running (Read 152 times)

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By notes, I mean the notes section of each run, right here on RA.

And could you not form your own group within RA for your students and you, and in that group create threads with all of these things you wish to define?  Then your athletes could use the forum within that group as a learning tool and you could all use the same nomenclature.  For a workout where the dropdowns don't meet what you wish, the athlete or you could simply add additional notes for specificity.  

I think the list of interval names should be pulled from a user defined list; kind of like how workout types are now.  Just makes it easier for everyone to get exactly what they want.

But I also agree that Coach Jimmy, USATF certified Coach, is a pedantic weenie.

 How would you explain the current use of the word "interval" in regard to workouts to 30 students?

Um, it's pretty easy.  "Interval" = "workbout".  Everybody understands this.  My high school runner sons understand this, although they are honor students, so maybe not representative of the norm.  ;-)

Nobody uses the term "interval" to mean the rest or recovery portions.  If we want to get really picky about the English then we could agree that "interval" could mean any period of time so there is no reason it could not refer to either the workbout or the recovery/rest, but I could find hundreds of examples that demonstrate that in the common tongue of Running people almost always use the term "interval" as synonymous for "workbout".  Nobody commonly uses the term "workbout".  They don't.

I'm glad I spent 5 minutes of my Saturday reading this thread. I found it very comical. I'm also glad I'm not advanced at running so that I can still figure out how to input my workouts in a meaningful way. It'd be a real bummer not to be able to use RA.

Hi Coach Jimmy,

Thank you for your post and feedback via email.  Let me start off by stating that I know nothing about coaching.  I am not USATF certified, nor do I plan to be certified.  I'm only interested in creating tools for running.  Most of the improvements are based on user suggestions like yours.  Using the proper terminology is very important in communicating with our fellow athletes and advancing our sport.

RunningAHEAD is created for all runners, and not just professional runners.  There are users who have never ran a step in their lives before creating their accounts, and advanced users who have won multiple races.  The interval options are intentionally vague, and only serve as guidelines.  How you intend to use them is entirely up to you.  You can use the notes field to document and clarify your workouts.

I'm not opposed to changing the words if you feel they are improper.  However, I can't change them just because you said so.  After all, someone else may come along and ask me to change them to something else.  Could you point me to a reputable online resource where these terms are defined?  I searched for "usatf workbout" using Google and this thread is the first result.  Workbout seemed to be referenced by only a handful of research papers.  I need to determine if they are indeed "industry standard" terms, although the sport of running is not an industry.

Please also keep in mind that RunningAHEAD is not just for Americans.  There are many users that do not know what USATF stands for and may have their own terminology.

eric

I fairness to eric, if coach is trying to bring new users here, I think I can give him the benefit of the doubt for a little longer.

 

But coach, please realize this is more than a running log, it's a community.  When you are new here and talk about fixing things that are "wrong" well that just rubs the wrong way.  Hope you can understand that.

 

My suggestion is to use the site for what is really great about it, make it work for you and your athletes rather than the other way around, and maybe in the future make suggestions in a way that doesn't suggest something is wrong with us.

+1

Alrighty then...

From the few quick and rude replies I see here, I am beginning to think this website may not ever be suitable for teams of young athletes...

As others have highlighted, Coach, your initial post came across as rude and condescending. It is not surprising to me that you received the push-back that you did.

On the other hand, the nature of digital communication leads to what we have seen here in this conversation - posts perceived as rude and condescending, and responses as such, and so on. In online communication we lack the ability to read visual cues and vocal inflections, leading to miscommunication and rather harsh attacks, the kind of which we would less likely experience in face-to-face communication (I see this all the time in other online forums in which I am active). It is kind of the nature of the beast … particularly in a forum like this, where all the posters are "semi-anonymous," not necessarily using real names. I agree that we should all probably give more attention and care to our tone online, but we also need a thick skin.

And your kids … while I get that you want to shield them from a forum that can be rough at times, the reality is that these kids live online and see and experience a lot online. I seriously doubt that anything they see or experience here will scandalize them.