Like Bob, Tim, and many others, a prime value of EN for me @ this stage (year 6) is the quality of folks I interact with in the forums. Just as a reminder, here are some threads I've noticed in just the last 24 hours which either have or are asking for some substantive contributions - check 'em out, and contribute if you want. I've often been surprised that sometimes the shortest posts are the biggest gems!
Like Bob, Tim, and many others, a prime value of EN for me @ this stage (year 6) is the quality of folks I interact with in the forums. Just as a reminder, here are some threads I've noticed in just the last 24 hours which either have or are asking for some substantive contributions - check 'em out, and contribute if you want. I've often been surprised that sometimes the shortest posts are the biggest gems!
- Strava vs. forums= easy. Workout deets are posted so no need to manually type "2 x 18' w/ avg BPM, power, etc..." Its all there. People scroll through and like and occasionally comment. Impersonal mostly, but Fast n easy. Forums= more work for poster and reader. Poster has to write out what they did for the WKO. No easy "like" function so you have to read what people write. Intended to be more interactive, but...
- I have noticed (re: JOS forums), in addition to less posting in overall in the threads, there is less interaction. ie Folks post their workout, and that's it. Granted, we're all time crunched, but there isn't much feedback going. It has turned into more of another workout log. Personally, I at least try to read through the posts and make some comments, even if its just "nice work", or "Ah bummer. you'll hit those intervals next time". But maybe that's cuz I'm JOS Bike captain.
- Its hard to determine what the solution is. It is always going to be fragmented I think. With newer folks not "getting" the forums, and other folks boycotting social media, there isn't ONE place to get everything done. Perhaps our Social media guru, Ms. Mariah can figure it out?
- I think it comes down to what you are doing and the intent of your post. To Tim's point, I wouldn't broadly talk about peeing on the bike on FB, but I would in the Forums. (IF I peed on the bike Last year, someone started a FB OS group, but for me, it duplicated the Forums, but maybe that's the wave of the future?
I think the intent of the thread originally was about the dangers of competition based on volume. It's a negative feedback loop because it basically an arms race to nowhere, or worse, to injury.
The good news is, I am motivated to get outside and workout cause I want to put up volume numbers on the board. The bad news is that I find myself making decisions regarding workouts based on my rank on the board.
Funny example - years ago, when I was in my 20's, there was a bar in Pasadena called "Crown City Brewery". They had a loyalty plan where if you ordered 100 different beers, you got a tee-shirt and your name on a plaque on the wall. So, drinking 5 distinct beers per visit (which is a lot), it would take 20 visits to complete the century of beers. I got into this thing with a few buddies and pretty soon, without anyone saying anything, it became a race to finish 100 beers. I found myself sneaking over there alone to have 3 beers at lunch to either get a little lead or just keep up. At the end, I was sick of the place and over drinking beer for quite sometime.
So, I think the Strava paradox is that a volume based arms race is just gonna lead to burnout.
Here is an example of how sick/funny I am. Last week on Sunday before heading our for my last workout of the week, I jumped on the board. I noticed I was 1'07" behind Coach Strauss. So my goal was 1'08". I got back on my street at 1'05". So, I had to run back forth to hit 1'08". hahaha!
Dino- Yeah, I totally digressed there... I should have started a new thread called "Kim's random thoughts re: Strava and the Forums" but that sounds pretty lame.
Some slightly more related commentary to build on Dino's incredible victory over Coach R.... I totally get it. We have a little competition at work called the Endurance Club. We track mileage for 3 sports, which is converted to run miles for easy comparison. I generally find someone who is close to me and target them as my "arch-nemesis". It gives me a little incentive to do just a little more Z3 on the bike or some Z1 miles on the run. One year I even *gasp* swam in the OS! But I didn't even try to compete with the guy training for an IM during my SC year. That mentally is the same I have for Strava. Find someone with a similar goal, or ability or training plan as you and use that to fuel some motivation. To me, its not a competition with "Joe 12 Hour IM", its "Suzy Q from CT who is riding on MY roads, just a little faster or longer than me". Find an appropriate target and aim!
I don't do strava. I keep a fairly detailed spreadsheet of my workouts and their metrics. for me, delving into Strava and similar would foster further unhealthy addictive type A type behaviors. I keep my life organized enough as it is. I don't need to go further down that path.
I have missed the activity on the base page and in the forums. I am not active on them as much as I would like due to that job and life thing (as we all have). I think some of my decreased activity has been due to a shortage of stuff to reply to. I am hoping that the activity will flourish again bringing newer folks into the EN chatty fold.
Like Kim, I've set goals for segments and have place targets on the backs of people, for motivation. One such guy is Frenchman in our tri club who's PR on one of my routes (MY ROUTE!!!) is legit and is serving as a very legit w/kg goal for me. I have a similar goal and person lined up on another climb, I'm stalking '12 Rich on some run routes, stuff like that. Besides, how can you not have a goal to beat the French at every opportunity .
Strava, Forums, and Social Media:
When we started EN there was a suite of social media tools/platform and a suite of training log tools/platforms. Those existing items have evolved dramatically since then. When I last trained seriously, in 2011, I was using a state of the art Powertap Joule as my bike computer and a Garmin 305. Uploaded my stuff into WKO and maybe talked about it/shared it in the forums here or on Facebook. At that time Facebook actually showed me stuff from my friends and it was sorta fun. As a business user of FB, I could share a LOT with you about how FB has changed it's algorithms to dramatically change what FB is and is not...but that's another topic.
Then beginning in about 2012 Strava started coming on board. And Garmin starting building stuff (units, software, etc) that more easily pushed your workouts into cloud-based platforms where you could share it. And so updates to Strava started to replace "hey, check out my workout!" updates on FB and Twitter. See Stephanie's notes about compartmentalization. Nowadays, I think it's kinda passe' to post your tri-geek workouts on FB and Twitter and it's more the norm to do that stuff on Strava. Or post a selfie or cool training, this-is-my-hobby pic on Instagram, so you can retain FB as your platform for your anti-gun control, pro-climate change, cat video, clickbait fix .
A new PM user buys a 510, is pretty much forced to use a Garmin plug-in to upload it, which then connects it to Garmin Connect, which asks him if he wants to sync it elsewhere = creates a Strava account, starts connecting with his local friends and using Strava however way they want to use Strava. This is just how the world works. If this athlete joins EN and doesn't also share his workout in one of the EN forums, as so many of us did back in 2010-2013, there's really not a lot we can do about that, frankly. Again, things are changing quickly.
But what we can do is recognize that a lot of EN athletes are using Strava, so we can create an EN Strava club, have a little fun by adding EnduranceNation.us behind our names, follow each other on that platform, and give each other kudos and comments around our shared experience of crushing ourselves within a platform that a lot of us are using anyway. And we can see that happening more and more, and see where it could lead, and I could start a thread in the forum where I can give my take on this potential trajectory with my coach-y coach-y hat on. I believe this is called leadership and is one of things you are paying us for .
What you're paying us for
Here behind the curtain, these are the items that Rich, Patrick, Anne, Mariah, Brenda, and Grant, your EN Team, are 100% focused on, all. the. time:
Creating for you a ludicrously comprehensive suite of the best training plans we know how to create, and constantly tweaking those based on our experience, observations, and your feedback.
Continually creating resources to support these training plans and, frankly, coach ourselves out of a job by teaching you how to better self-coach yourselves. Check out the writing PnI have done in the blog over the last 8wks. The accompanying podcasts in the podcast channel. Videos on YT. The weekly chats. The ludicrously long (28 and growing) list of pre-race webinars we have schedule for you, in the Team Calendar.
Being as prompt and on it as two guys can be with regards to our individual actions: the Micro and Macro Forums, TSRs (815 created since May '14), Patrick's athlete calls (booked 2-3hrs per day, M-F, through mid-March), and being elsewhere in the forums.
A Manhattan Project-esque...project...of creating a pre-race email series for you that (1) pushes our race execution tools to you, (2) teaches you about your individual race (we have 30+ race-specific pages with race-specific information on each), and (3) plugs you into the stuff we organize for you.
Creating 30+ quality race weekend experiences for you, your family, and Team for 2015, with RnP appearance and full-on 4k talks at 6x IM's this year.
Camps...starting to lose count of those...
And sooooo much more
So, yeah, just a little bit more than a training plan company with 140 characters drive-bys, at least for the EN athletes who continue to use the plans, participate in discussions, avail themselves of the resources we create, and plug themselves into all of these pre and onsite race actions.
The threads that Al shared above are examples of the quality, and rather unique to EN, stuff that's still happening just today and yesterday.
I realize that this went off topic, but for the past week I have been thinking about much of what has been posted here. Last OS was my first with EN and I thoroughly enjoyed the group/team aspect of the forums. I was actually a bit sad when the NOS was over. I have definitely noticed a difference in the posting frequency and volume compared to last OS. I just couldn't put my finger on what it was until reading this post. I do miss the comradery of the last OS.
I am an introvert and am guilty of not starting posts or not commenting as much as I could. I do make a point to post my wko and what is going on that day for context. I do read all of the weekly OS posts to see how everyone else is doing. I will make a point to work on creating a dialog rather than just a wko update.
I just started using Strava. Mostly to see what other ENers are doing and a quick way to give props. I may also use it to compare my times on previous routs I have run. Any more would be redundant to what I am already tracking on TP and Garmin.
Although an avid reader (i.e., stalker) of this site and FB, I am not an avid poster. There is just something about sharing personal information in an electronic medium that I do not like. That said, I enjoy reading about people's accomplishments here, have learned a lot from the forums and respond to questions if the conversation is something to which I think I can contribute substantively.
Regarding Strava, I signed up based solely on the fact that we have the widget on the home page, and that widget provides me motivation to get a workout done. My N=1 experience is that Strava in no way detracts from my use of this site. I view them as totally different since Strava, to me, is a training log, and the EN forums are educational. My participation on FB also does not detract from my use of this site. As for Twitter, I am not on it, have no idea why I would want to be on it, and still do not really understand the whole EN twitter chat thing! Same with Instagram. (Writing this makes me feel like an old man telling the youngsters to get off my lawn with these new-fangled interweb thingies!)
Regardless, the decrease in activity in the forums is something that many forums (on myriad topics) have experienced in recent times. Are Strava, FB, Twitter or Instagram causing the decrease? Maybe? Probably? Possibly? But, if we want the EN forums to succeed (or better yet, thrive), we as the users bear the responsibility of making that happen (and I say this as an infrequent poster so I am the sort of person who bears some of the blame). Plus, let's not lose sight of the reality that EN is a business and Rich and Patrick need to keep up with the times and expand their social media presence if they want their business to succeed and expand. All of this said, I regularly, routinely and commonly see people ask questions here and get a ton of answers and help. So, although there may not be the volume of discussions happening, there are some great discussions being had.
...here are some threads I've noticed in just the last 24 hours which either have or are asking for some substantive contributions - check 'em out, and contribute if you want. ...
I had only seen 1 of those. Maybe you could post a weekly "Als top threads"
Power user tip aka, what I do to keep up: go to the main page of whatever forum(s) you might be interested and check the "You are subscribed to this forum button". I then get as an email each of the posts which come into that forum, new and follow up alike. They flow into a separate EN folder I keep in my Mail program, so I can choose (or not) to review them en masse if/when I have time. EG, I DON'T subscribe to the Injury or Nutrition forums, but DO subscribe to "Race Execution" and "Race Selections and Reviews", reflecting my own personal interests.
relying on *just* me for threads to follow might miss some gems in, say, Ironman Texas or the Women's Forum
Comments
Like Bob, Tim, and many others, a prime value of EN for me @ this stage (year 6) is the quality of folks I interact with in the forums. Just as a reminder, here are some threads I've noticed in just the last 24 hours which either have or are asking for some substantive contributions - check 'em out, and contribute if you want. I've often been surprised that sometimes the shortest posts are the biggest gems!
http://members.endurancenation.us/Forums/tabid/57/aft/17969/Default.aspx#199065
http://members.endurancenation.us/Forums/tabid/57/aft/17968/Default.aspx#199077
http://members.endurancenation.us/Forums/tabid/57/aft/17963/Default.aspx#199050
http://members.endurancenation.us/Forums/tabid/57/aft/17961/Default.aspx#199037
Al, YOU are a gem. I had only seen 1 of those.
Maybe you could post a weekly "Als top threads"
- Strava vs. forums= easy. Workout deets are posted so no need to manually type "2 x 18' w/ avg BPM, power, etc..." Its all there. People scroll through and like and occasionally comment. Impersonal mostly, but Fast n easy. Forums= more work for poster and reader. Poster has to write out what they did for the WKO. No easy "like" function so you have to read what people write. Intended to be more interactive, but...
- I have noticed (re: JOS forums), in addition to less posting in overall in the threads, there is less interaction. ie Folks post their workout, and that's it. Granted, we're all time crunched, but there isn't much feedback going. It has turned into more of another workout log. Personally, I at least try to read through the posts and make some comments, even if its just "nice work", or "Ah bummer. you'll hit those intervals next time". But maybe that's cuz I'm JOS Bike captain.
- Its hard to determine what the solution is. It is always going to be fragmented I think. With newer folks not "getting" the forums, and other folks boycotting social media, there isn't ONE place to get everything done. Perhaps our Social media guru, Ms. Mariah can figure it out?
- I think it comes down to what you are doing and the intent of your post. To Tim's point, I wouldn't broadly talk about peeing on the bike on FB, but I would in the Forums. (IF I peed on the bike
I think the intent of the thread originally was about the dangers of competition based on volume. It's a negative feedback loop because it basically an arms race to nowhere, or worse, to injury.
The good news is, I am motivated to get outside and workout cause I want to put up volume numbers on the board. The bad news is that I find myself making decisions regarding workouts based on my rank on the board.
Funny example - years ago, when I was in my 20's, there was a bar in Pasadena called "Crown City Brewery". They had a loyalty plan where if you ordered 100 different beers, you got a tee-shirt and your name on a plaque on the wall. So, drinking 5 distinct beers per visit (which is a lot), it would take 20 visits to complete the century of beers. I got into this thing with a few buddies and pretty soon, without anyone saying anything, it became a race to finish 100 beers. I found myself sneaking over there alone to have 3 beers at lunch to either get a little lead or just keep up. At the end, I was sick of the place and over drinking beer for quite sometime.
So, I think the Strava paradox is that a volume based arms race is just gonna lead to burnout.
Here is an example of how sick/funny I am. Last week on Sunday before heading our for my last workout of the week, I jumped on the board. I noticed I was 1'07" behind Coach Strauss. So my goal was 1'08". I got back on my street at 1'05". So, I had to run back forth to hit 1'08". hahaha!
Feast your eyes on the result:
Some slightly more related commentary to build on Dino's incredible victory over Coach R.... I totally get it. We have a little competition at work called the Endurance Club. We track mileage for 3 sports, which is converted to run miles for easy comparison. I generally find someone who is close to me and target them as my "arch-nemesis". It gives me a little incentive to do just a little more Z3 on the bike or some Z1 miles on the run. One year I even *gasp* swam in the OS! But I didn't even try to compete with the guy training for an IM during my SC year. That mentally is the same I have for Strava. Find someone with a similar goal, or ability or training plan as you and use that to fuel some motivation. To me, its not a competition with "Joe 12 Hour IM", its "Suzy Q from CT who is riding on MY roads, just a little faster or longer than me". Find an appropriate target and aim!
thanks all for the points and perspective.
I don't do strava. I keep a fairly detailed spreadsheet of my workouts and their metrics. for me, delving into Strava and similar would foster further unhealthy addictive type A type behaviors. I keep my life organized enough as it is. I don't need to go further down that path.
I have missed the activity on the base page and in the forums. I am not active on them as much as I would like due to that job and life thing (as we all have). I think some of my decreased activity has been due to a shortage of stuff to reply to. I am hoping that the activity will flourish again bringing newer folks into the EN chatty fold.
Great discussion, thanks again to everyone!
Strava:
.
Like Kim, I've set goals for segments and have place targets on the backs of people, for motivation. One such guy is Frenchman in our tri club who's PR on one of my routes (MY ROUTE!!!) is legit and is serving as a very legit w/kg goal for me. I have a similar goal and person lined up on another climb, I'm stalking '12 Rich on some run routes, stuff like that. Besides, how can you not have a goal to beat the French at every opportunity
Strava, Forums, and Social Media:
When we started EN there was a suite of social media tools/platform and a suite of training log tools/platforms. Those existing items have evolved dramatically since then. When I last trained seriously, in 2011, I was using a state of the art Powertap Joule as my bike computer and a Garmin 305. Uploaded my stuff into WKO and maybe talked about it/shared it in the forums here or on Facebook. At that time Facebook actually showed me stuff from my friends and it was sorta fun. As a business user of FB, I could share a LOT with you about how FB has changed it's algorithms to dramatically change what FB is and is not...but that's another topic.
Then beginning in about 2012 Strava started coming on board. And Garmin starting building stuff (units, software, etc) that more easily pushed your workouts into cloud-based platforms where you could share it. And so updates to Strava started to replace "hey, check out my workout!" updates on FB and Twitter. See Stephanie's notes about compartmentalization. Nowadays, I think it's kinda passe' to post your tri-geek workouts on FB and Twitter and it's more the norm to do that stuff on Strava. Or post a selfie or cool training, this-is-my-hobby pic on Instagram, so you can retain FB as your platform for your anti-gun control, pro-climate change, cat video, clickbait fix
.
A new PM user buys a 510, is pretty much forced to use a Garmin plug-in to upload it, which then connects it to Garmin Connect, which asks him if he wants to sync it elsewhere = creates a Strava account, starts connecting with his local friends and using Strava however way they want to use Strava. This is just how the world works. If this athlete joins EN and doesn't also share his workout in one of the EN forums, as so many of us did back in 2010-2013, there's really not a lot we can do about that, frankly. Again, things are changing quickly.
But what we can do is recognize that a lot of EN athletes are using Strava, so we can create an EN Strava club, have a little fun by adding EnduranceNation.us behind our names, follow each other on that platform, and give each other kudos and comments around our shared experience of crushing ourselves within a platform that a lot of us are using anyway. And we can see that happening more and more, and see where it could lead, and I could start a thread in the forum where I can give my take on this potential trajectory with my coach-y coach-y hat on. I believe this is called leadership and is one of things you are paying us for
.
What you're paying us for
Here behind the curtain, these are the items that Rich, Patrick, Anne, Mariah, Brenda, and Grant, your EN Team, are 100% focused on, all. the. time:
So, yeah, just a little bit more than a training plan company with 140 characters drive-bys, at least for the EN athletes who continue to use the plans, participate in discussions, avail themselves of the resources we create, and plug themselves into all of these pre and onsite race actions.
The threads that Al shared above are examples of the quality, and rather unique to EN, stuff that's still happening just today and yesterday.
Thanks again, good stuff!
Yeah, I got that as a text at ~7p on Sunday...dick.
I am an introvert and am guilty of not starting posts or not commenting as much as I could. I do make a point to post my wko and what is going on that day for context. I do read all of the weekly OS posts to see how everyone else is doing. I will make a point to work on creating a dialog rather than just a wko update.
I just started using Strava. Mostly to see what other ENers are doing and a quick way to give props. I may also use it to compare my times on previous routs I have run. Any more would be redundant to what I am already tracking on TP and Garmin.
OMG! This just makes me laugh even harder!!! This is the fun stuff that makes EN great!
Hee hee hee!
Regarding Strava, I signed up based solely on the fact that we have the widget on the home page, and that widget provides me motivation to get a workout done. My N=1 experience is that Strava in no way detracts from my use of this site. I view them as totally different since Strava, to me, is a training log, and the EN forums are educational. My participation on FB also does not detract from my use of this site. As for Twitter, I am not on it, have no idea why I would want to be on it, and still do not really understand the whole EN twitter chat thing! Same with Instagram. (Writing this makes me feel like an old man telling the youngsters to get off my lawn with these new-fangled interweb thingies!)
Regardless, the decrease in activity in the forums is something that many forums (on myriad topics) have experienced in recent times. Are Strava, FB, Twitter or Instagram causing the decrease? Maybe? Probably? Possibly? But, if we want the EN forums to succeed (or better yet, thrive), we as the users bear the responsibility of making that happen (and I say this as an infrequent poster so I am the sort of person who bears some of the blame). Plus, let's not lose sight of the reality that EN is a business and Rich and Patrick need to keep up with the times and expand their social media presence if they want their business to succeed and expand. All of this said, I regularly, routinely and commonly see people ask questions here and get a ton of answers and help. So, although there may not be the volume of discussions happening, there are some great discussions being had.
Power user tip aka, what I do to keep up: go to the main page of whatever forum(s) you might be interested and check the "You are subscribed to this forum button". I then get as an email each of the posts which come into that forum, new and follow up alike. They flow into a separate EN folder I keep in my Mail program, so I can choose (or not) to review them en masse if/when I have time. EG, I DON'T subscribe to the Injury or Nutrition forums, but DO subscribe to "Race Execution" and "Race Selections and Reviews", reflecting my own personal interests.
relying on *just* me for threads to follow might miss some gems in, say, Ironman Texas or the Women's Forum