How Do You Maintain A Running Journal

Why do you need to maintain a running journal?

Everyone knows what a journal is. Well a running journal is something in which you jot down all the details of your run, for every run. This will help you keep track of your performance on a daily basis as well as any progress you are making. It will also help you to compare your current runs with previous ones. Finally it is a graph that tells you where you started, and where you are now.

You don’t have to follow any specific format when you are doing a journal. You can go online and download quite a few different templates of journals that can help you maintain your notes very easily. If there is anything that you think may be helpful to you in your running training such as track workouts or interval training or technique that you need to improve on, then you should jot that down too. Make sure to be detailed enough that you can understand your notes at a later date.

Make it a personal journal

Your journal is only for you and nobody else has access to it, much like a diary. You can therefore even enter in intangibles like your emotions during specific stages of the run and how your body felt. Even if this may sound a little odd, it is all information that will help you find a pattern to your running, and hopefully tell you what your strengths and weaknesses are.

Emotions surely play an important part in your physical performance. If you felt a little down one day, but you were still able to hit your target time or your target distance you need to jot down the things that you did to help you. If you don’t write it down, then you will not have that information to draw on at a later date.

Fartleks

In Swedish, this word translates to “speed play.” If you have been running for any amount of time, then you know how exhilarating a fast run can be. True, you won’t be able to keep that up for very long, but having a few “speed bursts” is a good to add to your training if you want to increase your speeds. If you just jog along slowly it can get pretty boring. Running fartleks will break things up and invigorate you. Runners have alot to gain by adding speed bursts to their training.

Jot down your bursts of speed

Make sure that you jot down the exact duration of your fartlek. It can range anywhere between 15 seconds to more than a couple of minutes. Then note down how long it took you to recover and what your recovery pace was. By noting the duration of your speed bursts and your recovery times you can figure out the optimal duration for your fartlek to give you the best time. This also gives you a starting point to improve upon.

Review at least one time a month

Once a month you should go back over your journal and do a review. This will not only help you see where you have made progress, but it will also help you find out if you are hitting any bottlenecks. You will be able to see what kind of an impact warming up and speed bursts will have on your run.

If you usually split your run down into segments and note the time between laps, you will be able to run an analysis so that you will be able to see where and when you are performing better and where you may be falling behind. Keeping a run journal is a great way to set reminders, goals and generally improve on your running overall.

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