Possibly the best site around?

The community aspect of this site is what makes it the best triathlon-specific site, especially for those of us relatively new to the sport. Most of us are self-coached. We rely on advice from a diverse community of individuals and information from widely varied resources as we develop training plans, race strategies, and evaluate our progress in hopes of improving our performance each time we race. The tools on this web site make this possible.

I see training for multisport events as a continuous cycle that begins with setting short and long term goals. Once the goals are identified a structured plan is developed to allow the athlete to meet them. As the plan is executed, the athlete must track the progress, and following the culmination of the plan and the performance in the actual event, the athlete evaluates the results. This leads to identification of new goals and the cycle starts over again. At all points throughout this cycle, interaction with a community of people provides vital input into the process, along with support and encouragement necessary to keep the athlete going.

So, according to this model, the critical elements for the self-coached athlete include setting goals, structured planning, tracking progress, evaluation of results, community input. When you consider what BT provides its members, you realize that it supports the athlete at all critical points in the training/racing cycle.

--Discussion forums and article library provide the community interaction, encouragement and support. This encouragement often inspires athletes to set a goal they otherwise might not have considered.
- Training plans provide guidelines for structured planning
- Training logs provide the ability to track progress and evaluate training plan, making adjustments when needed
- Race reports provide the mechanism to evaluate your performance and focus on improvements for the next training/racing cycle.

Finally, the philosophy of the site and the quality of the tools it provides combine to make it the best site around, not to mention that everything on the site is freely available! For example:

-While forums on other triathlon sites often embrace elitist snobbery and flaming responses, the BT forum is always a positive and supportive discussion. When disagreements do arise, they do not descend into personal attacks or soap box pronouncements.

-Training Plans are well thought out and provide an easy set of guidelines for building a structured training plan. These plans can be used out of the box, or tailored to fit each athlete's personal goals, strengths, and weaknesses. Additionally, the site administrator is always soliciting ideas for new training plans to be added to the existing library.

-The training logs are the very best of any that I've looked at. There is NOTHING that comes close in the free online training logs, and the fee-based log services I've looked at are not any better than what Ron has set up. No question in my mind that this is the best value out there.

-The race report templates are also very unique. Other sites have race reports which are often rambling (though entertaining) diatribes about a person's race experience. The templates on this site force you to objectively evaluate your performance, consider what you did right and what you can do to improve next time.

I still visit other triathlon-related sites often (TriNewbies, Slowtwitch, Crucible, Gordo's World) and I've even subscribed to other online services that offer training plans, logs, evaluation tools, and forums for a fee. But, without a doubt, I think that BT provides the best all-around tool as a training resource.

I fell into this website by accident... and it's the best thing that's happened to my tri training. What a happy accident!! I'm not familiar with other websites and what they offer, so I can't compare, but for me... there is no "possibly" about it. Sometimes I think to myself... I'm doing IMAZ (2006), and I feel like I would never have dreamed of that goal without this site, nor would I have hopes to achieve it, either.

As always, kudos to Ron!!!

Dana