A logbook stores all the workout history, equipment, and athlete history associated with a single athlete. Each athlete should have their own logbook. To create a new logbook, click the Open logbook command in the Other Tasks area.

When the logbook selection window comes up, click the "Create New Logbook" button in the lower left corner. Click the "Start" button on the first page of the Welcome wizard.

Set up your logbook

On the first page, enter your name. The name will be used to create the logbook file name and on report titles.

Select whether you want to see measurements in metric (kilometers, kilograms, celsius) or US (miles, pounds, fahrenheit). You can use any units to enter data into SportTracks (for example, 100 yards, 5km, 150lbs) and you can change this setting later - this setting will be used for the default.

Next enter your weight as of today. The weight you enter will be used for calorie calculations, and you can also track your weight over time. If you don't know your weight, don't want to track calories burned, or track your weight history, you can leave this blank but it is better to enter an estimate. If you leave the weight empty you can still manually enter calories burned for activities.

Enter the location of your home city (where you do most of your workouts) or a major city nearby. The format of this entry is "City, State" if you are in the US, or "City, Country" for non-US locations. This location will be used for downloading weather forecasts. Not all cities are available; if your city can't be found use another one nearby. If this entry is blank, weather forecasts will not be downloaded, but you can still manually enter weather conditions for activities.

Select a day of the week to start your calendar. This entry will also effect how weekly totals are calculated. For example if you pick Sunday, your totals will go from Sunday to Saturday and the weekend workouts will be split across two weeks. Typically you would pick Monday if you want to see your weekends at the end of the week, and Saturday if you want to see your weekends at the start of the week.

Finally choose a location to store your logbook file. You will most likely want to save this to a location that is included in your backups such as "My Documents" (you are doing weekly backups of your PC data, right?)

Where is my logbook data stored ?

Review activity categories

Each activity you create can be placed in a user defined category. The category defines what kind of exercise the activity is, whether pace or speed is shown for the activity, and what type of calorie calculation to use. Any imported activities will be automatically placed in a category based on the range of activity speeds in a category and the speed data for that activity. Categories are also used to quickly filter the list of activities you are showing. Categories can be setup in a hierarchy, with more general categories at the top such as "Running" and more detailed categories at the bottom such as "Hill training".

At the top of the category hierarchy are two folders "My Activities" and "My Friend's Activities". Any activities which are placed in a category under "My Activities" will be included in your workout totals. This category folder should be used for your primary workouts.

The "My Friends Activities" folder can be used to store other activities such as vacations or trips, miscellaneous GPS routes you've downloaded or workouts your friends have emailed to you. None of these activities will be included in your totals. You may want to create sub-folders for particular events or workout partners. You can also create a separate logbook for this purpose.

SportTracks creates a set of categories by default and sets the pace/speed and calorie calculation settings for these categories. You can add, delete, rename and rearrange the categories here if you know how you want to organize your activities, or you can edit the category list later after you've used the software for awhile.

Import activities

If you have prepared data for import prior to installing SportTracks, you can import the data now. You may want to start by only importing a few activities to get the feel for the software, then import your entire logbook history later. Once you have imported your existing history, you can import future workouts directly from the GPS device.

SportTracks supports a variety of formats to import your data from:

• Training Center .hst export file
• Garmin Logbook exported to .xml
• Timex Trainer database file (.mdb)
• Comma separated values file (.csv)
• Polar heart-rate file (.hrm)
• GPS eXchange file (.gpx)
• RunLog 5.0 file (.rli)
• Direct device import from Garmin GPS & Timex Trainer

Map routes & themes

On the next page you can select the map background which appears behind GPS routes. All map backgrounds are downloaded automatically from the internet as you navigate and zoom to new areas. Map coverage or quality in your area may be limited - if online maps are not available, you can create custom maps from saved images (.jpg, .png, .gif).

The last page lets you select a visual theme that effects the window and chart colors. The theme and colors can be changed later from the Settings command.

Click the Finish button to create your logbook.