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	Run Log

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Keeping track of your running can be a big help. It makes you accountable, allows you to set specific goals, shows your progress, and can help you resolve issues.

Keep track of your cross training and weightlifting activities in the log also.

You can do this in a spreadsheet or document or a notebook. But whatever you do make it easy and convenient so you do it and keep up with it.

Some of the most important things to put in a log include:

• Date
• Distance – keep track of miles per week, month, and year
• Time
• Type of run – recovery, easy, long, intervals, progression, fartlet, hills, tempo, strides, Yasso, race
• Pace – average or different paces like for intervals, progression, or strides
• How you felt – scale 1 to 10 or descriptive like great, tired, slow
• Did anything hurt or did you fall? This can help trace back to the root cause of problems
• What shoes did you wear? This is helpful if you have multiple shoes since shoes are frequently the source of foot, knee, and hip issues

• Where did you run?
• What surface did you run on? Road, track, dirt, sand
• Conditions – temperature, humidity, heat, cold, rain, snow, windy
• How did you sleep before?
• What foods did you eat before?
• Nutrition during run
• Who did you run with? Names of new friends for future reference
• Anything new that you tried or are experimenting with? Clothes, nutrition before or during, technique
• Any other comments

Go back and review your run log if you had a really good or really bad race. Maybe you can see a trend as to what worked or didn't work.

After a race it's a good idea to write down the things that went well and what things you could improve on or would do differently.

If you have a popular route or part of a route that is especially challenging to you or you are working on, you might do it every two or three weeks to get a feel of your progress. You can do this strictly by time to complete or time to complete while keeping your heart rate under a specific value or percent. Another variation of this is to see how far you can run in a specific time.