Bios, Profiles, Athletes and Results
When navigating Athletic.net, you'll encounter the words Bio and Profile a great deal. Here's a brief rundown on what they mean and how they work.
Bio
An Athletic.net bio is a listing of an athlete's performance history. Every time meet results or Training Log data are entered for a particular athlete, the athlete's bio is updated. An athlete is identified in their bio by name and team. Sometimes, when an athlete competes for multiple teams, the two sets of results won't be associated, and the athlete will end up with multiple bios, each containing a distinct set of results.
For example, Sarah Smith competes for both Central High School and Fleet Feet Track Club. When Sarah runs for Central, her results get compiled under a bio labeled “Sarah Smith--Central HS, 11th grade.” But when she runs for Fleet Feet, she gets a different set of results compiled under a separate bio labeled “Sarah Smith--FFTC, 16 years old.”
Ideally, each athlete should have one bio, which contains all of the athlete's performance history in one place. The other advantage of having a single bio for an athlete is that seed times will be accurate.
Continuing our previous example: If Sarah sets a PR in the 200m for Fleet Feet, and then her coach at Central enters her in the 200 at Central's next meet using Athletic.net's entry system, the PR set at the Fleet Feet meet would not be used as a seed mark, since Athletic.net views Sarah Smith from Central and Sarah Smith from Fleet Feet as two separate athletes.
The solution is to merge the athlete bios into a single bio, so that all the data is in one place. See Merging Duplicate Athletes for more information.
Profile
An Athletic.net profile is the equivalent to your Athletic.net account. It is what you see when you log in to Athletic.net using your email address. Through it you'll be able to access your athlete bio (once you claim it; see below), your Training Log, your meet calendar, and register for events that allow individual registration.
Claiming your bio (click for a how-to) is how an athlete's bio (and therefore, the athlete's results) can be associated with an athlete's profile. To put it in simpler terms, the Athlete's results get associated with the athlete's site account.
Advantages of claiming your bio include easy communication with your coach, a link between your training log and your meet results, and the ability to enter meets where individual registration is allowed.
