2010 January Jam Concludes
Congratulations, the 2010 January Jam is over!
Just a reminder, please submit your yardage for the month by February 8th. If you need help, please contact us and we would be happy to assist you.
Best regards,
The January Jam team
Submitting & Saving Workout Tips
Tip # 1
Follow these steps if you're participating in the January Jam and you want the quickest way to enter your total distance swum. (We'd prefer if you enter it set by set so it becomes a quality workout in the database, but we understand everyone's time constraints.):
Step 1:
Workout Name: It's up to you
Pool Type: Enter whatever distance type you prefer (the results page
will convert it automatically to yards)
Workout Category: Pick what best applies
Visible: choose "no" since this would not be a workout another swimmer
would want to search for in the database.
Step 2:
Set Type: Swim
Stroke: Up to you
Repetition: 1
Distance: whatever distance you swam using meters or yards depending
what you selected in the previous step
Interval: doesn't really matter but however long you swam (in minutes)
Click the "next" button
Step 3:
Verify what's been entered is correct, and click "finish"
Step 4:
On the confirmation page, click the "workout" link, and then click the
"save" link at the top of the workout. Enter the date you completed the
workout.
Tip # 2
If you tend to do the same workout each day, you could follow these
steps to save time:
Instead of submitting the workout each time, you could also just log
into your account, and go to "View your completed workouts". Select the
workout you want to save again and just save it with the date(s) you've
completed it.
Tip # 3
Use the Search Swim Workouts functionality to find a workout, print it out and bring it to the pool. Once you complete it simply log in and "save" the workout.
Tip # 4
If you are submitting a workout for the Jam, in addition to submitting the workout you must also "save" it.
January Jammers - Steps to Submit a Workout
Click here for steps to submit a workout.
Updated January Jam Results Pages
Updated 1/7/10:
The age group and team affiliation reports have been updated as well.
I added functionality to the January Jam results pages so you could click on a users name and view the workouts they completed. Currently, I only added it to the distance report, but I'll add it to the other reports shortly.
For those Registered with Dynoswim...
Especially, January Jammers...
Please go into your profile (Login => manage your Dynoswim account => Edit your profile =>) then, Choose your affiliation from the pull down menu
If your team affiliation is not listed, then please send us the name of your team through the Contact Us link.
Thanks Dynoswim!
Hi Dynoswim,
I just wanted to write a short note to say thank you.
I am writing from Australia and have been using your site for a couple of months to find and log swim workouts. It is winter here, and most pools around where I live in a town about midway between Sydney and Brisbane are closed, and most (adult) squads are on their winter hiatus.
So it was your site for workouts in preparation for the swim I completed at the weekend.
And as I said, thank you, because I completed the 8 kilometre Townsville/Magnetic Island swim in 2hrs 25 minutes. (Have a look at their site - http://www.magneticislandswim.com.au)
Apart from the distance, the swim has some additional 'challenges'. As well as the risk of sharks and crocodiles (2008 was the first year the swim was done without cages), there is also a risk of Irukandji Jellyfish - a tiny little critter that can kill a adult pretty quickly but it was not their season and the organisers assured that they were unlikely to worry the swimmers.
But alas finished with all limbs intact in a time a bit slower than I hoped (but put that down to a fair bit of chop for a couple of kilometres). I am just a middle of the pack 40 year + swimmer and was very pleased just to make the distance.
Your site has been fantastic and I have recommended it to a couple of friends who train through the winter and just thought you might like the positive feedback.
Regards,
Dean Hancock, Coffs Harbour, Australia
January Jammers...
If your creativity is lacking don't hesitate to use one of over 1500 workouts found within the Dynoswim workouts database. You could search by a variety of criteria - length by time or distance of practice, workout category (sprint, butterfly, etc.), or pool type. If you tried and enjoyed someone else's workout, leave them a comment and let them know. You can also use those comments to tell us how you've modified an existing workout.
January Jam - Everybody in the water!
For those of that have, thanks for registering for the 2009 January Jam - MS Plunge for Parcells. For those of you that haven't, please register now that January 1st is upon us. You will notice that the total distances of your "saved" workouts will now display on the results pages. If you're new to the Dynoswim.com website please refer to this document (http://www.dynoswim.com/files/dynoswim-workout-guide.pdf) that will help you with entering your own swim workouts. If you have any questions/problems when entering a workout, use the "Contact Us" form on the website and someone will respond to you shortly.
Please encourage your fellow swimmers to sign up for this event as well. Registration will remain open until the end of the month as the system will allow you to enter and save workouts from the past.
Happy New Year!
Your Dynoswim / January Jam Team
Did you know...?
Dynoswim has added a new workout category for "marathon" swimmers to save and share workouts. Experienced Channel swimmers around the world like Marcy MacDonald will be adding and sharing workouts specifically for the JANUARY JAM and marathon preparation.
THE 2009 JANUARY JAM: BEGINS IN THREE DAYS!
Dear Dynoswimmers,
Training for a big swim? Need to get back into shape? Feeling guilty from too many holiday treats? Just plain old competitive?
THE 2009 JANUARY JAM: MS PLUNGE FOR PARCELLS BEGINS IN THREE DAYS!
On January 1st, JANUARY JAM participants from all over the world will track their yardage for the entire month to see who can "jam" the most yards into 31 days. The St. Vincent's Medical Center Foundation's January Jam: MS Plunge for Parcells was created to promote fitness through swimming while raising money for the Dave Parcells MS Fund.
In 2007, Dave Parcells passed away suddenly at the age of 49 while doing what he loved: swimming the Tampa Bay marathon. Dave was known for his accomplishments as a long distance athlete and Channel swimmer, but not many people knew that just months before he died, Dave was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Even while struggling with his personal challenges and fears for the future, Dave had a dream to set up a fund to support MS patients and their families with expenses not covered by insurance as they undergo treatment for MS. Unfortunately he passed away before fulfilling this dream. This event will help realize his goal and at the same time present a challenge Dave would have enjoyed - to jam as much yardage as possible into one month.
2008 was the January Jam's inaugural year and not surprisingly, there were eight English Channel swimmers and at least six participants who were attempting the English Channel or Swim Across the Sound in the upcoming summer. David Blanke of Austin, Texas set the high water mark, covering over 255,070 yards in the 31 days. David used his Jam yardage to prepare for a number of national and international marathon swims including Cook Strait (the body of water separating the North and South islands of New Zealand), a husband-wife relay at the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, and the Chicago Shoreline Marathon. Marcy MacDonald was second with 196,900 yards.
Wishing you all happy and healthy holidays,
Dean, Josh, Judi, Liz, and Kristen - Your Dynoswim / January Jam Team
Workout Comments
We just added a new workout comments feature to the site. This allows you to provide feedback on any workout available on the site. If you really enjoyed a workout, why not leave a comment for the workout author? Also, if you modified a workout to make it more interesting, let the Dynoswim community know about it. Prior to submitting a comment you must first login to your account. If you don't have an account, create one now. This only takes a minute and it's free! In the coming weeks additional features will be implemented, stay tuned!
New England LMSC Newsletter
Nate McBride from the West Side Swim Club says:
"Heya...just wanted to let ya know that Dynoswim made the New England LMSC newsletter...see the last page!"
Thanks Nate!
Go Swim Videos!
We're pleased to announce a partnership between Go Swim and Dynoswim. Dynoswim.com is now offering our website visitors the opportunity to view Go Swim's video player. The Go Swim video player is known throughout the swimming community as among the best resources for swimming drills and examples on proper technique and good form. You can view these videos by clicking Swim Drill Videos on your left navigation.
Please comment below and let us know how you like it!
Save Your Completed Workouts!
Use Dynoswim's workout log!
It's free; it's easy.
If you've completed a workout in the database don't forget to "save it as completed". By saving workouts that you complete you could keep track of your monthly and yearly totals. If you aren't tracking your workouts already create a Dynoswim account and start keeping track today!
2007 Statistics
We put together some interesting 2007 year end statistics. We are quite pleased with the growth of the site this past year. Please continue using Dynoswim as your swimming workout resource. Let's surpass these numbers by a large margin next year!
- Workouts Submitted: 405
- Workouts Saved as Completed: 608
- Most times a workout was printed: 13
(http://dynoswim.com/freestyleFrenzy.php?workoutId=733) - Most times a unique workout was saved: 7
(http://dynoswim.com/freestyleFrenzy.php?workoutId=725)
Added Three New Workout Categories
We recently added three new swim workout categories to the workout database. Initially, we had only a stroke category for all stroke swim workouts. We added a backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly category. We then went through the 177 stroke workouts, and if we saw fit reassigned them to the new categories. Going forward, if the focus of the workout is a backstroke, breaststroke or butterfly set, please categorize it as such. If the workout is a mix of strokes, then the stroke category should apply. Thanks to Cyber-Dynoswimmer, Greg Rasmussen for the suggestion.
New Option When Creating a Workout
We recently introduced a new feature on the site that will serve
multiple purposes. When creating a workout, we've added a "visible"
selection. What this means is you have the option to add a workout to
the database, but not make it searchable to the Dynoswim.com community.
Why would you want to do this? One reason might be that you completed a workout at practice which your coach added to the database, but you might have arrived early/late and want to track your distance. Another example would be if you swam a mile in the open water and want to track your distance. Some other creative uses could be that you swam in a meet, and want to track each race along with your time.
Once you submitted the workout, you still won't have access to edit it regardless of the "visible" field selection. If it's not visible, you won't be able to search it, but you could find it in your "view your submitted workouts" page.
RSS Feeds for Saved and Submitted Workouts
We've added RSS Feeds of your saved workouts (save as completed), and submitted workouts. You could access your individual feed URLs when you log into your account. For those of you that wish to learn more about RSS feeds and how Dynoswim uses them check our our new FAQ item.
We also updated the completed workouts chart from a bar graph, to a line graph. Some users had saved multiple years worth of data, and a line graph allows a simpler view when you have multiple years of data.
Updated Search Swim Workout Results Page
Now that we have more than 850 swim workouts in the database we figured we needed a better way to navigate through the various pages of workouts. Previously, we only had the ability to navigate one page at a time from start to end which ended up being a tedious process if you wanted to view all the workouts (over 85 pages). Now you could easily skip to the end, or view various pages in-between. Also we applied a new look to the page which hopefully will make it a bit easier to read. Feel free to leave any comments below.
If you don't see the changes right away hold down the shift key, and press F5.
Workout RSS Feed for Your Website
Does your swim team have it's own website? Are you a swimmer or triathlete that likes to keep track of your swim workouts on your blog? If so we'd like to help display your workouts on your website using Dynoswim.com. We could create a custom RSS feed for you that would display your workouts submitted into the database in your website. To see this in action check out the sidebar at westportswimclub.org labeled "Workouts". If you're interested in adding this free functionality to your website, please contact us.
Completed Workouts Chart
Now you can view a chart of your monthly distances year over year. Access this feature by going into your profile and clicking the "View your completed workouts chart" link at the bottom of the page.
If you don't have a dynoswim account you could create a free one by clicking here. Once you create an account you could save your completed workouts and track the distances using your dynoswim account. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions....
Changing the Order of Workout Sets
For those of you that submit workouts, we've enhanced the create workout functionality to allow ordering of the workout sets.
Completed Workouts
Dynoswimmers have saved 67 different workouts as completed thus far in 2007. If you've completed a workout in the database don't forget to "save it as completed". By saving workouts that you complete you could keep track of your monthly and yearly totals. If you aren't tracking your workouts already create a Dynoswim account and start keeping track today!
For those of you using this feature leave the total yards or meters that you've completed thus far in the comments.
Updated: View Your Submitted Workouts
For those of you who have submitted workouts into the Dynoswim database we think you'll like the improved "View Your Submitted Workouts" tab interface. We display your submitted workouts into separate year tabs. We also display the number of users who have saved your workout as completed. We hope these enhancements makes the site more usable. Again feel free to leave a comment with any feedback, or features you think would benefit the Dynoswim community. For those of you who haven't created a workout this is what the interface looks like:
Note: You could access this page from within your profile page, the link is located at the bottom of the page labeled "View your submitted workouts".
New: Search Swim Workouts by Time
We've updated the search swim workouts tool, so you can now search swim workouts by "Total Time". For the new "Total Time" field, you enter the time in minutes, and it will return all workouts 15 minutes greater, and 15 minutes less than the time you entered.
Updated Website Features
We want to mention a couple of minor enhancements made to the website recently. The first change is the "View Completed Workouts" page which now displays the data in a tabular format (each tab corresponds to the year in which you saved workouts).
The second change corresponds to an extra step we added upon "saving a workout as completed". Once you click save you'll come to a screen where you could enter the date in which the workout was completed. Say for example you completed a workout on November 20th, but don't get around to saving it until December 21st. Prior to this change it would show up in your November monthly totals, wherein now you could choose the proper date you completed the workout.
We hope these enhancements help you better utilize Dynoswim.com as a training tool. Please continue to provide us feedback, and leave any comments/suggestions to these two features below.
Site Enhancements
We've made a couple more enhancements to the website today. The 1st change is we've changed the site layout from 2 columns to 3 columns. The 2nd change is adding a "Recent Comments" section to the far right navigation (below the ads). The "Recent Comments" should help keep site visitors aware of recent comments on posts that are no longer at the top of the page. If you come across any problems with the site due to the changes that took place today please let us know in the comments section of this post.
Completed Workouts
We've added another new feature to the website that will allow you to keep track of your completed swim workouts. It also gives you a monthly breakdown of your completed workouts, and monthly/yearly totals of your distances swam. When viewing a workout you'll have an additional link at the top labeled "save as my completed workout", once clicked that workout will be saved in your profile as completed. To view your completed workouts, log into your Dynoswim account, and click the "edit" link on the left to view your profile information, at the bottom you'll see a link labeled "View your completed workouts".
Please note to use these features you'll need to be signed into your Dynoswim account. If you don't have an account, create one today! Feel free to leave a comment on your experiences with this feature, or any ideas you might have on how to expand upon it.
Swimming Background
We've added a "Swimming Background" section to your Dynoswim account. Help us get a better idea of what kind of swimming background our Dynoswimmers have. To add this information to your profile you must first log into your Dynoswim account, and then click the "edit" link to access your account details.
New Dynoswim Web Features
We are now displaying the approximate workout time when viewing a workout.
ATTENTION: Cyber-Dynoswimmers!
Please be sure to fill in your country of residence next time you login to your account.
Thanks!
New Dynoswim Web Features
Take a look at some new features in our Search Workouts function. You can print directly from the selected workout; your workout will come out in perfect form. You can also e-mail your selected workouts directly to your friends simply by clicking on the e-mail link right on the workout page.
Check it out, and keep sending us comments on how you'd like us to improve the site!
Site Maintenance
We apologize for any downtime you might have experienced with the website today. We are currently in the process of migrating our website to a new web hosting company.
Dynoswim.com Website Tip
If you've created a Dynoswim account, and submitted workouts to the Dynoswim database you could view all your submitted Dynoswim workouts by doing the following:
- Log into your Dynoswim account
- Once you're logged in, click the "edit" link in the confirmation message or click on the "edit" link in the Dynoswim Account Login box
- At the bottom of the page, click the "View your submitted workouts" link to see all the workouts you submitted to the database
Visitors and Registered Users
If you're using Dynoswim's workouts database, why not enter your own favorite swimming workouts? Or if you have an important set you'd like to share with us, add that too. Spread the wealth of knowledge, if you have it, share it! We do.