i'm reading with some interest the hubbub over the coolrunning.com training log that used to be free and isn't any longer. active.com bought coolrunning about a year ago, and apparently the honeymoon, or grandfather period, or whatever, is over. either lots of folks are upset, or a few vocal folks are upset. in any case...

this causes me to wonder a few things.

1. is an online training log an important feature for a site like coolrunning?
2. would it be an important feature here?
3. how many of you would use it, and how many would not?
4. what are the features it ought to have?

in my mind's eye, i can see the following:

- it's set up sort of calendar style, and you log your swim/bike/run/lift/whatever workouts.
- perhaps it auto-calculates your "aerobic points" according to my scale or a consensus scale.
- all the fields are searchable in every way over any data range.
- graphs are auto-generated.

in other words, you could go back and look at your average aerobic points, per week, over a given date range, showing what quantity of work you did leading up to a really great performance. or you could just see what sort of run mileage you put in over that time. you could graph both your last 90 days of work versus another 90 days in your past. or just your swim yardage. whatever. manipulate the data however you want.

of course, that's just quantity, none of that touches on quality. and it doesn't touch on anything having to do with newer, alternative ways of judging quality or performance, such as power, as would be the case if one used cyclingpeaks or its equivalent. i don't know that we really want to venture into anything that hoity-toity.

if we're just talking training log, what other stuff would be useful?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman