We’ve improved sharing on Smashrun! Now you can choose between three different images to share on Facebook or Twitter, and highlight the information that matters most for that run.

Runs with GPS

Take advantage of the Smashrun Pro map and share a more detailed visualization of your running route. Choose to display your pace graph, elevation profile, or HR data depending on the type of run.

For example, intervals tend to look better when visualized by pace.

Whereas, trail runs are often better viewed with an elevation profile.

Footpod runs

Similar to our original format for shared runs, activities that only contain pace data and lack GPS can be shared as pace graphs including the HR, if available. You can also choose to share GPS runs this way, if you don’t want to publicly post your map.

Manual entries or treadmill runs

And if you happened to run indoors or don’t want to share your route/pace graph, due to bad GPS, you can also share a watch face with two data fields including the run’s notables. And if there are more than 5 notables, we’ll take the top 5 🙂

Your privacy settings will still apply to how you share your runs. And you can share the same run in different ways depending on what you want to post on Facebook or Twitter. Currently, the Facebook sharing option will now also allow you to post a run to a group instead of just your timeline. Win!

From the share modal, you can also control how you want to be prompted to share your runs. You can choose to be prompted after each new run, after only particularly good runs, or to never be prompted at all.

Regardless of which option you choose you can always manually share a run by clicking on the share icon from your “By run” or “Run list” page.

Questions about sharing? Leave us a comment or send us an email at hi@smashrun.com.

Now go share some great runs!

This week, we released some changes to Social making it easier for you to interact with your friends and followers, view your notifications, and add or invite your friends on mobile!

We decided to disable the Explore view on mobile for now, but we are working on releasing a modified mobile-friendly version. Additionally, if you need to update your Social privacy settings, you can do it by clicking the menu on the top-right, then choose “Privacy Settings”. Remember that you’ll need to select one of four social configuration options in order to use or disable Social.

You’ll find the Social and Notification buttons at the bottom of the Overview pages.

Once you load Social, you can switch activity feeds by clicking on the top left icon for the current view. You can also click on user profile photos to load their bio and quick stats.

To view different time periods when comparing Quick Stats or Trends, just click any of the Trailing Sum options.

As always, if you have any questions or if you happen to come across any issues, please don’t hesitate to email us at hi@smashrun.com 🙂

Smashrun’s social features are designed to enable you to find similar runners. Whether you’re looking for runners within your demographic or runners who follow a similar training pattern, there are several ways you can compare your training to other runners on Smashrun.

This is useful for a couple reasons:

• You can follow runners who are on a similar training cycle.
• You can benchmark your best times against runners within your demographic.
• You can connect with runners based on mutual goals or affinity (like being socially motivated!)

Make the most of Social

Load Similar Runners to discover runners who overlap with you in terms of pace and training volume, regardless of demographic. Similarity is calculated based on training history over the past year. As a result, your similar runners may change because everyone has different training cycles and train for different events.

You can learn about a particular runner by clicking on their username, which loads their Quick Stats; this is why it’s nice to have a runner bio!

Quick Stats lets you compare your Average Distance Per Week, Average Speed, Longest Run, etc. over the trailing 7-days, 30-days, 90-days, and 1-year. You can visit that runner’s profile by clicking their name, or by clicking the link to the their latest run or last race.

Switch the trailing sum period to see how your training comparison has changed over the past year.

If you’re a Smashrun Pro user, you can also compare your Trends. The Trends view plots historical changes in weekly distance, running frequency, and speed over time. It provides better context when comparing your training to someone else’s as opposed to focusing on individual metrics in a given period, because it’s easier to tell when someone is building a base, running more frequently, or doing more speedwork.

Get a quick glance analysis of someone’s overall training.

Within Similar Runners, you can also switch to the Explore view. Explore compares you to all runners within a certain group. So, if you’re viewing Similar Runners, then click Explore, it plots you and similar runners on a graph that compares your fastest run of a certain distance over your average distance per week in a given period.

See how closely you’re performing to runners training similarly.

The Explore view is an easy way of seeing who’s running the most and who’s capable of running a certain distance faster than a given pace. It might also give you some insight into how someone might have accomplished their fastest 10k. All you need to do is click on a user to see how their training compares based on their Quick Stats!

In the next couple of days, we’ll put together a knowledge base for everything related to social (woo!) and we’ll post a link on the blog once it’s ready.

Now go invite some friends and create your own personal social feed… or get to know some socially motivated runners! 🙂

One of things we’ve always liked about Smashrun is that it’s a personal dashboard for your running. Your stats are a testament to your training, and every run you’ve ever logged on Smashrun is displayed within the context of how you’ve evolved as a runner since the day you registered. Some of your hard runs probably deserved recognition. Perhaps, other runners could’ve learned from your training. Maybe a Smashrunner ran the same race you did, but you never knew…

Community is a big part of what makes running enjoyable and, while we’ve always been happy with Smashrun being a personal experience, our shared running experiences also deserve a home within Smashrun. This is why we built Social.

Smashrun’s social features adopts privacy by design. If you don’t want to be social, you don’t have to be. If you only want to interact with your friends and no one else, you can. And if you want to discover runners who train the same way you do, you can do that as well!

To get started, you’ll need to choose one of four social configurations: (1) Socially Motivated, (2) Open Social, (3) Closed Social, or (4) Private.

Private turns off all social functionalities – no one can find you or view your activities, you can’t friend or follow anyone, and you can’t compare your stats to other runners . You’re basically incognito.

Closed Social lets you connect only with people you explicitly allow, such as your friends. You can’t follow anyone, you won’t be able to view runners in your demographic, and you can’t view similar runners.

Open Social lets you interact with everyone who wants to be social. You can friend or follow anyone, you can see runners in your demographic, and you can see similar runners.

Socially Motivated is the same as Open Social, but we let your friends or followers know when you’ve had a great run 🙂

Once you’ve chosen a setting, you’ll be able to see your different activity feeds within Social. Any notifications you receive will show up on your Overview page. You’ll also be able to click on a username to view that runner’s profile modal, which displays their bio, profile summary, quick stats and trends, and see how you compare to that runner.

Tomorrow, we’ll post more about Similar Runners, the Explore section, Quick Stats, and Trends.

See you on Social!

Note: The “Friends” drop-down will now only include your friends and not the people you follow. Follows will only exist within the Social feeds.

An important part of successful race preparation is understanding what worked in the past, what didn’t, and what can be improved. A great way to do that is to use the Analyze Run View to learn from specific races, in combination with your stats dashboard.

Experienced runners generally require between 12-16 weeks of preparation before a half or a marathon. 5k plans are usually shorter (9-12 weeks) and some marathon training plans go as long as 20-30 weeks. This means that the trailing 90-days before a race can provide a wide variety of perspectives into your training.

A quick refresher on the Analyze Run View.

To load the Analyze Run View, click the analyze button, and click on a recent race or best performing run. You can also access it by clicking on any of your PR’s within PR Progress.

The Analyze Run View is broken down into performance, conditions, training volume, and training runs in the past 90 days. The values you might expect and the distribution of your runs will vary depending on the run you’re viewing. Here’s how it works.

Remember that you can highlight the runs themselves and you can go to the run, by clicking on its matching white box on the time scale. The cool thing about this is that you can see when you ran your long runs or, if you’re viewing your pace distribution, when you did most of your speedwork.

Here’s how you make the most of your analysis.

When evaluating your training, only compare runs of similar distance and conditions. Looking at weeks of speedwork dedicated to improving a fast 5k probably won’t teach you the best way to race a half. And different race distances require different analysis.

• When you look at a marathon, consider your training volume (average distance/week or duration/week). Visualize runs by distance – what was the longest run you did prior to your race/tune-up and what percentage of your runs were long? You can even see how much of your trailing 90-days were in your aerobic vs. anaerobic zone – just filter your training runs by pace and/or heart rate.
• For shorter races, it might be more useful to look at a distribution of your average pace or SPI. Race-specific training for a 5k or 10k tends to have more tempos, intervals, and time trials, which makes pace a good measure of how you’re progressing.

Additionally, since the Analyze Run View relies on the trailing 90 days leading up to a run, training gaps and tapering will average down your training volume and you could inadvertently exclude parts of the peak of your training.

To exclude the taper prior to a marathon or half, do a *tune-up run, or race a shorter event than your target distance. A tune-up is often 4-6 weeks out before race day, and runners usually limit their taper before a tune-up. As a result, the trailing 90 days leading up to it is a better representation of your training.

We don’t always take the time to look back over our training after we’ve run the race, but the best lessons come from previous experience. When we’re aiming for a PR, it’s nice to have something like the Analyze Run View to learn from our best runs and, with a tune-up, it’s an ideal way to measure our progress to see if we’re on target.

*If you need some ideas for adding a tune-up to your training schedule, RunnersConnect has a great blog post on how to incorporate tune-up races into your training.