Discussion: training volume of attackpoint users

clem says:

On the subject of geeked out comments/questions - here is one...

Any idea about the mean training volume of AP users over time? With Swampfox in the stratosphere and lots of other ambitious types all around the world, it seems like 11 hours per week is the new 6. I imagine a graph would be kind of interesting...

Actually, it seems like 5.5 is the same old 5.5, due to more people logging at the low end too. clearly there is a seasonal effect though.



PS. oooh, better graphs... ;-)

Cool! Also nice to see the number of users continuously rising!

Esp. in '05. Plus There definitely seems to be a new-year's resolution effect of a spike at the beginning of the year. (Or a I-want-to-log-a-whole-year effect.)

Thanks!! Ditto Boris -- good to see the active user base increasing--in agregate, that is a lot of training.

I hope that that Ken doesn't deceide to sell AP to one of the crowd of voracious PE funds out there. Because it is a hot property! :)

It also looks like the number of users drops significantly every summer. Are these students?

I would guess it's due to people travelling. Students typically have more time to train in the summer (at least I do).

The travel may not stop the training, but it may stop the logging... E.g. even Sam didn't log her WOC '05 week

I bet this beats DOW and NaSdAQ everages :)

The RSI says that this rally has got some legs and the Bollinger bands point to a breakout. Buy, buy, BUY!!

(Not that I believe in technical analysis, mind you.)

But one question remains unanswered... does attackpoint actually motivate people to train more? If we look at a graph of individual attackpointers' training volume over the years and see increase with time, will that only show correlation or also causality?

You need a control group to figure that out.

(Rereading that, I guess it's worth mentioning that it really isn't intended as a pun. You do have to have something to compare with.)

The problem is actually worse than that: for a really clean identification of the Attackpoint effect, you need the control group to be otherwise identical to the treatment group except insofar as they didn't get to sign up for Attackpoint. That is, they should be people who tried to sign up for Attackpoint but were rejected by the system at random.

It's possible the increasing awareness of Attackpoint across different parts of the world could be used as an instrument if this doesn't otherwise affect training directly. But still, I don't really like that identification strategy. This is why social sciences are hard... :)

To answer Boris on individual level: it motivates me to train, not more in volume, but produce better quality training and competitive results.

Time for the AP testimonials...

"Before I met AP, I was a wretch, stumbling from..."

Well, this isn't mine but you can run with it.

Yes it does more or less, but it helps to keep you motivated to train at all and then compare your perfomance with others.

Those anecdotes prove nothing: it could be that the kind of people who sign up for Attackpoint would have found some other way of motivating themselves without AP.

AP is a decent analytical tool for your training, not sure it motivates me when I am hurt though...

I agree with Greg, that posting and using Attackpoint for discussions increases the fun to train. Instead of logging in my Excel file only, I put it on AP.

There is some the effect of being out there and being seen plus the encouragement of seeing what others do. I started posting my training two days before the new AP went up. I enjoy it very much. And sometimes while I run I think, ok, I add another loop or some hill sprints, it will raise the graph a little bit.

Yes, this is not scientific, it is pure subjective experience. Fine with me. What counts is not only more training, but also smarter training, something which AP helps to do. I share the experience with other people and adjust my practice of running, find new formats and different ways of training.