The importance of daily logging in learning about yourself
Do you find yourself confused about where your strengths and weaknesses lie and/or what training best suits you? Consider the practice of daily logging!
WEEKLY WISDOM: IT’S NOT A DIARY, MOM!!!
WHAT IS DAILY LOGGING? WHY SHOULD I DO IT?
Daily logging, or journaling, is where you write down (or type) significant experiences, thoughts, and/or feelings on a daily basis. This can serve as a means to get anything out there that’s on your mind, but more importantly, it can become a place to reference and spot patterns in your training, allowing you to learn more about yourself such as your physical (and mental) strengths and weaknesses. From these findings, you can make adjustments to your training to optimize your performance. Try this process for an entire training block and you’ll be surprised by how much you learn about yourself!
AN EXAMPLE
Let’s say there is an athlete, John, who started up daily logging for a cross country training block. Over the course of the summer training build-up, as he continues to log daily, he notices after reflecting on the last two months that he consistently reported feeling beat up in the two or three days following longer continuous threshold workouts of 25 to 30 minutes. Commonly used descriptors included “sore,” “fatigued,” and “tired,” with “no pop” in his stride. Only after two to three days of easy running would he mention feeling lively and recovered again. From this, we can deduce that John is likely a more fast-twitch oriented runner. Resultantly, he should probably back off on his continuous threshold runs to closer to 20 minutes and lean more towards broken thresholds (e.g. 5x1-mile at threshold pace w/ 1-minute rest). Additionally, he might want to slow down the continuous threshold runs as he could be overexerting himself, whether knowingly or not, at an above-threshold intensity, putting excessive wear and tear on the body.
On the other hand, John notices that, in his logs, he almost always noted feeling more lively, bouncy, and/or peppy the day after easy runs with post-run hill sprints (e.g. 8x8 second hill sprints at a near-maximal effort on 2-minute cycles) or strides (e.g., 4x20 second strides at mile effort), further solidifying his initial deduction that he is more of a fast-twitch runner. From this, John can safely assume that is likely capable of handling higher volumes of speedwork than his slow-twitch counterparts. Additionally, he may benefit more from standing/walking rest than jogging rest as well as longer rests between sets of intervals.
These are highly valuable takeaways that John has picked up on thanks to his daily logging. Without it, he may not have connected the dots and continued on with his current training system without making beneficial adjustments. This is just an example, although I hope by now you see the merit in daily logging.
WHAT SHOULD DAILY LOGGING LOOK LIKE?
Daily logging can look different depending on the individual, but generally these are some good structural guidelines:
Day and time of run
Run type (easy run, easy run with “stuff,” workout, long run)
Mileage, duration, and average pace (plus splits if it was a workout)
Your overall rating of the run (scale of 1-10 or 1-5)
How you felt physically (energetic/peppy, average, sluggish/flat), physiologically (hard, medium, easy), and mentally throughout
Any niggles/pain/discomfort
Anything else worth noting: sleep, hydration, work/life, how recovered you feel as a percentage, etc.
AN EXAMPLE
Here is an example log:
9/15: Friday, 7 AM
Workout - 3x(4x400m at 3k pace w/ 100m jog) w/ 100m walk into 300m jog between sets
8 miles, 1:00:00, 7:30/mile
Splits: 79, 80, 79, 80 | 79, 79, 80, 81 | 80, 79, 80, 79
Overall, I’d rate this workout an 8/10.
I felt pretty peppy today. Towards the end of each set, I started getting fairly out of breath and it was somewhat difficult, although the rest following each set felt like enough to get me back on track and feeling pretty good for the start of the next set. Mentally, I had a lot of fun with this workout and although it was a harder workout, I didn’t feel like I was battling myself.
I had some slight soreness in my right calf but nothing notable outside of that.
I slept pretty well last night and came into this workout feeling recovered and ready to go. I could be better with hydration; need to drink another bottle every day in these warmer months.
Of course, you can structure your logs however you’d like, but regardless, I’d highly recommend you have some structure to make it easier for you to identify training patterns.
So, I’ve got to know…
If you don’t, consider doing it for at least a month and see how it goes!
If you have further questions, please ask me of course! See my contact information at the bottom of this post; I would love to help.
Next up on All Things Running… Don’t only run easy and slow on your easy days!
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If you want personalized coaching and/or training advice, I’d be happy to help. You can email me at jacobreesmontgomery@gmail.com or send me a direct message on Instagram.