Find your community

Working out alone is often therapeutic and thought-clensing, however, everything isn't better in isolation. Communicating with friends and regularly seeing familiar faces is what makes us human. That's why easy-to-use connection tools are built into SportTracks.

This blog post is giving you an assignment: You need to connect with some fellow SportTracks users — whether they're in town or on the opposite side of the planet.

Why should you connect?

• Encouragement and community make endurance training more fun
• If you're having more fun, you'll enjoy what you're doing a lot more
• If you enjoy what you're doing more, you'll improve faster!

The following instructions only take a couple of minutes to complete, yet they dramatically improve all of your training efforts. ;)

1) Get on the map

First, set your location in SportTracks. Click your profile in the upper right corner, click the My account button, and then click the Location button:

Next, enter your location, select the correct option, and hit Save:

PRO TIP: You can move the pin on the map to the exact spot you want.

2) Find some amigos

Click your profile in the upper right corner again, but this time select My connections. In the card that appears, click the circular + button:

This brings you to the Find Connections page where you'll immediately see people who are geographically closest to you:

A search field is at the top. This is where you enter names or email addresses. Below that you'll see cards of the SportTracks users who live nearby. Want to do a group run, ride, or swim? These people likely already work out on your favorite local routes. Why not connect and train together? It's a proven way to get faster!

Check out the screenshot above one more time. To the right of the search field there's a small whistle icon. This is our new Coach Search tool. Click it and you are brought to a similar screen, except all of the people in the results are professional coaches that you're encouraged to contact and hire.

Okay... back to your assignment. Select someone from your Find Connections page, and push the Connect button. You're done.

When the other person accepts your request, SportTracks will notify you with a red bell icon in the corner of the app. The next time you search for friends, you'll see a green check mark in the right corner of the cards of people you're already connected to.

One of the best parts about working at SportTracks is interacting with our community. You are an exceptionally pleasant and intelligent group of people. We're absolutely confident you'll enjoy engaging with them as much as we do!

Lastly, don't skip your assignment! You already love SportTracks. Connecting with other users makes it a lot more fun. Don't miss out! Consider the wisdom in this ancient, British proverb: Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you'd like to.