Re: orgmode and physical fitness training

[Mikael Fornius <mfo@abc.se>]

David O'Toole <dto@gnu.org> writes:

> Does anyone else here use org-mode for fitness and/or health tracking?

I have used emacs as my running exercise diary for some years now,
currently over 300 exercises in the database.

From the beginning I used a plain text emacs file for my exercise diary
entries.

Later I began to use org-mode for its folding and table features. I then
made my own elisp files for maintaining a database of all my org-mode
running diary entries in parallell.

When I made a new run a insert it with a command both in org-mode file
(as a heading with proerties) and in a separate data file.

I can use my own functions to get statistical tables of my training in
month och week tables.

The data is sorted in a special tree structure for fast lookup of
special heart-rate intervals or exercise types.

With point on a exercise entry I can get a colorized table fast in other
window with other runs with similar result too compare and eventually
see some progress.

Lately I have been thinking of and trying to implement a true org-mode
running diary. Which means to use the org-mode file as raw-data file
(properties) instead of my parallell sexp-assoc-list-elisp-data-file.

I tried column mode but it is far too slow for 300 headings and the
calculations possible is only sums but I need much more.

This is how my diary can look like:

----
** 2008
*** 2008-10                                   :october:
*** 2008-11                                   :november:
**** <2008-11-01 sat>                         :running:hill:
**** <2008-11-02 sun>                         :skiing:alpine:
**** <2008-11-04 tue>                         :running:lake:
     :PROPERTIES:
     :TIME:      27:34
     :DISTANCE:  6.0
     :HEARTRATE:     169
     :MAXHEARTRATE:  183
     :PACE: 4:36
     :SHAPEINDEX:  -8.4%
     :WEATHER: +5 cloudy
     :CALORIES: 370
     :SHOES:     nb858-1
     :STATFLAG: t
     :END:
Strong legs but high heartrate.
----

Then I also have a calendar section and a statistical table section with
dynamic blocks for statistics of certain running routes,
year/month stats or record tables.

I will post here if I manage to make a nice fast org-data mapping from
headline-properties to assoc-lists or hash-tables together with some
nice table-creating functions.

Thanks alot for org-mode!

It is so flexible and clean. I also use it as a agenda planner,
time-tracker and notebook.

/Mikael Fornius