So, I'm trying to learn a lot at once, and this place is really helpful!

I'm making a little running log website for myself and maybe a few other people, and I have it so that the user can add workouts for each day. With each workout, I have a variety of information the user can fill out for the workout, such as running distance, time, quality of run, course, etc... I store this in a MySql database as a table with fields titled "distance", "time", "runquality", etc... Now, these field titles don't match up with what I want displayed on the running log, so I was thinking of using the "Comments" attribute for a field to store its human-readable title--thus the field "runquality" would have "Quality of run" as its comment, and then I would pull the comment with a SQL query and display it instead of the field name. Is this a good theoretical/practical way of going about it? And what sort of SQL would I use to pull the comment for the field anyway?

Secondly, suppose I want to add the ability for the user to create their own workout descriptors. So say a user wants to add a "temperature" descriptor for their workout. Should I create a script that adds fields to my workout table, or should I create a separate table listing only workout descriptors and somehow link the descriptor table with the "contents" table? I haven't learned any theory about database design or anything so any help is appreciated!