Version 1.3
August 1997
Whether you downloaded the software from our Web site or received it in the mail, you should have a file called AthCalc.prc on your desktop or laptop computer (on the hard disk or on a floppy diskette). If you have a file named AthCalc.ZIP, that is not the proper file; that's a compressed or "zipped" file that you must uncompress with standard "unzipping" software (which we do not provide).
If you do not have the file AthCalc.prc, you cannot proceed. If you do have AthCalc.prc, here's how to install it on your handheld unit:
Using MacPac Version 1: Run the program InstallApp. Click on the Select button, set the List Files of Type to All Files, locate and select the file AthCalc.prc, and click Open. Now click on the Install button. The next time you HotSync your Palm, the program will be downloaded.
Using MacPac Version 2: Select the HotSync Manager from the "Instant Palm" menu on the upper right of your menu bar. In the HotSync menu, select Install. Click on the Add To List button. Locate and select the file AthCalc.prc, and click Add File. The next time you HotSync your Palm, the program will be downloaded.
Using current Palm desktop software: Start your Palm desktop software. Click on the Install button. Check to make sure the User name displayed at the top of the Palm Install Tool window which appears is the user name of the Palm handheld device on which you want to install the software; if not, select the correct user name. Now click on Add. Using the file browser which appears, locate and select the AthCalc.prc file, and click Open. Now click on the Done button, and then on OK. The next time you HotSync your Palm, the program will be downloaded.
Using old Pilot desktop software: Run the program INSTAPP.EXE (it may be displayed simply as INSTAPP, depending on how you have Windows configured), which is located in the C:/PALM folder. Click on the Browse button, locate and select the AthCalc.prc file, and click Open. Now click on the Install button. The next time you HotSync your Palm, the program will be downloaded.
From the Applications window on your Palm, look for the icon labelled AthleteCalc which looks like this:
After
clicking on the icon, the application will start and you'll see this screen:
The second time you use the program the Calculate button will read Enter S/N, and the calculation functions will be disabled until you enter the seven-digit serial number that you were provided when you purchased the software. Enter the serial number by tapping on the numbers in the lower-left of the screen, and then tap on Enter S/N. If you enter the number correctly, the button will change to Calculate and you can proceed.
If you run into a problem, this probably means that when you provided your Palm name to Stevens Creek Software, you did so incorrectly. In order to provide you with a serial number for your software, we need the *User Name* of your PalmPilot. To get the User Name, tap on the Applications button, then tap on the HotSync application. If you have a PalmPilot (Personal or Professional), the top line of the screen will read, "Welcome, XXX." "XXX" is your user name; that's what we need. If you have a Palm III or IBM WorkPad, the name appears in the extreme upper right of the same HotSync screen. Please be sure you supply it to us EXACTLY as it appears, including upper or lower case letters, punctuation, and spaces as appropriate. Just email it to Stevens Creek Software technical support and wait for a new serial number to be provided to you.
We recommend of course continuing to read this manual to learn about all the features of The Athlete's Calculator. Once you are running the software, there may be a few things you can't remember. If you select any of the "Help" options from the Help menu, you'll find help on the relevant subject:
The
Active FieldAlong the top left, note the three buttons: Time, Distance, and
Pace. The "active" field is always highlighted, and a round-cornered
rectangle also helps to show you which information you are entering. The active field
is the field into which you are currently entering a number. To switch the active
field, just tap on either Time, Distance, or Pace to make that
field the active field.
Entering
a Number into the Active FieldTo enter a number into the active field, tap on the numbers in the lower -left corner of the screen. The button marked Del is used to delete (erase) the last character entered; you can erase the entire entry by pressing the Clear button.
To enter "simple" numbers, just press the numbers in sequence, e.g., "32" or "26.2". To enter numbers which are times, do exactly the same thing, ignorning the need to enter the "colon" character (:); the software will insert those for you automatically. For example, "4517" becomes "45:17" automatically. Note that "34" is 34 seconds. To enter 34 minutes, enter "3400".
In this example, you want to enter a time of 3 hours, 25 minutes, and 23 seconds,
so you tap the "3","2","5","2", and "3"
buttons sequentially:
Now watch what happens when you tap on the Distance button in order to enter the distance:
Notice that the colons have been inserted into the time, and now the Distance field is active, so that tapping "26.2" enters that number into the distance field.
Note that if the "Number Format" set by the Prefs application on your
Palm calls for a comma to be used as a decimal point instead of a period, the key
next to the "Del" key will be labelled ",", as appropriate.
Calculating
PaceNow to calculate pace, just tap on the Calculate button. As you see at the right, the pace is calculated and displayed in the Pace field.
When you tap the buttons on the screen, you will by default hear a standard very light sound which is used in all Palm applications to indicate that a button has been tapped. In many applications, if you "miss" a button nothing will happen, so it's not that important to have aural feedback. In The Athlete's Calculator, however, if you miss a button you may get the wrong answer, so a special feature of the software lets you get a longer, louder feedback when you tap buttons.Tap the Menu button on your Palm, and select
Preferences from the Options menu. You'll see this screen:
If you check the button, you'll get a louder sound when you tap the buttons.
If you find it easier, you can use Graffiti (tm) as well as the on-screen buttons for data entry. The characters which are recognized are:
The Edit Menu gives you four choices:
Cut and Copy will cut and copy the contents of the currently active field. Paste pastes the contents of the clipboard into the currently active field, but it can do much more, because all of the Graffiti commands listed in the previous section are active. Thus if you have (we'll use T for Tab and R for Return): "4523T10kTR" on the clipboard and go to The Athlete's Calculator and do a Paste, "4523" will be pasted into the Time field, then a Tab will skip to the Distance field (and convert the "4523" to "45:23" in the Time field, then "10" will be pasted into the Distance field and the units will be set to kilometers, then Tab moves to the Pace field and R (Return) calculates the Pace.
Copy All to Memo copies the contents of all three fields, plus the date and some other information, to the clipboard, and transfers you to the MemoPad application where you can paste the information into a memo. See Transferring Information using the Clipboard for more about this feature.
The basic rule of The Athlete's Calculator is that it will always calculate an empty field if the remaining two fields are filled. So if your workout covers a known (or roughly known) distance at a known (or roughly known) pace, fill in Distance and Pace, press Calculate, and the Time will be calculated. You might do this, for example, to estimate your finishing time in a marathon - enter the distance and your estimated (or hoped-for) pace, press Calculate, and you'll see the expected finishing time (see example below). If you run an unknown route, you can estimate the distance by entering Time and Pace and pressing Calculate.
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Enter distance and pace |
Press Calculate to calculate time |
After a field has been entered and used in a calculation (by pressing the Calculate button), you can enter a new value in that field simply by entering a number; there's no need to press the Clear button. For example, let's say you are estimating your finish time in a marathon and you entered distance and pace, pressed Calculate, and saw the predicted finish time (as shown above). Now if you want to see the finishing time for a different pace, simply enter a new number and press Calculate (assuming Pace was already the active field; if it wasn't, tap on Pace first).
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Enter a new pace |
Press Calculate again to calculate new time |
To perform a completely new calculation, you can clear all three fields by tapping
the Clear All button.
Units for the distance and pace can be changed using the pop-up menus at the right of the screen:
Distance Units
Pace Units
To enter a distance or pace in appropriate units, select the units before entering the number, unless you want to convert them. For example, if the distance units are in miles, and you enter "10" because you ran a 10K, now if you switch the distance units to kilometers (km), the number will automatically change to "16.09", because the program has converted 10 miles into 16.09 kilometers:
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Enter distance in miles |
Change units |
Of course you can use this feature intentionally. If you swim a pace of 1:20 per hundred meters, you can set the pace units to /100m, tap on Pace to make pace the active field, enter "120", and then change the pace units to mph or /mile to see what your pace is in miles per hour or minutes per mile, for example.
The last units you use are always saved, so that each time you start the application,
it will return to your "default" units.
In the lower right corner of the screen you see four standard
calculator buttons: +, -, *, and /, which allow you to
perform addition, subtration, multiplication, and division, respectively. What is
unique to The Athlete's Calculator is that these operations work on times
expressed as hours:minutes:seconds as well as they do on "regular" numbers,
and furthermore, whenever they are used to modify a number, the other fields are
modified appropriately.
Let's take an example. Suppose you read in a book of training advice that you should
"do your long runs at a pace 30% slower than your 10K race pace." Let's
start by assuming you know your most recent 10K time, but not the pace. First calculate
your pace as described above - enter the time and distance, and press Calculate.
Your screen should look like this:
Because you now want to modify the pace, tap on Pace to make it the active
field. Next tap the * button, followed by 1.3. What you'll see at this
point is shown at the left. The pace field is active and is enclosed by the large
round-cornered rectangle, which lets you know that it is the field that is about
to be modified. At the same time, your mini-calculator number appears just below
the Calculate button, enclosed by a smaller round-cornered rectangle of its
own to show you that that is the number you're currently entering.
Now when you press Calculate, two calculations are actually performed. First,
the pace is multiplied by 1.3, as you requested with your calculation. Then the software
proceeds with a recalculation. Because it doesn't make sense to recalculate pace
from the time and distance (that would negate the effect of the multiplication!),
the program instead recalculates the time:
At this point you have learned that if your 10K time is 42:10, your long run pace (according to this advice) should be 8:49/mile. You also see how long it would take you to run a 10K at that pace, but that probably isn't of interest. What you really want to know is how long it's going to take you to run your 20-mile run at that pace. To find out, tap on Distance, enter 20, then tap on Calculate, and here's what you'll see:
Your 20-miler should take you just under 3 hours at the recommended pace.
You can use the calculator function buttons repeatedly, just like a real calculator, without hitting the Calculate button. For example, suppose you have just run a series of 400-meter intervals on the track, in times of 72.6, 73.4, 75.2, 72.8, 73.1, and 71.6 seconds. What was your total time spent running?
Press Clear All if you need to reset the calculator; that will also make Time the active field. Now enter 72.6, tap +. You should see this:
Note that as the time was entered, it was automatically converted from 72.6 seconds to one minute, 12.6 seconds. Now enter 73.4 and tap + again. The program will add your two times, and, since the last key you pushed was + and not Calculate, the mini-calculator is still active and ready for you to enter the next number:
Continue by entering: 75.2+72.8+73.1+71.6. At the end, since you're done, tap the Calculate button to show the final total and de-activate the mini-calculator. If you're a user of The Athlete's Diary for Palm, you might use this feature, then select Copy from the Edit menu to copy the total time to be pasted into The Athlete's Diary.
The Athlete's Calculator is designed to deal with time, distance, and pace - all by definition are positive numbers. If you use the subtract function of the Mini-calculator and the result would be negative, the result is set to zero instead.
If a calculation results in a number too large to be displayed in the available space (or if you try to enter too many digits into any field), the field is reset to zero.
Any attempt to add, subtract, multiply, or divide by zero is simply ignored.
There is one final option in the software, which is activated using the menus. Press the Menu button on the Palm, and then select Show Totals from the Options menu to activate the mode in which all calculations which are performed are added together automatically. If you tap the Menu button again, you'll see that the first menu item has now changed to Hide Totals; tap on this to de-activate the automatic totals feature. The Athlete's Calculator will always remember the last setting (Showing or Hiding Totals), and will return to that setting when you use the calculator the next time.
There are two typical cases in which you will be interested in totals - the case of even (equal-distance) splits, and the case of uneven (unequal distance) splits. Both are similar, although in the first case you have fewer numbers to enter.
Let's take the previous example - the case of running a series of 400-meter intervals on the track. Here's the sequence of operations:
What if the distances are unequal? Perhaps you do a bike ride where you ride to a mountain, ride up the mountain, ride down the mountain, and then ride home, and you want to know your average speed for the different legs of the ride. Your bike computer, of course, only shows your average speed for the entire ride, but if you measured the time and distance for each leg, The Athlete's Calculator can do the calculations for you. Or, perhaps you ran a 50K race in which you took your splits at each of the unevenly spaced aid stations. Again, The Athlete's Calculator can calculate your splits for each leg, as well as for the total race, all at the same time. You simply need to enter both time and distance for each leg of the workout or race; otherwise things are as above.
Another application - predict your finishing time in a marathon, assuming unequal paces during the race. Most marathoners figure the first 20 miles is one race; the last 6.2 another. Here's how you would calculate your estimated finishing time:
If you are looking for an athletic log program for your Palm, you should consider The Athlete's Diary for Palm. However, to a limited extent and with greater difficulty, The Athlete's Calculator for Palm can also be used to generate data which can be saved and merged into other applications, including the desktop version (Macintosh and Windows) of The Athlete's Diary.
Select Copy All to Memo from the Edit menu. When you select this option (or its equivalent using Graffiti shortcuts), the distance, time, and pace, along with today's date, will be transferred to your Palm clipboard in a format which is consistent with The Athlete's Diary. This format is a series of fields, separated by Tabs. These fields are
After selecting Copy All to Memo, the software jumps to the MemoPad application, where you can choose the memo into which you want to paste the information. We recommend creating one memo for all your data (rather than a separate memo for each entry); a single memo in the Palm can contain 4000 characters which should hold quite a few workouts. This memo must contain one "header" line, in which you should write something like "Athlete's Diary info" (the actual words don't matter). Select that memo, then use the Paste function to paste in your new workout starting on the second line of the memo; additional workouts will be pasted on additional lines. Usually one workout will "wraparound" and take up more than one line; just make sure the next workout starts on a separate line.
Once the data are in the memo, you can modify it or add to it. In the second field, the first letter defaults to a T representing training; you can change this to I or R for Intervals or Race, as appropriate. The second letter, which represents your sport, is automatically chosen according to the pace units. It's set to R for Running if your pace is in minutes per mile or kilometer, to C for Cycling if your pace is in mph or kph, and to S for Swimming if your pace is in minutes per 100 yards or meters. Again, you can simply change this if it is wrong.
To add in a Route/Workout description, tap at the end of the line (after the Tab following the pace but before the carriage return) and enter whatever descriptive material (up to 254 characters if you want compatibility with The Athlete's Diary) you want. To add a Comment, insert a Tab and then enter your comment. You will not need to add a return, since one is already there.
Once you HotSync your Palm, the file named MEMOPAD.DAT on your desktop computer will contain your workouts. If you have version 3.2 of The Athlete's Diary (released May 11, 1997), you can use the Merge function of the software to extract your workouts from the MEMOPAD.DAT file with no further ado. All your other memos will be ignored; only the one containing information in The Athlete's Diary format will be read and extracted (but see the "catch" described below).
To merge the data into your Athlete's Diary log following a HotSync, follow these steps:
Another minor "catch." If you do use this method of moving information from Palm to desktop and then into your log, there are some minor restrictions on the other data (other than your workouts) which can be in your Palm memos. A line cannot start with a date (e.g., "7/13/97") followed immediately by a Tab or The Athlete's Diary will attempt to read that line when you Merge the memo.Additionally, if the first word on any line starts with "Sports", "Prefer", "Routes", "Keyword", and the first character following the first space on that line is a number, that number of lines following the line in question will be skipped when reading the file. Both of these situations should be rather unlikely, so you needn't worry about them too much.
If you have an earlier version of The Athlete's Diary, or want to transfer the workout information to some other file, you can open the file MEMOPAD.DAT with a text editor. You'll find embedded within it (along with your other memos and some non-printing characters), your workout data. If you copy and paste this information into a separate file, you'll be able to merge it into your Athlete's Diary log. If you are merging using The Athlete's Diary version 3.1 or earlier, you'll need to make sure the dates are "zero-padded" (i.e., not 5/6/97 but instead 05/06/97).
Stevens Creek Software manages The Athlete's Bookstore, which sells over a hundred book titles of interest to runners, cyclists, swimmers, triathletes, and other fitness enthusiasts.
Copyright 1997-9 by Stevens Creek Software
All Rights Reserved
