Training Plans (for event organizers)

You can add Training Plans as a special type of challenge to your event. This allows your participants to connect and engage with your event and sponsors also in the months leading up to race day.

We have a wide range of training plans available for all levels for these (and more) distances:

5K
10K
10 miles
Half marathon
Marathon

This article focuses on the setup and configuration of training plans, as an event organizer.

On Demand Start by participants

An important difference between training plans and other challenges is that training plans are so-called on demand challenges. This means they do not start automatically but need to be started by the participant him/herself.

This is important as each training plan has a schedule which is relative to the day the user starts the training plan.

Restrict access to training plans

A training plan can be marked to be available either for all participants in the challenge, or only for participants who have purchased the plan as part of their event registration.

To make it available for everyone: check the 'Available for all participants to start On Demand' toggle in Advanced Race Settings dialog.
To restrict it to only participants who have purchased the plan during registration: make sure the 'Available for all participants to start On Demand' toggle is OFF and also import a special column ''OnDemandRace' as part of the registration data which should contain the Import ID of the allowed training plan(s) for each participant.

Training Plan Progress

Training plans have a special visualization in the results view to clearly communicate the schedule and progress to users. Each week and workout are presented in a table. This table will also show progress of all other users following the same training plan.

The leaderboard for a training plan will show a table with all participants and checkboxes for completed weeks. A week is marked as completed when all workouts are completed.

The users' profile will show a summarized version of the progress, showing 14 days before and after the current date with an option to show the full progress.

Social/Community Features

To encourage participants to finish their training plan we show the progress of other users following the same plan. This will help participants keep going on as are not alone at it.

Upcoming workout emails

Participants will receive an email the day before each of their workouts is scheduled to be completed. This email includes all details and steps needed to complete the workout.

Automatic and manual matching activities to workouts

The system will automatically try to match any completed activity with a workout from a training plan. This is done based on:

the date of the activity: only activities on the scheduled date or 1 calendar day before or after may qualify
the duration: duration of the activity should roughly equal the duration of the workout. A bit too short or too long is allowed by the system.
the distance: for distance based workouts the system will verify the completed distance is roughly the same. Again, a certain difference is allowed.

When an activity is not automatically detected users can easily link an existing activity with the selected workout or click the Add button to add a new manual activity. Clicking Add will prefill the form with the expected date, distance, and duration.

When, for any reason, the user or system made a mistake with linking an activity to a workout they can easily correct that using the Unlink option to undo this.

Other features and constraints

Please keep in mind there are a few constraints in place:

Each training plan can only be appended once to each event.
Once a training plan is added to an event it cannot be changed anymore
As training plans are marked as On Demand challenges they should not be imported as part of connected races in the registration data (please use the special OnDemandRace field instead)

Adding a training plan to your event

Adding a training plan to your event is as easy as adding any other challenge.

Go to the EventManager section and open your event
Click the Add Training Plan option from the Add Challenge dropdown menu:
Browse the list of available training plans and select a training plan you'd like to add
Click Add Plan to add the selected training plan to your event
Repeat these steps if you'd like to add more training plans