everyday ironman

Buckeye Outdoors (www.buckeyeoutdoors.com) is a FREE multisport training website created by Ben Deutschle, an Ohio based web developer and outdoor enthusiast who, at the request of a small group of co-workers back in November of 2005, began cobbling the site together so that they could all map and share their personal training routes.

Instantly, Ben found that not only were his coworkers USING the site as intended. He was now fielding a slew of “wouldn’t it be cool if” requests for site improvements. In response to these requests, he continued adding new features to his site over the months to follow.

Before long, Ben was surprised when he began noticing that people from outside of his office were creating user accounts and had begun entering their OWN routes into his website. Though the site had been publicly available online, Ben had not advertised it and had not anticipated it’s use outside of his immediate circle of friends and coworkers.

Eventually, the same type of “wouldn’t it be cool if” emails began flooding in from all over the country.  Ben continued his effort to improve and enhance the site, incorporating the ideas of his new and growing user base.

And so the site was developed, over the next 4 years, based primarily on direct user feedback and driven by Ben’s passion for the sport and his commitment to providing the best possible tool for designing and tracking multisport training plans.  Today, the Buckeye Outdoors training website has over 16,000 registered subscribers living (and training) all over the world!

April of 2010 marked Buckeye Ourdoors’ first major upgrade, which involved transitioning the entire site to a unique programming foundation which allows more design flexibility and closer customization to the needs of its users.  The site is a highly functional and rapidly evolving work in progress, based on the following core functions.

Training Plan Design – You can design and modify your own training plan, dragging and dropping standard or custom workouts by the day or by the week. Make your training plan publicly available to other users or choose another user’s public plan and adopt it as your own.

Workout Log – Add and record your workouts either manually or by syncing with your (compatible) Garmin device. Record your favorite training routes. Track equipment mileage. Set specific training goals and track your progress toward their achievement.

Social Networking – Connect with your friends, view their training calendars and follow their progress, lending support through comments in the site’s ‘Event Stream.’ Create virtual teams and clubs. Extend or accept a public ‘challenge’ and measure yourself against your training community.

Nutrition – Track your diet using the site’s comprehensive food database, by adding your own custom foods and by grouping individual foods into ‘meals.’

Reports – Chart your progress visually using the site’s comprehensive collection of graphs and reports.

Customization – Choose from one of 25 preset color themes to suit your individual personality.

According to Ben, Buckeye Outdoors will continue to be a work in progress. On the average, 4 new features are added every month, a majority of which are driven by direct user feedback and suggestions.

On occasion, an upgrade or enhancement may be so specific that only the user who requested it knows that it exists at first.  Then, as other users discover and share it, the feature is adopted into the Buckeye community. For this reason, not only has the site become a reliable and incredibly useful tool for multisport training. Each use of the program offers an element of adventure and discovery as the site evolves, in real time, with our sport.

New features on the horizon will include the ability to record and associate videos (and video ‘comments’) with individual workouts and an array of social networking tools, including easy integration with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Buckeye Outdoors is well worth a test drive, even if you are already using (and probably paying for) another comparable training site.  For the full effect, grab a bunch of your friends, log on together and train as a team.  You will find that the social networking aspect of the site is invaluable, especially on those days when you just can’t seem to get out the door for your daily run.  Knowing that your ‘teammates’ are watching can be a big motivator.  Make sure you drop Ben a line (via the site’s ‘Contact’ page) and let him know what you think of the site.  Share your ideas regarding new features and improvements and you may be surprised by how quickly the ‘good ones’ are implemented.

One very small caveat regarding the Buckeye Outdoors website.  According to Ben, Internet Explorer has a hard time processing JavaScript, the programming language upon which the site relies pretty heavily.  If you are using Internet Explorer, you will find that the site runs a LOT faster if you also install Google’s ‘Chrome Frames‘ plugin.  Or, to avoid the Internet Explorer ‘speed issue’ altogether, simply download an alternative browser, like Mozilla Firefox, and call the website up from there for lightning fast performance.

Happy Training!