Riptide Multisports Website

Yesterday the team met at Highline Canal for a long run with a tempo mixed in. Dan and I are on the same page in what we want to do for run training now and last week we agreed that a 12 miler with 6 at easy tempo pace would be good for us. We started the tempo and Josh and Pete took off but I stuck to the 5:55 pace I had planned with Dan. We hit it spot on- 5:54, 5:54 then ran a bit farther than 3 miles before turning around. Held it on the way back, 11:50 for the last 2 miles. Felt good and controlled. I can tell that I should do some more of these to work on my endurance. Right now I prefer to do these longer tempos and then as race season comes I'll move them down to 4 miles at about 20 seconds per mile faster.
I used to do a long run and then a separate tempo run every week but since I'm not running as much now it makes sense to merge them. I like keeping the tempo pace relatively comfortable since I won't actually be running that fast (5:30 pace at altitude) in races. Instead of doing training at faster than race pace I prefer to get my body as comfortable and efficient as possible at 5:30 pace so that it will come as second nature when I hit the run leg in a race.
I relate this to police training. As a cop I'd practice drawing my weapon and firing over and over and over. After hundreds of repetions the movements become second nature, just what is needed so that you can react in a real life or death situation.
If you haven't checked the RiptideMultisports website lately then check it out. Amy and I revamped it and I'm happy with the outcome. Amy did all the design and I wrote a program similar to Facebook that allows team athletes to maintain profiles and race schedules.
We were going to have a static site but with around 15 athletes and ever changing schedules I decided that a dynamic PHP based program was needed. Amy maintains the site and it would have been a full time job to always have athletes emailing what races they were doing.
The first phase was to make a login page where athletes could sign in with a username and password. From there they can fill in a form to enter their profile. Next a form to upload a picture. The results of this can be seen here. As you can see in the web address it's a PHP page with the athlete name sent with the GET method. Type in a different athletes name in the web address (try "AmyDannwolf") and the page will display based on searching the database for that athlete. This way I only had to make 1 page for all the athletes and it would dynamically display a profile based who's name is in the web address.
From there, allowing athletes to enter race results and schedules.

I initially had a simple form when athletes would enter the race name, location, etc. This proved problematic because athletes came up with 5 names for the same race (USAT Elite Champs, USAT PRO Championships, USAT... you get the picture). This looked OK on an individual athletes results but when you looked at the team results it looked like a mess.
To solve this I changed the program so that when an athlete wants to enter a race on their schedule, a drop down menu appeared with all the races that had ever been entered by team members. If the race is on that list then just click on it, it's added to the athletes schedule, and all the info from the initial entry is there such as venue, date, etc.

If the race is not on the drop down (because no athlete has previously added it to their schedule) then the athlete enteres the details of the race.
Once an athlete selects a race, then it is added to the database of races and can be displayed in a vaiety of ways. It is shown on the athletes profile page under their races and results. It can also be displayed in the entire team's race schedule. You can see this here in Riptide's 2009 race schedule. The schedule can be shown in a number of arrangements, whether by date, athlete, or finishing place. About the finishing places. When no place is entered then it is displayed as TBD. Once an athlete finishes a race they can sign in, click on the race in their profile and enter what place they finished.
All of this is an incredibly efficient way for teams to maintain up to date schedules and results with minimal webmaster maintenance. Athletes can constantly delete races, add races, and enter finishing places as the season progresses.
It could also be an incredible website feature for triathlon coaching companies. It's a great advertisement for coaches to show the variety of races their athletes are competing in and how they finished. Athletes also feel more linked to the group if they are featured on the website and can control some of the content. To top it off, athletes can figure out who else is going to their races so they can make travel plans together.
Check out the comfort I enjoy while blogging. Got my mutt Gulliver and my mom's Border Terrier Primo: