RunSaturday

A little more than a month ago, one of the individuals in my running group mentioned this site on their Facebook account so I took a look. There were a number of sites like this, however most of them only worked with Nike+ and Garmin products and were pretty limited in their ability to analyse the data that was captured. Nonetheless, I've always liked the idea of being able to share detailed running logs with friends so I was very open to the idea of any site that provided the level of detail that I wanted and could work with my Polar. This blog does a decent job of that, but the workflow for posting detailed telemetry from each run wasn't really practical so it only really helped with the major sessions.

Either way, after checking out the site I was disappointed to find that it didn't support Polar's products at the time. Thankfully, however, the site's owner appeared to be very open about the development of the site so I gave him a shout and offered my assistance. After a bit of back and forth, I dug up a bunch of sample files (making some up as well to test certain scenarios) and worked with him to work out the format of Polar's files and do what I could to assist him in getting things up and running. I asked around and got some further samples for Polar devices I didn't have immediate access to from another blogger. Within a week or so, we had the system operational and I was able to begin uploading my files. There were a few minor bugs, largely due to oddities in the way that Polar formats their files but overall it was functional and allowed me to achieve what I wanted to.

Since that point, I've been uploading my sessions and keeping a second copy of my running logs online (in addition to the copy stored locally within Polar ProTrainer). The site offers the ability to pull up detailed plots of telemetry from sessions covering multiple sports, as well as a large variety of analysis features that aren't present in Polar's software. Further, it has an excellent mapping system that is much more sophisticated than gmap pedometer (which I was using previously to make up routes) and allows me to attach those maps to my exercise sessions (the RS800sd can't record GPS tracklogs, that feature was added in the RS800CX). As a result, in addition to being able to share my sessions I also have a number of tools that I otherwise wouldn't have had access to.

The site is free to use, and currently doesn't have any advertisements. It has a great community for discussing various topics related to fitness, and the author is extremely active on the site and willing to address any issues that come up. It can also be connected to your Facebook, Twitter and Blogger accounts, which can cut back on having to go to a bunch of different sites every time you want to post an update. As such, if you are interested you can join by clicking on this link. More information is available on the main website at www.runsaturday.com.

For reference, you can follow my progress via my profile.