What's New
This section will help you keep up-to-date with what's been happening on the site. It's undergoing constant development, to improve the existing features, and to introduce new ones.
Week Ending 27th July 2007
Race Finder
This weeks major update has been a complete overhaul of the race database. Previously, the site offered
a simple month-by-month race listing, with races classified by county, and no way of filtering results
by distance of race, name of race etc. In short, it took a lot of reading to find suitable races, and the
counties system was a bit hit-and-miss, plagued by county name changes, and causing problems for people living
right on the edge of one county etc.
The new system includes all the basic search options seen on other sites, but goes further than a simple
listing. Each race is displayed as a marker on a map, zoomed in on the users
home location. Clicking on the markers provides basic information about the race, and a link to view
the full set of details. The user is also shown a text-based listing, which is handy for those who don't want
to click on each marker to see the race details, and also provides a route to the data for users with accessibility
issues. Thanks to the effort of the users, 84% of our races have now been pinned to the map. To aid this process,
the Race Finder also lists non-mapped races that match the users search criteria (name, race distance, date etc).
What's New
Created this page, to let people keep up-to-date with the daily changes on the site.
Club Directory
Updated the clubs main page to enable Fetchies to pinpoint their clubs on the map, for
a future "Find My Nearest Club"-type tool.
Smaller changes & Bug fixes
- Amended the training summary table to use "shortcodes" for different training types
Member of the Month
Interview with Cabletow.
Week Ending 20th July 2007
Calculators
Added some more simple calculators to Train > Calculators, including:
- Calculate equivalent race times, based on a given race time
- Calculate how many Fetch ranking points you'd score for a given race time
- Calculate some suitable training paces based on a desired race time. These calculations were also incorporated into a sidebar (my name for the boxes on the right) on the training planner.
- Calculate split times for any race distance
Training Log
Added a new measurement - "beats per mile" - to the heart rate tab. This is an interesting measure of running efficiency. You can get at it quickly by multiplying your pace per mile by your average bpm over the course of the run.
Buddy System
Previously, the buddy system just allowed you to create a list of other Fetchies on the site. Adding someone to your buddy list gave them the ability to see your entire training log, and to see entries in your blog marked as "buddies only".
I've updated and extended the buddy system to give you the option to configure the permissions for each buddy individually. So for example, you can let your buddy view your training log, but not see your training plan. Most importantly, given other recent updates, you can now give a buddy the rights to create and edit your training plan. This is very useful for users who coach or receive coaching through the site, which is a small but growing scenario.
Training Planner
As outlined above, you can now open up your training plan to allow other users to create and edit a training plan for you.
Following your feedback, I also made some smaller updates to the new training planner:
- Provided a link to the old planner, for those of you who found it easier
- Provided a sidebar (those boxes on the right) to indicate suitable training paces for your next race.
- Updated the plan to allow you to decide how many weeks to display (previously, it was hard coded at 4 weeks).
Training Summary
Previously, the Training Summary would take the user to a set of graphs, showing total mileage by week, by month, and by year. This page would take a long time to render, and was of limited use to a lot of people.
I have kept these graphs (as they can be very useful for users , but replaced the main summary page with a text-based table that shows a lot more detail. You can view the year of your choice, broken down into weeks or months, and also by type of run (tempo, intervals, recovery etc), and can see the following information:
- Number of sessions
- Distance run
- Time spent running
- Average pace
- Percentage of time spent on each type of run
Race Finder
To help reduce the number of duplicates in our Race Finder, I have built a page that displays "known duplicates" - these are races where the name, date and race distance are all identical. If you spot a duplicate in the system (someone may have entered the race as "London Marathon" and "Flora London Marathon" for example), all you need to do is make sure both copies of the race have the same name, date and distance - and it's then flagged up for me to fix. Working well so far, and has reduced the (small) number of complaints about duplicates.
Smaller Updates & Bug fixes
- Updated feedback form to improve look-and-feel, and to auto-populate as many fields as possible.
- Updated Eat > Weight, to allow users to delete measurements from their weight chart.
- Fixed the calory counter in the training log, which was not correctly recognising the difference between miles and kilometres.
- Fixed bug with Training Plan - cross training was not being retained.
- Fixed bug in Training Analysis where user had not recorded any training in build-up to his or her PB race.
- Filtered the "Member Map" to only show users who've logged in within the last 30 days.
Week Ending 13th July 2007
Training Comments
Added the ability for users to disallow comments about their training.
Favourites
Added facility for users to mark blogs and threads as "favourites".
Main Update: Training Planner
Added a new training planner, that allows you to quickly build a plan for the 4 weeks ahead.
The older planner was pretty slow, and involved clicking through 3 screens in order to plan each session.
The new plan is all on one page - so the whole process can be completed quickly. Before this update, there
were about 60 users planning their training in advance - but this figure has now risen to around 250, and is still increasing.
Week Ending 6th July 2007
Site Optimisation
Further work to optimise page response time.
Race Information
Further updates to allow you to edit race information. You can now:
- Edit the date of any race that's at least 10 days into the future (to avoid having any impact on Fetch Betting, rankings, PB leagues etc)
- Edit the distance of any race that's at least 10 days into the future.
Fetch Challenges
Added a new "game" that allows users to challenge each other (on any subject). This is coming along nicely.
Training Log - Add Comments
It's now possible to add comments to other peoples training. Most of you are pleased with this update, but some have requested that their training cannot be commented on. There were also a few comments that the number of "You've received a comment" messages (from blogs, pictures etc, and now training) was escalating - and some sort of customisability is requested.
Training League
The training league shows everyone's total mileage for the year, split into months. You guys enjoy seeing which page you're on, and who you're near. However, because users often have time out, it's often difficult to see who's training at the same level as you in any given month. I've added the ability to sort the table by month, which has helped.
Route Database
The route database is growing well, and it was necessary to update the main page. Previously, it displayed your own routes and all the "publicly available" routes added by other members - however, the page was becoming too large.
Calculators
Added a new subsection under "Train" to provide all the usual "calculators" as seen on a variety of other sites. The first calculator to be added takes your resting and maximum heart rate, and calculates the bpm boundaries for the various training zones. It has the added advantage of being able to grab your HR data from the settings stored in our database.
Bug Fixing
The "add training run" page was showing shoes that had been marked as "retired".
Week ending 29th June 2007
Settings Update
As part of an effort to increase the amount of customisability on the site, I've introduced some new code that will make capturing your settings a simpler task. There's no real visible impact of this change on the site, but it has added a great degree of flexibility.
Member of the Month - June 2007
Completed the interview with Rach E for display on the site.
Race Information
I have added a field allowing you to describe the type of race by terrain: road, cross-country, fell, trail, track, mixed etc. This information is not being used yet, because the vast majority of the races are still classed as "road" by default. But in the long term, it will be possible to show PB's by terrain.
The race information page has been given a facelift, to show the race information more clearly.
I have also given you the ability to edit some elements of the race information in our database, where previously, you could only add it. This was resulting in a fair amount of inaccurate data, duplicate data, and requests via the feedback system for corrections. You've done a great job cleaning up the data.
To guard against misuse, I have also added some code to record all such updates.
Training Log Updates - Heart Rate Tracking
I have added a new section in the training log specifically for those training with heart rate monitors, allowing them to record their average heart rate in a session (as previously available), the max during the session, their resting heart rate, and maximum heart rate, on a per-session basis. This opens the way for a whole load of interesting graphs based on heart rate zone vs pace vs time, etc. Waiting to collect some decent data before progressing.
Site Optimisation
Occasionally, it is necessary to spend a few days working on improving the responsiveness of the site. Because of the regular updates to functionality, some pages may begin to operate slowly. In this exercise, I monitor the average response time of each page, and concentrate on improving those that consume most of the server's processing power.
Fmail - Update
The onsite messaging system displays the users "sent items" to help them remember what they've sent. Previously however, there was no functionality available to remove these sent items, which was making some of our users a bit nervous, for reasons I can only speculate on. I have now added this facility, and a "panic button", which empties both "sent items" and "inbox".
Bug Fixing
- Fixed a small bug that was introduced recently where users could submit their race time before the day of the race
- A malicious user was able to update an article anonymously, deleting its content. I have restored the contents of all damaged articles and closed this loophole.
Week ending 22nd June 2007
Nothing this week, but Mablethorpe is a nice place to take young 'uns.
Week ending 15th June 2007
Export Training & Race Portfolio
You now have the ability to export your entire training log and race list to Excel spreadsheets.
Buddy List
When you add another user to your buddy list, the new buddy gets a short Fmail to notify them.
Training Wizard
The bulk of development work this week has been focussed on improving this tool. The improvements include:
- Rather than forcing you to accept our estimates of your weekly mileage and best recent race time, we now just provide suggestions, which you can customise.
- Rather than a fixed 16 weeks, you can now select any length of plan, from 4-16 weeks. The system automatically inserts rest weeks where suitable.
- You can now select how many days you train each week, from just two days up to seven. The system generates a weekly breakdown of different training sessions, ranging from "long run + easy run" for those training just twice a week, up to a full range of intervals, tempo, long runs and easy mileage for those training seven days a week.
- There is now a "suitable mileage" cap in place. In last weeks version, your mileage would increase each week without regard for the length of the goal race - this has now been taken into account.
- The generated plan now contains more detail, including suggested paces for each run. Some of these may need a little work.
Bugs & Small Improvements
- Fixed the "unsubscribe" process, so it doesn't impact on threads in the forum, nor on Fantasy Fetch
Week ending 8th June 2007
Personal Bests By Year
On user profiles, we used to show just a list of the users personal bests. I have developed this to also detail a year-by-year breakdown, showing the users best times in each year of running.
"Training Wizard"
I have begun work on developing a tool that will generate training plans for a user, based on parameters such as recent race time, weekly mileage, and "how hard do you want to train". Unlike many online tools, we have the potential to automatically assess your current level of training, and racing capabilities. I've established some basic rules, which I've begun putting into code, to create the "first draft".
Training Log
Following your requests, I've added two select boxes to the training log allowing you to choose your surface, and give an indication of the hilliness of their training run (note to self - must write something to exclude "hilliness" for swimmers).
Training Analysis
Following my failure to PB at the Notts 10, I asked myself what I had done differently compared to my PB race. So I've built a tool that will allow you to click any of the races in their Race Portfolio, and perform a comparison between it and their PB race. The comparison includes:
- The users mileage in the build-up to the race
- Breakdown of training by type (Long Run, Intervals, Tempo etc)
- Breakdown of training by daily distance
