Monitor with SportTracks

The following instructions require a Moxy Monitor, a PC (or a Mac running PC emulator software), and SportTracks Pro. When you track a workout with a Moxy Monitor, it's advisable to also track with a GPS device or a mobile sports app (so you will have more than just blood oxygenation data).

1. Plug the Moxy Monitor into a USB port on your computer.
2. Open the Moxy PC application on your computer, and download the data from the connected Moxy Monitor to the destination of your choice (a specific folder on your hard drive, for example).
3. You now need to import the data you just downloaded from the Moxy Monitor, and import it into the desktop version of SportTracks. Click the "Import" button and navigate to the location where you saved the Moxy Monitor .FIT file, and click "Next".
4. In the dialog box that opens, select the “Update existing activity” button, then in the “Activity to update” menu, select the specific activity that you want to import the Moxy Monitor data into. Also be sure to select “No” from the “Adjust data start times” options.
5. Click “Finish.”

Now you will be able to see the Moxy Monitor data alongside your other workout metrics when you click the “Select more charts” icon in the Pace/Time screen, and select SmO2 and Thb charts.

Once your Moxy data is loaded into your logbook, save your logbook and let it sync to your web-based account at SportTracks.mobi. Now you can share your workouts with your coach or athletes. The SmO2 and Thb charts can be selected from the chart metric option to overlay with heart rate, pace, etc.

Instructions for performing this task with Garmin watch be found in this video.

More recent Garmin watches like the Fenix 3, Vivoactive, Forerunner 920XT, and Epix feature the ability to display Moxy data in real time as you're working out (using separately available Garmin Connect IQ apps). However, these watches are not required to record your blood oxygenation data with a Moxy Monitor and then upload into SportTracks for analysis.

Sounds good. How do I get one?

If you're interested in integrating this new device into your fitness routine, check out the Moxy Sensor Store. Happy hemoglobin tracking!

Top performing endurance athletes are very efficient. They produce a large amount of output (in the form of forward speed or power) at a minimal aerobic cost. One important part of fitness performance training is to improve your efficiency. The more efficient you are, the better you're going to perform in races. Knowing how your aerobic efficiency is improving (or not...) is a key factor in planning your training and setting performance expectations for competition.

How can we measure improvement in aerobic efficiency?

Pros have access to performance assessment labs, and a team of professionals that can run the tests. Most of us aren't so fortunate. Luckily, with SportTracks all you need is a GPS or bike power meter and a heart rate monitor. With these two sensors we can calculate your aerobic efficiency (AE), allowing you to track and monitor improvement.

Aerobic efficiency is a new metric we display in two places:

1. On the workout detail page in the top "total blocks" you'll find aerobic efficiency located in the heart rate block. Click or tap the block to cycle to the aerobic efficiency metric.

2. On the workouts list page you can add the new aerobic efficiency column to monitor changes across a season (or years) for a particular sport and type of workout.

Aerobic efficiency theory and practice

The theory behind aerobic efficiency is simple: it measures the ratio of intensity to effort. For running, intensity is indicated by your pace: higher pace = higher intensity. For cycling intensity comes from your watts: higher watts = higher intensity.

In all sports the effort in this calculation is measured by your average heart rate. We know from basic physiology that as your intensity increases your heart rate must also increase - muscles require more oxygen supplied by your heart. On the other hand, a more efficient athlete will be able to maintain a higher intensity with lower effort, resulting in a higher AE ratio.

Effective training will show a visible improvement in aerobic efficiency. Conversely, if over a season you see that your workouts with consistent intensity are requiring more effort (decreasing AE), it may indicate problems in aerobic endurance.

A few important notes when you're looking at trends in aerobic efficiency:

• Aerobic efficiency is best measured on longer, steady aerobic workouts (sub lactate/anaerobic threshold). AE numbers for interval workouts may not be relevant.
• Because intensity is measured by speed or power, different sports will have different AE numbers. Be sure to filter your workout list by sport and workout type (using the text filter).
• As much as possible you should compare AE numbers on similar courses (terrain, road surface) in similar conditions (weather, nutrition, sleep/fatigue) since these things will effect both the intensity and effort.
• There is no absolute AE number you can use to compare performance across athletes. Each athlete will have different numbers, and improvements should be recognized as relative changes in the number for an individual athlete.

Training tips

Endurance training guru Joe Friel recommends doing regular aerobic threshold workouts as a way to assess efficiency changes. Basically this is a standard duration run/ride (say, 30 minutes) at 28-32 BPM below LT HR.

Once you've completed your workout, add a tag to the notes such as "#AETest". You can now use the text filter on the workouts page to list only those workouts with "#AETest" for a particular sport. Make sure you've added the aerobic efficiency column and sort the list by date. If fitness is improving, you should see your AE number go up over weeks or a season.

Doing these tests periodically and using the aerobic efficiency metric in SportTracks can be helpful if you're not able to find the time (or money) to go to a proper performance assessment lab.

If you only have a passing interest in endurance cycling, you probably have heard of power-based training. It’s an innovation that has revolutionized the cycling world. In this article, we cover the fundamentals, and show you how to leverage the tools in SportTracks to fully optimize your efforts.

What is power-based training?

Power-based training is a type of cycling training that is reliant on a piece of equipment called a “power meter,” which must be installed on the bicycle. A power meter is exactly what it sounds like: It’s a device (or a system of sensors) that accurately measure how much power you generate as you push the pedals. This measurement isn’t impacted by high or low gears. A properly-calibrated power meter gives you accurate, actionable information whether you’re spinning or mashing up a hill.

Your effort is measured in “watts.” What makes power meters so appealing is how your wattage numbers can be used to accurately train and improve your fitness as a cyclist. Power meters can help you strategically compete in races, too. In short, when you dedicate yourself to power-based training, you will see results. That's why it’s so popular, and genuinely revolutionary to the sport.

Many athletes and coaches are so enthusiastic about power-based training that they strongly recommend prioritizing the purchase of a power meter when budgeting for a bike. The general idea is that you’re much better off using a decent bike with a power meter, as opposed to using an amazing bike without one. Don’t sacrifice your power meter in favor of other high-quality components. If you understand how much technology can help you improve as an athlete, a power meter is a must.

What is Critical Power?

Similar to an athlete’s Lactate Threshold Heart Rate, Critical Power enables you to determine the highest average effort you can maintain for a specific period of time. It empowers you to accurately understand the average wattage you are capable of sustaining, without blowing up and burning out.

A runner who utilizes zone training knows if they exceed their LTHR, they are going to over exert themselves and slow down — finishing with a worse overall time. Critical Power works the same way for cyclists, with the additional benefit of having data that's far more accurate.

One downside to heart rate zone training is its accuracy. Outside factors can influence and skew heart rate data. For example, caffeine intake can impact heart rate data. A power meter isn’t swayed by outside forces. You can look at your wattage immediately when you start riding and pace yourself accurately all the way to the finish — and trust that the data is accurate, regardless of the amount of espresso you slurped down.

What's the diffrence between Critical Power and FTP?

Functional Threshold Power (FTP), a measurement popularized by Dr. Andrew Coggan, is the maximum sustainable power output you can hold for one hour. Critical Power (which is often abreviated to CP) is used to measure various intervals of time. CP60 is the Critical Power average for 60 minutes. CP60 is essentially the same thing as FTP.

Determining the maximum effort you can sustain for one hour on a bike is a demanding task. Shorter tests are often used to determine Critical Power, to avoid completely exhausting a cyclist in the middle of training. You can discern the same information that you would get from a one-hour FTP or CP60 test with shorter CP30 or CP20 tests, and a little math. More on this later in the article... 

How to determine Critical Power

A bike outfitted with a power meter is required for Critical Power tests. It may be more practical to use a bike on an indoor trainer, as the test requires you to ride for a long period of time without stopping.

You should also have a device to record your workout. Bike computers are often used in conjunction with power meters. They’re usually mounted to the stem, and feature a top-facing screen that displays wattage and other information.

Some GPS watches can be used to monitor and record data from a power meter (such as the Garmin 920XT). You can even use a smartphone as a bike computer, as long as it has the required sensors to receive ANT+ and/or Bluetooth data (depending on what kind of power meter you’re using). It’s also useful to record your heart rate data during this test, so wear a HRM if you have one.

The test

Make sure you have fresh legs and are properly hydrated before, during, and after the test (consider having some cool chocolate milk to chug down when you're finished). If you’re conducting the test indoors on a trainer, make sure you have towels and a sufficiently powerful fan to avoid overheating.

There are several ways to conduct these tests. For a CP20 test, a 15-minute easy warmup ride is usually recommended to get started. From there, you begin a series of four or five high-intensity one-minute interval drills, followed by three minutes of easy riding. Next, build up to a strong pace and go as hard as you can for twenty minutes, non-stop. The average wattage from the 20 minute stretch multiplied by .95 is your FTP, or, CP60 score. Why do you multiply at the end? To compensate for the amount of effort you would expend in a 60-minute test. You have a lot more energy to burn in a 20 minute test as opposed to a 60-minute test, so the math compensates for this.

As you train and improve your fitness, your numbers should improve as well. Even though the tests are exhausting, you should execute them every six weeks or so, to be certain your numbers are consistent with your current fitness level.

When you execute Critical Power tests, you can then calculate your “body weight to power ratio.” This ratio enables you to accurately compare how your performance stacks up against other cyclists. It's a vital tool for cycling teams and coaches. There are several free tools available online that can help you calculate your body weight ratio. If you enter your current weight into SportTracks (or if you do this automatically with a synced smart scale), SportTracks will calculate this for you.

Using SportTracks for performance analysis

SportTracks enables you to view power zone data on a graph, and to overlay other metrics from the workout for a deeper, more actionable understanding of your fitness. Most power meters also measure cycling cadence. In SportTracks, you can easily overlay your cadence chart over your power plots, to see how they interrelate. It's also helpful to overlay your power with pace, heart rate, and the grade charts from your workouts.

SportTracks also features extensive segment analysis, which utilizes automatic hill climb detection. You can view each hill segment individually, which features a section that displays your critical power for the segment and the overall ride.

The Personal Records section of SportTracks enables you to filter the view by a date range. You can include the "best efforts all rides" critical power chart, and then filter by date range. This will give you an accurate picture of your power performance history.

The entry-level price for power meters has dropped significantly in the past few years. They are still expensive, but, if you're serious about cycling, this could potentially be one of the most important parts of your bike. With the barrier of entry dropping, it's a great time to start training with power, and take your performance to new heights.

Today RunGap - a workout data manager for iOS - has announced sync integration with SportTracks.

If you're a Polar user this is particularly exiting as RunGap syncs with the Polar Flow website. Using RunGap Polar users can now get their data into SportTracks for advanced analysis. RunGap also supports many other popular platforms such as Nike+, Adidas, and Magellan.

Connecting from RunGap to SportTracks

To connect RunGap to your SportTracks account:

1. Select "Accounts & Settings" from the upper left menu in RunGap.
2. Select "SportTracks."
3. Tap "Connect".
4. Enter your username and password and authorize RunGap to access your SportTracks account.

RunGap will now connect securely to your SportTracks account.

Sharing your activities on SportTracks

You can upload a single activity directly to SportTracks by opening it from the "Activities" list, tapping the "..." button in the upper right corner and choosing "Share." This will bring up a page where you can choose to share the activity to on or more of the most popular services including SportTracks along with an optional message. The activity will then be uploaded to SportTracks and you will hear a "swoosh" sound when the upload is complete. If the activity already exists on SportTracks, only the title and activity type is updated.

Similarly, you can upload all your activities directly to SportTracks by choosing "Share & Export" from the upper left menu and then "SportTracks." RunGap will then upload all activities missing on SportTracks and update the titles and activity types for the rest. This may take a while the very first time, but RunGap will automatically skip previously uploaded activities which have not been modified and therefore subsequent exports will complete much faster.

Please note that the in-app "Swag Bag" update is required in order to share activities directly to SportTracks.

The SportTracks partner list keeps growing...

RunGap joins a large and growing list of partner devices, smartphone apps, websites and trainer software that integrate and sync directly with SportTracks. We know your time is important and we aim to make data tracking as convenient as possible, so you can focus on your fitness.

For a complete list of compatible solutions visit our Partners page.

We've got great news for cyclists who use PeriPedal indoor training software: You can now enable Auto-Sync between the two programs — so when you complete a ride, your workout data will automatically upload to SportTracks. This is useful for gaining actionable insight by analyzing the details of individual PeriPedal workouts, and for understanding how these efforts impact your overall fitness, tapering strategies, and Training Load.

PeriPedal is a powerful, yet easy-to-use software application for athletes who utilize indoor trainers (which are also referred to as "Turbos" in other parts of the world). It syncs via ANT+ and displays live stats on your computer as you turn the crank (PeriPedal is only compatible with Windows). It's a budget-friendly solution for monitoring your Power, Heart Rate, Speed, Cadence, and more while you work out indoors on a bike.

If you have an indoor trainer but lack a power meter, PeriPedal can act as a virtual power meter (if you're unfamiliar with power-based training in cycling, you can learn about it in our Critical Power fundamentals post). PeriPedal also comes with structured workouts, training plans, and many other useful features, such as a media viewer that can pause a Netflix stream when you get off the bike, and automatically unpause it when you return and start pedaling again. Perfect for binge suffering!

How to set it up

In order to take advantage of this partnership, you need to enable the connection between SportTracks and PeriPedal. This requires an account on both platforms. If you're not yet a SportTracks user, you can easily sign up for a 45-day free trial to test this out. There are no obligations, and you won't be charged at the end of the trial.

1. In PeriPedal, click on "Edit Profiles" and scroll down to "SportTracks Settings." Click the button labeled "Connect with SportTracks."
2. Go ahead and turn off "Upload Workouts to TrainingPeaks." You won't be needing that any longer. ;)
3. Log into SportTracks, and authorize PeriPedal to access your account by clicking on the "My Account" link in the upper right corner of the SportTracks interface.
4. Click on "Sharing," and then click the "Connect" button.
5. Select the PeriPedal option from the menu.

That's it! This integration will add a new dimention of utility to the workout data that's generated from your PeriPedal sessions. Moxy Monitor users will be especially pleased because both PeriPedal and SportTracks feature blood oxygenation data integration.

Many ingredients are required to train for a marathon, and two of the bigger ones are willpower and ambition. While you can never have too much willpower, it is possible to overdo it with excess ambition. How can it get the best of you? When training for a 26.2 mile effort, you need to have a good idea of what your pace should be for the majority of the course. If you take off like a bolt of lightning and leave your normal pace behind in the dust, you can run out of gas long before you get anywhere near the finish line.

Without a doubt, pacing plays a major role in both marathon training and in the race itself. In this article, we go over the nuts and bolts of pace, and offer advice for finding the ideal marathon goal pace to suit your personal level of fitness.

Step 1: Nail the basics

Let’s review the basics of pace, so beginners get all of the information they need, and so experienced runners can confirm what they may already know. Pace is the amount of time it takes you to complete a mile or a kilometer. In SportTracks, pace is split up into three separate stats to give you a broader understanding of your fitness:

• Pace
• Max Pace
• Level Pace

The first one, Pace, is your average pace from the entire workout. Speeding up, slowing down, and taking breaks all impact this number. The second, Max Pace, is the fastest pace you recorded during your run. The last one, Level Pace, is a little more involved. This number gives you a theoretical idea of how fast you would have run if there had been no hills in the course. In fitness training, Level Pace is also often referred to as Grade Adjusted Pace (GAP).

Step 2: Track and monitor

When you begin training, it’s important to keep track of your pace as you’re running. To do so, using a GPS sports watch or a fitness tracking app is strongly recommended. It won’t take you long to find a comfortable pace for longer runs. As your training intensifies and the distances increase, knowing how fast of a pace you can sustain for long periods of time becomes crucially important.

Running a sub two-hour marathon is the ultimate goal of every endurance runner, but for most of us, it’s just good fodder for daydreaming.

Step 3: Set a time goal, and use pace to train for it

Running a sub two-hour marathon is the ultimate goal of every endurance runner, but for most of us, it’s just good fodder for daydreaming. Therefore, it’s advisable to set a realistic marathon time goal for yourself based on your current fitness. A free online running pace calculator can help you determine a good marathon time for yourself. The RunnerSpace calculator is one we recommend for its simplicity.

In order to properly use a running pace calculator, you need to determine the appropriate Distance and Time to enter into it. You need stats from a recent race (or a race-like training run), or a recent PR. The idea is to enter your strongest recent effort near the target distance (for example: one that isn't over two years old), so the calculator can estimate your best possible marathon time based on your ability.

Here's how to determine the Distance and Time to enter into a running calculator:

1) Go to the Personal Records section of SportTracks

2) In the right corner, filter the sports type to display "Running"

3) Check out your records. If you have a recent PR, use it for the calculator. If not...

4) Click on "All dates" in the upper right corner, and filter by the current year 

5) If you still can't find an applicable workout, filter the dates again by the previous year

6) In the example above, the athlete ran a 24:03 5K as a part of an 8K race. This is the most applicable data we've found yet, but let's look a little more, just to be thorough.

7) Go to the Workouts page in SportTracks

8) Click the "Search By" box, select "Sport" from the menu, and click "Running"

9) Click the "Search By" box again, select "Text" from the menu, type "Race" and hit Enter

10) Sort the Distances by clicking on that column

11) Looking at the workout history, we confirm that the 24:03 5K is the most recent data

12) For this athlete, we enter a Distance of 5K and a Time of 24:03 into the RunnerSpace calculator

13) In the results, we scroll to the second to last row. The suggested average marathon time for this athlete is 3:54

Once you determine your time goal, you can establish a focused training plan leading all the way to race day. As you work to get there, understanding your pace is key. How fast you are as a long-distance runner should become more and more obvious as you train. Similar to your Lactate Threshold Heart Rate, you will begin to understand the thresholds of your pacing.

Step 4: Listen to your body and live in the moment

We all want to run the fastest race possible, but when we’re talking about a full marathon, what gets you to the finish line the fastest is how smartly you train, how carefully you pace yourself, and how strategic you are with your available energy.

If you check your pace early in the race and it’s much faster than normal, you need to be careful. Runners often pick up extra energy from being in an actual competition — and it can work to your advantage to go with it and use this energy for a faster run. But, if you still have a great distance to cover and you’re pushing too hard, you’re in danger of overdoing it, slowing down, walking or even dropping out.

The most common advice is to aim for a negative split in a race, meaning that you run more conservatively for the first half and faster for the second. This can make for a more enjoyable racing experience, because by strategically leveraging your energy reserves, you get to eventually pass many of the lightning bolts who darted off at the start and tuckered out sometime later.

But, who knows? Maybe the most common advice isn’t what suits you best. Either way, the key here is to use pacing and tracking to your advantage. Have a plan for race day, and strike a balance between how you’re feeling in the moment, and what you know you’re capable of from training.

Step 5: Get to work

The fresher your data is, the more accurate your pace and time goals can be. Hop into your Calendar in SportTracks and start planning some training runs that will give you clear idea of what you’re capable of. Hurry up, your next PR is waiting for you at the finish line with a free banana and a couple pints of beer.

This week we’re announcing several new features on the calendar page, two of which are explained in this post:

• A customization option lets you choose what data is visible
• Availability of five new metrics (including training load)

Read on for details of these exciting new features.

Data customization

You can now customize the data you want to see in your yearly, monthly and weekly views by clicking the “Customize” button in the upper right corner of the page.

When the customize dialog appears you’ll see two options:

• Totals
  Select which data you want to appear in the sidebar total blocks and any other places on the page where totals are summarized such as monthly and weekly totals within the calendar.
• Sport totals
  Select which data you want to see for totals summarized by sport. You can also choose whether you want to see “just the numbers” or a pie visualization.

For each of these options you can select the visible data by dragging the item into one of the first four spots. You can also choose the order by rearranging the top-four items.

Note that in some screen resolutions (tablet portrait/landscape and smartphone) certain data fields are hidden to ensure the calendar space is fully visible. You can customize exactly which you want to see by dragging around the items until the layout is exactly like you want.

New data metrics

With the ability to customize the data fields in the calendar, we’ve also added five new metrics:

• Elevation gain
  The total elevation gained during the period. Available as a period total or per-sport summary total.
• Effort
  The total effort put out during the period. Available as a period total or per-sport summary total.
• Performance
  Your performance level at the end of the period, including any future planned but uncompleted workouts, determined by the training load model.
• Fitness
  Your fitness level at the end of the period.
• Fatigue
  Your fatigue level at the end of the period.

Of course, you can also select from the previous metrics: Workout count, Distance, Time, and Calories.

For any of these metrics, click the totals block in the sidebar to view the trend chart for the metric. Metrics that are calculated as a total for the period are shown as a bar chart; the three training load metrics show the relevant daily chart for the trend period. The current period is highlighted in a darker color while past and future periods are shown in a lighter color.

You can also quickly navigate to a new period by clicking the segment in the chart. This makes jumping forward or backward as easy as one click.

Multi-period analysis

One final tip: You can perform analysis of your workout volume, training, and performance over multiple periods by using your browser’s “Open in New Tab” or “Open in New Window” option to bring up more than one view of different parts of your history. If you’ve got a large desktop display, this is a great way to plan future workout training plans while looking at data from past seasons.

One of our favorite techniques is to bring up today’s monthly view in one browser window, and last year’s calendar in another, then tile the windows side-by-side. You can plan your training session in the monthly browser, while referring to the yearly view next to it.

If you read our previous post on the new calendar customization features you probably also noticed the new option to show training load data. In this post we’re going to explain how and why you would want to see training load metrics within the calendar view.

Remind me what training load is again?

Training load is a mathematical model which crunches through your workout history and shows you three metrics over a time-based chart:

• Fitness: How trained your body is
• Fatigue: How tired your body is
• Performance: The difference between your fitness and fatigue

You can read much, much more about training load in our three part series, starting with Part 1: Science, History and Application. The TL;DR version is:

The Training Load model predicts your overall performance level at a point in time.

For historical time periods, the training load model is going to run off your actual, completed workouts – measuring the intensity of every second of your workout. For future time periods, the model will use any workouts you’ve planned, with an estimate of the duration and intensity.

A new, integrated view

Many solutions, including SportTracks, present training load data using a “One Big Chart” approach. In SportTracks you’ll find the Performance and combined Fitness/Fatigue charts on the Health page. These give you a quick holistic overview of your current body state, as well as historical trend lines, but are lacking context. You can graphically explore the charts to look at details for a particular time span, but in a sense… it’s not “integrated” with your workout details.

Moreover, since the predictive model works off future planned workouts, to get an accurate picture of where your performance will be in the months leading up to your race, you’ll need to add those planned workouts. And probably edit and tweak them as your plan progresses to reality. We’ve got rich features for adding planned workouts in the calendar – drag n drop, templates, repeating workouts – it made perfect sense to add an integrated training load chart.

Showing training load metrics

To show training load metrics in your calendar, go to the monthly view, click the “Customize” button, and drag any of the metrics to the top of the list: Effort, Fitness, Fatigue, or Performance.

Keen readers will note that this is the first time I’ve mentioned Effort. The training load model has three outputs and one primary input: Effort. So while you’re looking at the predicted values, you probably also want to see the total effort for each period. We won’t cover the details of effort in this post; think of it as a combination of workout duration and intensity, and if you want more details go read that 3-part series linked above.

Training load data appears on the monthly view in several places, described below:

Weekly totals

Below each week in the calendar you’ll see a weekly summary showing the total effort during the week and the values for fitness, fatigue and performance at the end of the week. Recall that for historical periods, these are modeled from actual completed workouts, and for future periods these are modeled from planned workouts.

Sidebar: Month totals

In the calendar sidebar you’ll see the total effort or training load values as they will be at the end of the month.

Sidebar: Sport totals

You can also see your total effort for the month by sport type if you’ve chosen this in the customization dialog.

Sidebar: Trend chart

The final place you can see training load data is in the trend chart which appears below the breakout by sport type. To view the chart for a particular metric simply click the total block in the sidebar. Since effort is a total you’ll see the accumulated data in a bar chart, whereas training load metrics will be a daily trend chart. The current period is highlighted in a darker color.

Using the charts within the calendar

If you’ve started playing with the features described above you’ve discovered the integrated training load charts work just like summary totals for distance, time, etc. You can navigate through different periods – to the past, or future, and select to view charts over year, month, or week. You can bring up multiple browser tabs or windows and navigate to different seasons to compare past performance. For weekly and monthly views, your charts appear right there alongside the actual completed workouts or planned workouts.

Speaking of planned workouts – if you start editing your calendar you may notice that the training load charts are not just integrated, they’re interactive too. Add, edit or delete a planned workout and the view will be refreshed to show the new trend lines and predicted ending values. Lay out your future workouts and watch the predicted performance raise to where it needs to be on race day.

With integrated planning and interactive training load charts, the SportTracks calendar view is nothing less than pure awesome.

This is our third blog post on the new features we’ve just released in the calendar view. If you missed the other two be sure to check them out: Calendar Customization and Monitoring Training Load.

New tools to monitor planned vs. actual

If you’ve added planned workouts to your calendar we now show the training volume as a shaded bar in the sidebar trend chart. Depending on which metric you select from the totals above, you can see planned time, distance, effort or number of workouts displayed in the chart.

You’ll quickly notice that this makes monitoring your training plan performance much easier. At a glance you can see if you’re over training or under training compared to your plan.

The trend chart also shows your upcoming workout volume, and you can easily compare this visually to previous periods in this season, or past season. Switch between the month and week view to show totals by month or week. It’s fast and easy.

Planned workout volume details

Along with planned workout trend charts, you can also see upcoming planned workout totals. And for multi-sport athletes you can also see a breakout of planned totals by sport.

You’ll automatically see these planned workout totals on future periods (next week, next month, etc). For past periods we show completed workout totals. If you’re viewing the current week or month you have the option to switch between by clicking the header

Our integrated charting tools in the calendar make sticking to your plan easier than ever. Let’s get to work!

Greetings, SportsTrackers! Ellen here, from the social media department! Fun fact about me: When I'm not trolling the Twitter feeds for interesting articles and blog posts for your reading enjoyment, I work full-time at an awesome, locally-owned running specialty store. One of the most frequently asked questions I hear in my day-to-day work life is this: "How do I know when it's time to replace my running shoes?"

The usage you get out of your running shoes is a very personal and individual thing that's contingent on a variety of factors: What model of shoes you have, your gait tendencies, your body weight, whether you reserve your shoes specifically for running or use them for other activities, the surfaces you run on, etc.

Your body will tell you if your shoe's cushioning system is not doing its job...

Here are a few general rules of thumb that we (the independent running retailers of the world) adhere to when it's time to make the call on a fresh pair of kicks. Enjoy!

1) Replace your running shoes every 300 to 500 miles (500 to 800 kilometers)

This includes running miles, walking the dog miles, going the grocery store miles, boot camp miles, and so on. Anytime you are wearing your shoes you are counting down towards their 300 to 500 mile expiration date. Also, if you are using a lighter-weight, minimal shoe, you may see them start to break down towards the lower end of that range (or maybe even at a lower mileage than that). Whereas a more robust, highly-cushioned shoe may err closer to the 500 mile end of the range. Remember, these are just generalizations. Plenty of exceptions may apply.

If you're tracking your shoes with SportTracks, knowing their current status is as simple as visiting your Gear page. If you're not tracking your shoes, you can add them to your SportTracks account now and retroactively assign them to completed workouts (instructions for this are provided at the end of this article).

2) Beware of permanent mid-sole creasing!

This probably means the cushioning system of your shoe has seen better days. Each time you take a step, you compress the foam on the mid-sole of your shoe, creating creases in it. This is normal and as long as the cushioning system isn't broken down, they should decompress overnight when your shoes are off. When you reach the point where the creases are no longer decompressing, chances are it's time for a fresh pair.

3) How do your treads look?

The colored, blown rubber on the bottom of your shoe is its most durable component. It protects the more vulnerable mid-sole, which is where the cushioning system of your shoe is housed. If you're wearing the blown-rubber layer away, chances are you've worn out your cushioning system as well.

4) How do your sneakers smell?

Just kidding! Seriously... keep your nose out of there!

5) Have you been using your shoes consistently for over a year? Do your feet hurt?

Your body will tell you if your shoe's cushioning system is not doing its job as well as it once did. If you have minor aches and pains in your feet and ankles, and if you've been putting miles on your shoes for one year or longer, it's probably time to switch it up.

Tracking your shoes with SportTracks

One of the many cool features of SportTracks is the ability to track the life of your running shoes (and other gear such as bike parts, swimming goggles, etc.). This completely removes the guesswork from determining the life of your equipment. SportTracks will even automatically add a specific pair of shoes every time you run.

Here's how to do it:

1. Log into SportTracks and go to the Gear page.
2. Click Add gear in the right corner of the screen.
3. Enter the Brand, Model, and Type of shoes.
4. Upload a picture of the shoes (optional), and add other details like "Purchase date," etc. You can also enter in the expected life of the item in Distance, Hours, or Months.
5. In the Import settings section, you can tell SportTracks to automatically add these shoes everytime you run by clicking Add sport and selecting Running. You can also select the three dots (···) to tag a sub-category, such as Trail Running.
6. Click Save.

Adding gear isn't limited to new purchases. You can add older equipment, and then quickly edit your past workouts in bulk to include them. To accompish this, complete the same steps above to add your gear, then do the following:

1. Go to your Workouts page in SportTracks.
2. Filter the dates to include the span of time that you've been using the equipment.
3. Filter by sport so you only see activites that apply to the piece of gear that you've added.
4. Click Select in the upper right corner of the screen.
5. Click the check box for every past workout that you want to add the equipment to.
6. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the screen.
7. Select the Gear tab in the "Edit workouts" window, and click the Add radio button.
8. Click the box of the gear that you added, and click the Save button.

Boom! The gear will be added to every past workout you checked off. You will now be able to see its usage stats in your Gear page!

So there you have it. Now you know how to determine if your current running shoes are dead, and you have a way to automatically track all of the gear you own. Plus, you can completely keep your nostrils out of the process. ;)

This week we finally release something that has been cooking in development for the past month: a complete, top-to-bottom rewrite of our Analysis page. We’re super excited about this smashing new set of features!

Because this is such a large feature update, we’ve broken this out into three blog posts:

• The release announcement (you’re reading right now… good job)
• Analysis report customization and management
• New metrics and charting details

If you want all the details, read these three blog posts and comments entirely. If you want to just jump in and play, head over to your Analysis page and start clicking around.

Release notes

The following list outlines all the features in the new analysis page update:

Streamlined reports management

• Ad-hoc exploration preferences are stored immediately per browser
• Save as many reports as you like
• Clone any report to a new saved report
• Manage reports (rename, delete)
• Bookmark report URL

Allow full customization of view

• Unlimited number of widget rows
• Up to six widget columns with 11 layouts
• Full customization of every widget panel (chart type and options)
• Five widget sizes from tiny to huge

A bunch of new metrics

• Elevation gain
• Average heart rate
• Average cadence
• Average power
• nPower
• iFactor
• Power variability
• Aerobic efficiency
• Average (time | distance | workout count) per (week | month | year)

Some new charts

• Summary value: A single summarized value
• Bubble grid: Grouped row/column layout with metric as bubble size and color
• Scatter plot: X/Y scatter plot of any metrics with series grouping options
• Bar charts: Metrics grouped by start time (day, week, month, year)
• Five chart sizes from tiny to huge

The roadmap ahead

Unfortunately, we couldn’t cover everything we wanted in four weeks, but the rewrite has set the foundation for some pretty cool stuff we’ll consider in the future based on your ongoing feedback:

• Allow filtering by text match (sport, sub-sport, name, location, notes, tags, comments)
• New widget: “Best” single workout record (fastest, most distance per week/month, most elevation)
• Line chart: Series by year
• Line chart: Series by previous period
• Line chart: Trailing average by arbitrary period size and number (eg 30 days, 4 weeks, etc.)
• Line chart: Cumulative totals (time, distance, workouts)
• Line chart: Stack by sport, distance or time bin
• Bar chart: Stack by sport, distance or time bin
• Stacked bar and line fill charts by time in heart rate zone
• Allow rearranging the order of reports
• Allow report layouts to be set as public and shared with notes & tags
• Allow searching/browsing the public report gallery

Got an idea not listed here? Let us know in the comments, or submit it at our Idea Page!

That's all for now. ~Enjoy

When you first visit the Analysis page you’ll see a simple layout with some basic information on your workout history for the last 12 weeks. As you will learn here, this is only the beginning of the kinds of analysis reports you can do in SportTracks!

Analysis view basics

The analysis view is made up of three sections listed from top to bottom:

• Saved report selection and page buttons
• Report data filtering/search
• Report chart/data “widget” panels

We’re going to start at the bottom by customizing one of your existing widget panels.

Customizing a widget panel

Every widget panel in your analysis report can be customized.

With most charts you can quickly select different data and grouping options by clicking the labels directly in the chart. For example, to show a daily line chart of your total workout count, click the panel header to select “Workouts”…

…then click the word "Week" at the bottom of that widget and select “Start > Day”

If you want to make more advanced customizations to a panel such as selecting a different chart type, or chart size and grouping, click the customize button in the panel header:

Take some time to explore the options of the different charts in the customize page, or read the detailed walk through in the (link: analysis charting and metric options) blog post.

Customizing the report layout

To add new widget panels click the page customize button at the top right corner of the page:

The page customize dialog lets you add and remove widget panel rows and change the number and arrangement of columns. There is no limit to the number of rows you can have in a report and each row can have one to six columns in 11 different layout styles. The customization features should be self-explanatory:

Existing widget panel options are preserved as best we can; new rows/columns will be empty until you select the chart options for the panel.

Filtering report data

Once you’ve organized a report layout to your meet your needs you probably want to pick which workouts are showing in the report. There are two ways you can do this: with the “Search by” button or by selecting ranges directly in the charts.

For example to show only running workouts click the “Search by” button and select “Sport”, then click the running icon:

To change a filter, click the named filter and select a different option. Some filters like date, distance and time have range sliders you can use. To clear a filter, click the “X” button in the named filter.

When you’ve selected the workouts you want to display, you can click the currently active named filter to hide the selection panel and save some vertical space.

Filtering report data by chart selection

Some charts such as the line, bar, and pie also let you filter your data by clicking data directly in the chart. For example add a pie chart grouped by sport, and click each slice to filter by that sport type. You can also select ranges of data by clicking and dragging. Watch how your charts are updated interactively!

Saving performance reports

Any customizations you make to the layout, chart options and data filtering will be automatically saved in your browser settings and restored when you return to the Analysis option.

If you find there is a report you keep coming back to, you may want to create a saved report. There is no limit to the number of reports you can save; create as many as you like.

Click the “Save new report” button to copy the currently viewed report to a new saved report. You can copy the default auto-save report or clone an existing report.

Once the report is saved you can select it from the list:

From the same menu you can also manage your reports to rename or delete them.

If you’re viewing a saved report and you make changes to the layout or filters a “Save changes” button appears by the report name. To revert to the saved report just refresh the page or select a different saved report and your changes will be discarded.

Finally you may notice when you view a saved report the browser URL changes to indicate the report. You can use this URL as a bookmark in your browser or on your mobile phone homepage to instantly jump to the selected report. It’s a powerful feature especially for coaches who want to see a particular athlete’s data.

Layout considerations

As you customize your report view, you’ll begin to notice that some widgets have different natural heights depending on how much data is visible. We won’t prevent you from making an ugly layout that wastes a lot of screen space:

So you’ll want to experiment with different widget types and sizes to optimize your layout:

If you’re using SportTracks on a variety of devices with different screen sizes (such as desktop vs. smartphone) you may even want to make device specific reports. This way you can have fewer columns on your mobile phone and still see the important data you care about. The image below shows the same data as above, tailored for a mobile phone vertical orientation:

You can combine this technique with the report URL to drop shortcuts on your phone homepage so your custom mobile reports are just one click away.

~Enjoy

The analysis page in SportTracks gives you powerful tools to understand your training history and performance. To get the most from this page you’ll need to understand the available charts and workout data described in this article.

Workout data basics

For the purposes of the analysis page, your workouts have two kinds of data:

• Categorization: Sport, Date (year, month, week, day), Distance and Time range
• Value metrics: Distance, Time, Speed, Pace, Avg Heartrate, … and more …

In general you can use categorization data for grouping, summarization and series options, while value metrics are used for charting the actual workout values. Makes sense, right?

We currently offer 16 value metrics listed below:

Basic Metrics

• Total workout count
• Average workout count
• Total distance
• Average distance
• Total time
• Average time

Performance Metrics

• Average speed
• Average pace
• Elevation gain
• Average heart rate
• Aerobic efficiency

Cycling Metrics

• Average cadence
• Average power
• nPower
• iFactor
• Power variability

Different display types allow different metrics (and categorization) as descried in detail below.

Summary value

The simplest display type is the “Summary value” which shows a single value in the panel:

The summary value type can display all value metrics. If you select average workouts, average time or average distance you can also select the summary per option, illustrated below:

The size option allows you to set the font size to scale with other charts in the row, or to adjust for mobile / desktop resolution.

Line chart

The line chart shows a single value metric over a time period based on the workout start date. You can choose to plot a point every year, month, week or day with the group by option. For metrics which are a total sum, the group metric will also affect how the data is totaled up.

The size option allows you to set the vertical height of the chart.

Bar chart

The bar chart shows a single value metric over time or grouped by the Sport, Time, Distance or Day of week category.

The size option allows you to set the vertical height of the chart.

Pie chart

The pie chart shows a total value metric grouped Sport, Time, Distance, Day of week, Month or Year.

The size option allows you to set the vertical height of the chart.

Scatter plot

The scatter plot allows you to select two values to display on the x and y axis to show relationship between them. You can also select a categorization series.

If you use a heart rate monitor or a cycling power meter the scatter plot can provide good insight of your performance related to different types of workouts.

The size option allows you to set the vertical height of the chart.

Bubble grid

The last chart is one we put in for testing but decided to release it because – why not!

The bubble grid is similar to a scatter plot but instead of showing value metric relationships you can explore categorization on two axis (rows and columns). The bubble color and size is determined by the value metric you choose.

Because the number of rows (and therefore, the panel row height) may be variable based on categorization, this is a weird one. You might want to put it at the bottom of your report in a row by itself.

~Enjoy

Hiring a coach is a proven way to dramatically enhance your athletic abilities, and having them coach you through SportTracks is an ideal way to train. Your coach can create a free SportTracks account that enables them to plan your training calendar, deeply analyze your performance, leave private or public notes on your workouts, and send you messages. SportTracks also lets you know if your coach reviewed your workouts or not, so you'll know they’re doing their job.

You can determine if your coach has an account by searching for them in SportTracks. If you find them, you can invite them to be your coach. If you don't, you can easily invite them to activate their free coaching account.

Here’s how to do it:

1) Go to your profile in the top right corner of the screen, and select “My account” from the menu.

2) In the tabs that appear on the left, select “Connections.”

3) Click the search button.

4) Type your coach’s email address in the search box and press enter.

5) If your coach appears in the search results below, skip down to Step 8. If no results are found, click the "Send Invites" button.

6) An invite window will appear with your coach's email address already filled in. You need to change the "How do you know these people?" field to "They are currently coaching me," and then click the Send button.

7) When your coach receives your invitation and accepts it, their free SportTracks coaching account will be active! They can start planning your training calendar, analyzing your workouts, and communicating with you through SportTracks. The remaining steps are only for people whose coach already had a SportTracks account. 

8) A “Connect” button can be found to the right of their name. Click it.

7) A window will appear with a drop down menu, giving you the option to connect with them as “My coach” or “Friend.” Select “My coach” and click the “Ok” button.

After you submit your request, the “Connect” button turns into a “Request sent” button. Your coach will receive an email informing them that you have requested to connect with them on SportTracks. They just need to visit the "Connections" page of their SportTracks account, and accept your request. That's it! 

Don't forget the Share button

If you just want to quickly send someone the details of a workout without having to go through the invitation process, you can always use the Share button in SportTracks.

Just select that button, choose "Email" from the menu, and enter the recipient's email address. Click the Share button in that window and your workout will be sent.

However you decide to work with a coach, we hope that the tools in SportTracks make your life a little easier, and help you fully realize your training goals.

Exercising with a fitness watch is radically different than exercising without one. The simple act of going out for a run, swim, or bike ride becomes a more dynamic experience where you gauge and interact with your activity in real time, and then deeply analyze your performance afterward. Instead of slugging it out in the dark, you become acutely aware of your capabilities, and you can better understand what you need to do to improve.

This series of articles was created to help get you started with your GPS sports watch — and to make sure you fully understand the benefits it provides.

Not only can your watch make you a better athlete, it makes the overall experience of training more interesting and fun. You’re not just working out, you’re drawing detailed maps of your journeys that you can share with friends, and you’re completely in tune with your pace, heart rate, distance, and time. Your watch acts as a major source of motivation to push a little harder and to go a little further.

Starting out

Whether you’re initiating a fitness routine for the first time or you’ve been training forever, the best way to get to know your new watch is to strap it on and work out. But, there are a couple of things you should accomplish before you head out the door:

1. It’s a good idea to fully charge the device soon after you take it out of the box.
2. As the watch charges, consider reading through the manual (which you may need to download from the internet).

Okay… most people completely ignore the manual, but there are a few important things you should understand about your watch. Chief among them is the act of establishing a satellite link.

It would be nice if GPS watches immediately synced with satellites the moment they powered up, but in order to avoid unnecessary battery drain this isn’t how it works. You need to initiate a workout mode on the watch and wait for it to find and establish a link with GPS satellites (it helps to be outdoors when doing this). The linking process can take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. When established, the watch will provide visual feedback, such as a satellite icon informing you that you’re ready to begin.

The satellite link is important because it enables the watch to record your location. If you start exercising before the link is established, the portion of your workout that elapsed before the link was made will be missing from the map data.

Your first workout

Now that you have a basic understanding of how your watch works, go ahead and start your first workout. If your watch doesn’t have a built-in heart rate monitor, be sure to put on a heart rate strap (if you have one) and pair it with the watch. Establish a satellite link, and press Start.

If you need to take walking breaks, do it. There is absolutely no shame in doing so.

Just enjoy yourself as you workout. Don’t worry about interfacing with the watch at all. Perhaps glance at it as you go, keeping track of elapsed time and distance. Speaking of which, you don't need to plan the length of your route in advance. Want to cover four kilometers? Go until you hit two kilometers on your watch, turn around and come home. If you need to take walking breaks, do it. There is absolutely no shame in doing so. Don't bother pausing the watch if you slow down. Enjoy the fresh air instead.

There is a world of stuff you can get into in the near future, such as using the watch for zone-based heart rate training, but for now, just get used to wearing it. At the end press Stop, and be sure to Save the workout before you turn it off.

Your first analysis

Now that you’ve recorded and saved a workout, you can analyze the data. Your watch should come with included software that displays your workout data on various charts and tables that take advantage of larger screens. The software may also enable you to plan a calendar, engage with other athletes, and track equipment (such as the milage on a pair of running shoes). These are all helpful features to have, but the central goal of the software that came with your watch is to keep you as a customer of that specific manufacturer’s hardware.

You may need to connect your watch to a computer, either with a supplied USB cable, or through a wireless connection (if your watch supports it). Once you’ve figured out how to upload your workout, spend some time exploring the software. Keep in mind that much of the power of fitness software comes into play when you have several workouts loaded, so you can cross analyze your efforts. This process is especially helpful when you’re training for an upcoming race.

Many athletes find that they’re not satisfied with the software that came with their watch and seek third-party options. SportTracks is a popular choice for this purpose, because it offers powerful (yet easy-to-use) analysis tools, innovative calendar planning tools, compatibility with all computers and mobile devices, and built-in coaching. It also automatically uploads workouts from Garmin, Suunto, and other major watch manufacturers. Plus, if you decide to try a different brand of watch in the future, all of your past workout data will be present and accessible in SportTracks alongside data from your new gear.

If signing up for a race was one of the motivating factors that drove you to get a GPS sports watch, you will appreciate the Training Load features in SportTracks, which is something you don't get with the free software that came with your watch. Training Load predicts your overall performance level based on previous and upcoming workouts in your calendar. Being able to accurately determine this is incredibly helpful, especially in the days, weeks, and months leading up to a race. It helps you put forth your best effort on race day, without unnecessarily overexerting or injuring yourself during training.

Taking the next steps

At this point your watch is functional, and you can track, save, and upload your workouts. Now you need to better understand how this stuff will impact your training. To this end, be sure to check out Part Two of this series, where I explain some of the more advanced functions of GPS sports watches, and how you can use them to fully optimize your training.

Oh, I forgot to mention... that watch looks fantastic on your arm. Seriously. You look great. ;)