Benchmarks of the season
I struggle keeping my running log book up to date. My buddy Dave has offered to review his and send me mileage for the past couple of months of our runs together. I have some runs listed in, thanks to the storage feature of my 305. And I did write in some others, well, a few...ok, two! Dang, why can't I just take 45 seconds to write down my run for the day when I get done?
Without being able to look back and see exactly what we've done, it's hard to know where we are, or should be, in regards to fitness. Sure, we know of certain workouts we've done over the past few weeks, but being able to see the numbers enables us to know if we are slacking or overdoing it over a six to eight week period. Especially if we make notes on how we felt for the day versus just logging the mileage. Notations add weather, conditions, course, etc and make reading early workouts more enjoyable and help you recall the effort more vividly. "Great 6 miler today, felt good after a couple miles and then we pushed it to the finish. Solid effort!" or "Really humid today, sucked the life right out of my legs. Eased back and just got through todays run." and the ever popular "Felt like I had lead in my legs today. Really feeling this weeks workouts. Need a long easy run this weekend."
Many years ago the talk was about a paperless society, so why do we have so many shredding companies now? Anyway, I can see that in the rush to fill our days texting , emailing and posting we really don't have much in the way of documentation of our lives. Even photographs are being stashed in computers, hardly ever making their way to walls or bookcase displays. A running log is a real, tangible tracking of our running life and something that others can look at and get a glimpse of the true self of a runner. Every runner has the chance to build a library of their running life in yearly log books, complete with photos, race bibs and whatever else fits in to their running personality.
It's as easy as using a calendar with large sections, or a simple date book. I use a sheet I designed for TEIL and put them in a 3 ring binder. I don't maintain it like I should, but I am committing to doing better, and adding even more notes to my entries. I spend so much time training, I need to spend a bit more time noting things about each run. Today was a perfect example, we did two sets of 4 x 440. 90 rest between quarters, one lap walk job ( 3:30 ) between sets. Went well and I averaged 87 for my quarters, about 7 seconds faster than the four I did about a week and a half ago. Since I did write the previous workout in my log I was able to look back and see that today I did twice as many at a faster pace and felt good.
Great benchmark, great reason to keep writing down my workouts after every run. So, keep up with your journals, no matter the distance. Sometimes it's good just to write something even on the off days. You usually get motivated by reading previous workouts!
Go Run!
Without being able to look back and see exactly what we've done, it's hard to know where we are, or should be, in regards to fitness. Sure, we know of certain workouts we've done over the past few weeks, but being able to see the numbers enables us to know if we are slacking or overdoing it over a six to eight week period. Especially if we make notes on how we felt for the day versus just logging the mileage. Notations add weather, conditions, course, etc and make reading early workouts more enjoyable and help you recall the effort more vividly. "Great 6 miler today, felt good after a couple miles and then we pushed it to the finish. Solid effort!" or "Really humid today, sucked the life right out of my legs. Eased back and just got through todays run." and the ever popular "Felt like I had lead in my legs today. Really feeling this weeks workouts. Need a long easy run this weekend."
Many years ago the talk was about a paperless society, so why do we have so many shredding companies now? Anyway, I can see that in the rush to fill our days texting , emailing and posting we really don't have much in the way of documentation of our lives. Even photographs are being stashed in computers, hardly ever making their way to walls or bookcase displays. A running log is a real, tangible tracking of our running life and something that others can look at and get a glimpse of the true self of a runner. Every runner has the chance to build a library of their running life in yearly log books, complete with photos, race bibs and whatever else fits in to their running personality.
It's as easy as using a calendar with large sections, or a simple date book. I use a sheet I designed for TEIL and put them in a 3 ring binder. I don't maintain it like I should, but I am committing to doing better, and adding even more notes to my entries. I spend so much time training, I need to spend a bit more time noting things about each run. Today was a perfect example, we did two sets of 4 x 440. 90 rest between quarters, one lap walk job ( 3:30 ) between sets. Went well and I averaged 87 for my quarters, about 7 seconds faster than the four I did about a week and a half ago. Since I did write the previous workout in my log I was able to look back and see that today I did twice as many at a faster pace and felt good.
Great benchmark, great reason to keep writing down my workouts after every run. So, keep up with your journals, no matter the distance. Sometimes it's good just to write something even on the off days. You usually get motivated by reading previous workouts!
Go Run!
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