Nov 20, 2017

Goal Tracking

Stay on target with easy-to-use goal tracking

Today we are excited to announce our new goal tracking feature. If you want to track progress to your training goals, but aren’t committed to filling out a full training plan, goals are a wonderful new tool you can use.

Touring the new goals page

The first thing you will notice is a new top level Goals tab. The goals page is your command center for setting high level goals, tracking current progress, looking at what goals are coming up and reviewing your past accomplishments.

Click the Add goal button to create a new goal.

The most important parts of your goal are the start and end date, the goal type and the goal target. If you like you can limit your goal to a specific sport by clicking the sport icon. You can even pick a sub-sport such as a particular type of workout. You may also want to enter a useful name.

There are six different target types you can choose from. All targets are accumulated from the sum total of workouts that match the sport type (if selected) and date range: distance, effort, elevation gain, calories, total time, and number of workouts.

Once you have created a goal for the current time period you can track progress using the goal cards.

Several tools in the goal card visualization can tell you whether you are on target to achieve the goal by the end of the time period.

  1. At a glance, the color coding system shows you whether a goal is on target (green), nearly on target (blue), or at risk of failure (red). Ideally, all of your goals should be green or blue after the time period has begun, especially by the half-way point.
  2. For short term (week/month) goals, you can compare the target remaining and days remaining numerical values to give you a feel for whether the required training volume is achievable based on what you know about your upcoming schedule.
  3. Compare the “today” indicator line to the goal completed value meter to see how far ahead or behind you are in the target time period.

Future and past goals

Below the current goals section you will see future and past goals listed.

You can review the start/end dates and targets of your future goals to see what is coming up. If you’re at the end of your training season, the future goals section can be used for planning next season. If you’re in the middle of your season future goals allow you to plan your training schedule.

The past goals section shows you how well you did on your targets. If you see a lot of red here, it means you’re setting your goals too high, or something is interfering with your training. If you see green with a lot of targets above 100% you may want to set higher goals in the future.

If you need to edit or remove a goal, simply click the goal card or table row to show a goal detail dialog.

Dashboard integration

Keen observers of SportTracks probably noticed another change this week – your dashboard now has a new section showing current or upcoming goals. If you have one goal active you will see the detailed goal card displayed:

Otherwise you will see a list of current or future goals:

If you’ve completed a goal recently you will also see a message telling you how you did.

You can also add goals straight from the dashboard.

Calendar and email report integration

We have a few more changes coming up for goals including integration into your planning calendar and email reports. Keep an eye out for future updates and until then… enjoy!
 

Comments

Great feature and nice integration in the UI 👍
I already see room for improvements :
- if I have a weekly goal of anything, would be great it renews itself... every week ;-)
- what if I want to set a goal on health data (performance, fitness, fatigue, ...) ?

Thanks again for this constantly improving application.

I agree and would love to see improvements like the ones you've suggested.

Like it!

I really like the new goal feature. It would be good if you can move the individual "tiles" on the goal side and thus be able to place them freely.

I like the monthly updates of sporttracks pretty much - thank you for that!
One thing from my side as an issue for improvement of the goals-feature:
- I would have the possibilty to write a comment when I was not able to reach a goal (esp. when I became ill or
a fail concerning an appointment impeded my workout....)

Thank you once more!

Great feature and nicely implemented, but can I suggest a small tweak? I set a goal to run 85km in the week ending 26 November and another to reach 330 for the month of November. ST is reporting on the dashbooard I reached my most recent goal and shows that to be the goal for the week not the month. It looks like the latest goal is the one that started most recently, but logically (for me at least) it should be the one that most recently ended, ie I would expect to see now that I'd reached my goal for the month of November not the week ending 26th November.

I have now been using this Goal Tracking-feature for some time. I would like to make a suggestion för a small amendment. Once the goal has been completed it is marked green as long as I meet och shoot over the target. This is somewhat contra-intuitive since it suggest overtraining is as good as just to meet the target. If I barely miss the target it will indicate red, as if it is a failure. I instead think a more resonable signal would be to create bands around the target. For instance if goal is <= ±5% then it is marked green, if it is outside "green" but still <= ±10% it is marked yellow, and only if it is outside "yellow" it gets marked red. That corresponds better with how the evaluation between expectation and outcome is evaluated.

It really depends on your training goals whether over-accomplishment is considered a "failure". Goal accomplishment is currently colored by:

  • red - fail
  • blue - on target
  • green - succeed

I guess what you propose is to add a new color indicator for "over succeed"? Sounds great!

I love this feature too but also love to see a goal feature where it countdowns the days and weeks to your big race. so instead of picking a time or distance goal, it would just be the date and it would countdown for you. 32 weeks until Race day.

Would be great to add possibility to define health-data related goals, such as weight, VO2max or performance.

I use the goals feature for weekly goals. I like the presentations and graphics, but find the functionality less than ideal. How so?

1. No matter what week-day you call the first day of the week, to my knowledge, a week is SEVEN days long. However, the line that indicates the progress of time on a weekly goal seems to split the "progress-bar" (270 degree partial circle) in EIGHT. On the first day of the goal it indicates one day has passed (and 7 remaining) and on the last day of the goal it indicates one day remains (and 7 days have passed). I think this is an oversight, that should be corrected.

2. Related to item 1: Typically, I will be looking at the goals section of Sporttracks AFTER an excercise, and typically I don’t exercise multiple times a day. Other people may have different exercise patterns and preferences, so I'm thinking it would be nice to have a toggle switch, where one could select whether the present day (today) should count as a day ahead or a day passed. If you've done your day's exercise you turn it on, and if you still haven't, you turn it off. This should then be reflected in the graphics and days remaining. I hope you will consider including something like that in the future to improve this Goal feature.

3. Like b0ris suggested above, it would be nice if there were a simple way to make repeating goals. This is especially relevant with short-term goals, like weekly goals for example.

Thanks for an otherwise great product/service - I think Sporttracks is great!

Hey Olaf. We've fixed the 8 day problem and now show the precise time of day for the progress meter as well as showing partial days + hours with goals that are one week or shorter and when you're on the last day of any goal with less than 24 hours remaining). Thanks for reporting these!

Wow, thanks - that was fast! I like the changes you made - works beautifully!

It would be nice to know the delta between the prorate target and the actual to date. Yes, we can see how much to go and how many days. But if the goal is long term, say an hour a day for a year then knowing you are x behind or ahead would be great. The info exists, just needs a display.

You have a Workout Library, how about a Goal Library for repeating goals?

Also, we don't need a reminder of missed goals. At least provide us with a "delete" function to eliminate these messages. A 91% completion of a goal is not a "missed" goal. It's an accomplishment.

Add a vote for setting health goals, and recurring goals.

Yes you can, and here's the link to vote for that :)

https://sporttracks.uservoice.com/forums/201951-general/suggestions/3310...

Hi Can I have a weight target goal? EG a goal to get down to a certain weight or BMI say 25 which is supposedly top of the normal weight range?

Is there a way to set goal including several activity types (but not all)? For example, time target for running, walking and skiing combined?

I might be missing something but you can't set a goal for one specific event e.g. run a 10k in 40 minutes, or swim 1k in 20 mins. If you miss your target time for the distance you're green because ST3 sees it as doing better than your goal, i.e. running for more time overt the distance! No idea on the science needed to fix this but I'm sure some whizzy programming could sort it?

Has anything been done to add a feature to allow automatic repeating weekly goals? or monthly, etc? I would like to not have to setup a weekly goal each week.....

Has anything been done to add a feature to allow automatic repeating weekly goals? or monthly, etc? I would like to not have to setup a weekly goal each week.....