 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 | ||||||||
 | ||||||||
|
If you are using a downloading monitor with PC Coach, when you first download, the workouts appear on your calendar as “Imported Data”. While you can leave it like that, you are missing out on a lot of the fun unless you link it to a workout.
In PC Coach parlance, workouts are entries that are placed on your calendar to create a context for your actual real-world workouts. They provide places to enter your data by hand. If you are importing from a monitor, these get filled in automatically when you link the results of the download to the workout.
Workouts can be put on the PC Coach calendar before you do them. This happens when you follow one of the training plans. In this case, the ‘planned’ section in the Workout View is already filled in for you, with the customized recommendation. Also, the workout is there and ready for you to link, or attach, the downloaded data after you complete the workout. This is the easiest case, because all you need to do is drag the “Imported Data” icon and drop in onto the workout icon. Mission accomplished – the ‘actuals’ section gets filled in automatically, and the workout gets marked as ‘completed’.
If you are not following a training plan, you can still put workouts on the calendar ahead of time, as a planning step. You can fill in the planned data, too, if you like, and this can help you upload the workout parameters to the watch. Having the workout already on the calendar allows the simple drag and drop step to link the imported data to it.
If you do not have a plan worked out in advance, or at least, not within PC Coach, then you can link your imported data to a workout from the Imported Data View.
On the PC Coach calendar, if you double click a workout, it opens the Workout View. But if the entry is an ‘Imported Data’ holder, double clicking opens the Imported Data View, showing the graph of the data you downloaded. From this view, you can click on the “Link” button at the top (indicated with an arrow in the image below), and a very short wizard lets you select the type of workout that best describes your exercise. This adds a workout of that type to your calendar, links the imported data to it, fills in all the fields and marks it as ‘completed’.
There are some very good reasons to take the time to ‘Link Your Imported Data’. Here are just a few.
Once linked, the workout type you have chosen provides a context – in other words, you can tell from the Workout View description whether the workout included intervals, and if so what the interval times, paces and heart rates were. If it was a tempo, steady state, or AT style workout, you will see how many minutes you spent in the work zone, excluding warmup and cooldown. Race workouts are designed to show your splits and finish time.
If you want to use the Report Graph functions of PC Coach, it is important to link your data, because the workouts are the cornerstone of the reports function. Once linked, you can create custom reports that show any of the captured data, such as calories or miles per week, in a graph with calendar time along the bottom. Imported Data holders are not available for long term graphing; since there is no context for the data, it would be difficult or impossible to know what graph to assign the data to. Once you make the link, all of that data flows right into your long-term graphs.
If you do more than one sport, linking to a workout becomes even more important because the context includes which sport was done. This helps especially with long term graphs, because it allows you to make reports for weekly mileage in cycling separate from running, for example.
If you are following a training plan, you have the advantage of a planned section that is filled in for you. Whether you create your own plan or follow one of ours, the link gives you the opportunity to compare planned to actual to see how well you are following the plan.