I didnt get a chance to read through all the threads so this may or may not be added. If any runners are like me they are pretty competitive and to keep modivation up while running this is something they need. I have found several ways to keep my modivation up while running. running races, or my anual PT test. However there are times like in the winter months that raceing goes down and theres not that much going on for months to keep my modivation up. This is where garmin connect could really help.
Picture a site that will rank runners based on total distance vs time. Sure they would have to think up a good formula in order to make it work but heres a break down. This would only include activities you make public so that way when you run your slow days you could just make them private. It will caculate all the public activites or you could add a check box to manually add the activity to the rankings. This way you could only rank your best activities. Something that could also be done is register for a paticuler event 1 mile 5k or so then you could submit your run to that event that way you could compete at a higher level. cause honestly the if somone ran 1 mile every day at there top speed and somone ran 10 miles aday at a good speed for 10 miles the 1 mile will out perform the 10 mile so it would probally be better to have diffrent ranking areas. each one linking to the popler runs. The math behind it would be fairly simple:
Sum Total Miles
Sum Total Time
Compute avrage time per mile
rank runner based on avrage time per mile
It would also be kind of cool if you gave users the ability to start there own rankings. This would allow them to select a custum distance and invite there friends to join in. You could put a limit on how many custom rankings a user could create or participate in this would keep it from getting out of controll.
then users could go to the ranking site and see where there listed. This would be a very competitive area for those looking for some extra compatition. You could compete aginst thousands of runners accross the world. to keep it competitive you could have a weekly, monthly, and anual rank table. You could even go as fare as to have competitions for some sort of award. This could actualy lead to a huge boost in sales for garmin after it got out in the open and everyone knew it. It could be advertised on FB to help boost sales. Anyway i have looked all over the net for a application to rank runners. As of yet i have not found a good accurate one. Most sites allow you to manualy input the activities which how accurate is that. at least if garmin did this it would be extreamly accurate. They would just have to make sure only device information could be caculated and not manual information. Anyway i think this would be a great idea and it would keep my motiviated to run through the winter months.