FRIDAY MORNING - LARGE UPDATE

I don't have a solid timeframe for Friday morning...whenever everyone's respective kids are safely to school I guess.

What's in this update?

1 - Calories Burned will be LIVE...FINALLY
    
2 - The Custom Training Plan Creator (CTPC) will be officially live...FINALLY
*Power plans/logs are still a month or two out.
   
This has literally been a solid 3 year project with hundreds and hundreds of hours (and $) spent on it.  It is the future of BT training plans...this is the SINGLE MOST thing that the users who took our large survey in late 2006 wanted.  A databased training plan generator can be easily updated, added too and the workouts changed.  Future upgrades will be strength training and multiple B,C race scheduling within the main training plan...with lot's of smaller usability items updated in between.

3 - Membership Re-organization
Instead of a 4rth membership for the CTPC, we are doing this:

• Gold will be the full version of the Custom Training Plan Creator
  *NOTE, free uses can generate print versions of sprint/oly, Bronze and Silver can import 'minutes only' sprint and oly.

• Online Coaching Support (formerly Gold) will be a 'add-on' to silver and gold BUT we are ADDING 'weekly log analysis'.
  *All current gold members will have the same level of support PLUS the weekly log analysis BUT you will now be Silver with the 'online coaching option'.  So through your expiration date, your same service will be KEPT and you will get weekly log analysis too. 
  **We will send out PM's to all current goldmembers on the change and using the weekly log analysis...so hold tight through next week...though your CURRENT level of service will be unchanged.
  
  
• Why?  First we didn't want a '4rth' membership type - confusing.  Second, our Gold member survey indicated that most of the current gold members REALLY WANTED weekly log analysis too. Although our survey found that 70% of the gold members were satisfied and around 60-70% would recommend it, only HALF of them actually made a first post in the gold forum.  So we are adding on a requested feature, upping the price some to cover it ($35/month - still a lot cheaper than most online coaching options) so that we can offer a more focused, refined service to you where it is not so one-sided (user asks the questions to the coaches), but now the coaches will automatically review your logs weekly and post about how they view your training progress.  An even more dynamite deal at that price.
           
  
• Price Change.  Yes.  We haven't changed our prices for over 5 years..what company does that?    And no, this is not to 'get us rich'...far from it.  We are as non-corporate as they come...3 main people separated by several states working out of our homes gives you BT everyday (nice for overhead)...not to mention the mods and authors.  We have done a lot the last 5 years and want to keep doing a lot more...and the web is quickly changing to the phone and apps.  Now that the custom training plan creator is 'not a programming bottleneck' anymore, new things are going to be coming out much quicker.  My goal is to have a NEW programmer come out of this...so that we have 2 full time programmers and a handful of part-time.
  
  Bronze and Silver will go up 5 and 10 respectively.  Gold is the same.  New $20/month membership for Silver plan AND Custom training plan creator plans plus all current bronze stuff. We are about to introduce both Iphone and Android apps that WILL allow bronze+ members to access their planned training.  This has been a lot of cash so far.  We will be finishing power logging and working on a lot of new stuff after a new survey is sent out early 2011...we are preparing for the next 5 years which you will soon dictate.  I KNOW that even at the current price, our Silver membership is vastly undervalued and a great deal...31 detailed training plans to import, combine, use as needed for any level.

We hope to have any bugs or issues settled by early next week.  If you have any general comments, please feel free to discuss them here - they are welcome as you set the agenda here - it's just up to us to balance the budget and get it done.  Between these three things, they are the biggest changes to hit BT since the membership levels were first introduced.  I really hope you like them and we can keep up the progress.