| « Creating your logbook | Recording activity data | Correcting data » |
| The easiest way to record activity data is to import directly from a supported GPS device after you've done your workout. |
To tell SportTracks how to find your GPS, follow the steps below:
1. Change to the Daily Activity view and click the
Import data command in the Other Tasks area.
2. When the Import wizard opens, scroll to the top of the
files browser on the left side of the window until the GPS Devices item
is visible.
3. Click the GPS Devices item.
4. If your GPS device doesn't
appear in the list on the right side of the window, click Add Device
and
select the appropriate device and port.
5. Once you have configured a GPS device, select the device and click the Next > button. SportTracks will start downloading active GPS tracks from your GPS device. If your GPS stores summarized workouts (time, distance and lap data without GPS route detail) these will also be downloaded.
6. When the download completes, the next page of the Import wizard shows a summary of the downloaded activities. On this page, you can select whether to import the activity or update an existing activity (this is useful for merging GPS data from one device with heart-rate data from another device), and which category to assign the activity to.
Once you have selected the activities to import and assigned each a category, click the Import button to add the downloaded workouts into your SportTracks logbook. The final page of the Import wizard shows a summary of the imported activities and lets you import more data, or finish the import process and return to the main window. Click Done to view the activity detail of your imported workouts.
 |
You may notice that the times and distances shown in SportTracks differ slightly from those shown on the GPS device. For further reading on this topic refer to the section on correcting data. |
Information prefilled during import
SportTracks lets you record a lot of additional information about your activities that the GPS device doesn't collect. To streamline your data recording, much of this information is prefilled based on existing activities in your logbook - SportTracks "learns" from what you've done in the past. Import prefilling can also be controlled from options you've set within your logbook.
| Category | Each
category has a speed range (slowest
to fastest speed) and average speed based on the activities in the
logbook
that are assigned to the category. The average speed for the activity
being imported is compared against the range of speeds and average
speed for the
category, finding a match.
If you have many categories with overlapping
speeds (say you walk very quickly and also run very slowly) then the
prefill may not assign the right category. Prefilling the category
during import can be turned off in the Settings > Import page.
If this option is turned off all activities are assigned to My
Activities and must be manually re-assigned during the import step. |
|
| Location | Activities for which you
have
specified a location
for are grouped together and a boundary is calculated based on the GPS
tracks of those activities. The GPS track of the activity being
imported is compared against the location boundaries. If a match is
found, the location is prefilled with the matching location. Prefilling
the location can be turned off in the Settings
> Import page. |
|
| Calories | Some devices, such as the
Garmin Forerunner and
Edge series, will calculate calories burned based on the time and
distance of the workout and exercise type (bike or run, etc). If the
device doesn't provide a calories burned amount, SportTracks will
calculate the calories based on the category.
You can manually change the calorie amount later
or use
the calculate
button on the activity detail page to re-calculate the calories based
on the category's exercise type. This might be useful if your workout
type is an exercise that the GPS doesn't know about such as
kayaking, swimming or cross-country skiing. |
|
| Equipment | When importing
activities,
equipment will be marked as used based on the category of the activity,
and whether that category is checked under the Import Settings page for
a particular piece of equipment. For example, you might want to mark
your shoes used for the Running category, your boots for the Hiking
category, and your bike for the Cycling category. After the import is
done, you can change the equipment used for an activity under
the
Summary page of the activity detail on the Daily Activity view. |
|
| Weather | The weather entry for an
activity will be
prefilled from the weather forecast (temperature and conditions) for
the day of the activity if one is available. Weather forecasts are
stored for 30 days in the past - if you are importing activities older
than that the weather will not prefill. You can manually enter weather
conditions from the Summary page of the activity detail. |
Importing from data files
SportTracks supports a variety of file formats for importing lists of activities, such as exercise history from another software program, or detail for a single activity such as a GPS route or heart-rate data track.
To import data from a file, follow the steps below:
1. Click the Import data command in the
Other Tasks area.
2. When the Import wizard opens browse to your file
using the hierarchical list on the left side of the window.
3. Click on a
folder to see the files in that folder that SportTracks recognizes and
can import. When you have selected a file, click the Next >
button, and the process is then as described in the importing from a
GPS device section.
Recognized
file formats for importing activity
history:
|
||
Recognized
file formats for importing detail for a single activity:
|
Manually entering an activity
In addition to importing data from GPS devices, SportTracks is a fully functional manual-entry exercise logbook. Creating manually entered activities is useful for indoor activities such as treadmill running, swimming or stationary bike riding, or simply for those times you forgot to wear your GPS. Many of the same features used with GPS activities are available with manually entered activities such as totalling time, distance and calories burned for the week or month, averaging pace and heart-rates, analyzing workouts by category, and tracking usage on equipment. You can even manually enter time, distance and heart-rates for splits you record manually.
To record a non-GPS workout, go to the Daily Activity view, select the day the workout took place (using either the calendar or the activity list at the top of the view), and click the Add activity command.
Enter text which describes the location for the activity. This can be as general or specific as you want - for example "Treadmill", or "Max Fitness Gym on 53rd Street". The location (and many of the other information) can be used to group and categorize your activities for later analysis. If you want to use a location you've entered previously, click the arrow pointing down next to the entry field and select a location from the list.
Location, like Category, is a special hierarchical data field. Any text you enter will be split into hierarchy levels based on the placement of colons ( : ) in the location. For example, if you have three locations named "USA: CA: Los Angeles", "USA: CA: San Diego", and "USA: NY: New York", these will be shown in a hierarchy which looks like this:
 USA |
||
| CA |
||
| Los Angeles | ||
| San Diego | ||
| NY |
||
| New York | ||
Grouping like this will allow you to see statistics on your activities such as total distance, total time, pace & speed and calories totalled by each hierarchy level (USA, CA, and NY in the example above); using this format is highly encouraged.
If you want you can change the date and time - the date will prefill with the day you selected before you clicked the Add activity command. Move to the time entry after the date. You can enter time in a variety of ways. An entry such as "8:00" without an AM/PM designator will be interpreted as AM. Add a "p" or "pm" after the time to enter a PM time. You can also enter a 24 hour time such as 20:00 to represent 8:00 PM. If the time falls on the hour, you can leave off the minutes. For example the text "5p" would be interpreted as 5:00 PM. When you exit the Time field, you can verify the value that was entered. With some practice you'll learn how to enter most of your activity times with two or three keystrokes.
If you don't have a time for the activity you can leave the entry blank, but it is better to estimate the time in case you want to do performance analysis based on the time of day (looking at your morning pace compared to your afternoon pace for example).
Click the arrow next to the category entry to select an activity for the category. In the list you will see the hierarchy of categories you set up when you created your logbook. Adding new categories will be covered in a later section.
The distance field will also handle a variety of entry formats. A numeric entry such as "5.25" will be interpreted using the default measurement units you specified earlier - miles for US, kilometers for metric. For whole distances such as 5 miles, you can leave off the decimal and just enter "5". If you want to use a different distance unit, enter it after the number (with or without the space). All unit designations are English abbreviations as listed below:
- Feet: "ft". Example: "1000ft"
- Yards: "y", "yd". Example: "500y"
- Miles: "mi". Example: "5mi"
- Meters: "m". Example: "500m"
- Kilometers: "k". Example: "5k"
You'll notice that when you leave the distance field the pace or speed is immediately calculated.
If you want to enter total ascend and descend figures for the activity, enter the amounts in the Climb field separated by a forward slash (eg "+200 / -250"). The values are in meters or feet for metric and US units respectively.
If you want to track calories burned, enter the amount or click the calculator button to let SportTracks automatically calculate the calories based on the activity category, time and distance.
If you took a heart-rate reading during the workout, you can enter it in the Avg. HR. field.
To mark the shoes, bike, or other equipment you used during the workout, click the arrow next to the equipment entry and check the items in the list. Adding new equipment will be covered in a later section.Fnally, you may also want to enter any notes about the workout.
Entering split details
If you recorded split times, you can enter these as well. Click the page selector for the activity detail and change to the Splits page.
If the split type "Custom time" is not selected, pick it from the split type selector:
Click the Add Split button 
to add a split. When the
Add Split window appears, enter the total
elapsed
time from the start of the activity (not the split time) for the split.
In the distance field enter the split distance. If you took a
heart-rate reading you can enter this also.
Continue adding splits for the entire workout, or as many as you recorded. You can also delete a split and re-enter a new time, or edit the split distance and heart-rate for a split from this window.
Additional activity information
On the workout page you'll find some additional information you can record. This page has the same calories burned and avg. hr. entries that are on the summary page. In addition you can enter a maximum heart-rate reading, and the level of intensity of the workout.
If you took any measurements such as body weight you may
want to enter that in the Athlete History view.
| « Creating your logbook | Recording activity data | Correcting data » |