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Athletes' training schedules

(closed account) says:
So I needed to draw up a new training schedule, after recently coming back to running after an injury. Previously I've used iCal for my training calendars, but I've never been keen on clogging up my increasingly cluttered calendar.

So, I thought - training sessions are tasks in a sense, they're things I need/want to do on a fairly regular basis; and they all have different characteristics; e.g. tempo runs, long runs, recovery runs, speedwork, cycling etc. So why not use Remember the Milk to schedule all of this? I look at my task list on a regular basis, more so than my calendar, as my life is more task orientated than events orientated; and it would be a good motivator to see my upcoming training plan in there as well.

So I set about starting a new RTM list specifically for training this morning. I created a new static list called "training" to file these tasks so they could be kept separate from my inbox where everything else resides.

I tagged each session with an "Area" tag of .training - this fits in with my current area tagging, e.g. .work, .finance, .family etc.

I am using a simple description of the session as a title, e.g. "Bushy Park lap; ~7mi" or "Long run; ~10mi" or "Cycle to work"

Then I tag them with a context relating to the activity, e.g. @run, @bike etc.

Finally I use a dedicated "training" tag whcih all use a prefix of †. This tag is used to depict the type of session I'll be doing; e.g. †tempo, †race, †commute, †long, †recovery


So I end up with something like this:





And my tag cloud looking like this:





I also created a smart list using the following search string:

list:Training AND dueWithin:"1 week of Sunday"

This gives me just the following week's training plan, to give me a quick view of what I've got coming up.

I think this could prove pretty useful, and make me more inclined to follow the schedule than I have been in the past.

It's not meant to give me any info on stats, mileage etc, I log all my runs on strands.com for that. This list will just allow me to draw up plans for the future and (hopefully!) stick to them.

Now, I'd better go for that tempo run! :)
Posted at 12:06pm on May 28, 2009
(closed account) says:
Great idea. My girlfriend likes to run marathons and would totally dig this. Also you could import the training list into iCal so you could actually have the best of both worlds.
Posted 14 years ago
(closed account) says:
You could indeed. And I think there'd be a real feeling of acomplishment coming home after a run and ticking a training session off as complete :)
Posted 14 years ago
(closed account) says:
Absolutely. Thanks again for the great tip.
Posted 14 years ago
(closed account) says:
Bushy Park lap; ~7mi, †tempo @run ? Check! :)
Posted 14 years ago
(closed account) says:
This is sweet. I've also created a smart list called Training Log, that uses the following search string:

status:completed AND list:"Training Plan"

This lists all my completed training sessions.

I've also created a task in the "Training Plan" static list, recurring every Saturday, called "Weekly Mileage: XXmi". I've set the priority to 1, so it stands out from the others. I've also set a tag of †totals, you'll see why later.

Then when Saturday evening comes, I just update the name to reflect my weekly total, e.g. "Weekly Mileage:15.33mi", set the task to completed, and it appears in my Training Log list so as well as individual sessions I can also see historic weekly totals.

Ends up looking like this:



You could tweak this to be monthly totals as well. Just add another task to recur every month. You could also create smart lists to view just the totals (using the †totals tag I mentioned previously), i.e. use this string:

status:completed AND list:"Training Plan" AND tag:†totals
Posted 14 years ago
(closed account) says:
Now all I need to do is reverse engineer the only Mac app that can upload training logs from my Suunto T3c watch (2peak's Butler app); and get it to automatically send a completed task to my RTM inbox, with the distance, time, avg. pace & avg. heartrate in the task title, and if I sync on a Saturday, send another task, adding up the total distance and total time for the previous week...

LOL! Me thinks this is beyond my capabilities. :) I reckon it's perfectly feasible though. In theory, at least.
Posted 14 years ago
(closed account) says:
I think the RTM guys should make a sister app - Remember The Miles. :)

Seriously, I think it could be amazing. A lot of the functionality is there already. Just needs a different layout to the db. A few extra tables for heart rate, mileage, time etc. Then a simple desktop app to pull the data from Garmin, Polar, Suunto watches, Nike+ etc. and sync it up to the website. The mappin tool is there already. Just needs to allow people to create routes. Maybe an iPhone app with GPS tracking? :)
Posted 14 years ago
mehardin says:
I love RTM , but.... Doesn't a spreadsheet work just as well, probably better for all of this training stuff? I mean, use RTM to remind me to get in my daily workout, but if I'm wanting to track miles, heart rate, time, all that stuff, I know a spreadsheet can do all the math for me. And if you want it in the cloud as I do, you can't beat a Google spreadsheet.
Posted 14 years ago
(closed account) says:
Yeah, true. This is good for creating a training plan more than it is for logging training sessions. But I was just playing around with different ideas, and letting my imagination get a bit carried away :) Some people may find it useful though. It's always nice to have things in a central place.
Posted 14 years ago
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