Dear Diary

I realized on Sunday that I have run 3,718 kilometres this year. My immediate thought was can I make 4,000 before year end. Four thousand is such a nice round number. Perhaps not as round as 5,000, but satisfying none the less. My second thought was, “how far does this take me if I started in Toronto and say ran towards Vancouver?” Well, if I stayed in Canada and ran along the Trans-Canada, it would get me to the entrance of Glacier National Park West of Banff. If I make it to 4,000km before the end of the year – hey,wait a minute, that’s only 3 weeks today! Well, 4000km would take me to Kelowna, so it looks like I’ll be stuck in the Rockies.

I didn’t stop thinking there. I wondered how long it took me to run that far. If I assume I put in three good weeks and make it to 4,000km and further assume that my average pace was 5min/km that would translate into 333 hours. Now, if Outliers author Malcolm Gladwell is correct, at this rate it would take me 30 years to become a great runner at which point I would be 76. So, if I’m still healthy and running, I’ll be so going after Ed Whitlock’s records!

This all came about when I entered the details of my Sunday Long run in my log book. I have kept a log of my running since I started in 2003. What’s the point you might ask. Well, I believe that the success I have achieved with my running is due, at least in part, to keeping track of my workouts in a logbook.

A well kept log can be a source of motivation, silently urging you out the door so that you have something to enter at the end of the day. It always bothers me if I have to write 0 in the mileage column, even if I can say “sick with H1N1” under comments. I’d just rather go for a run.

A log is also a useful tool in figuring out why you are injured. If you look in your log and compare this month’s mileage to last month’s mileage and see a big increase, it could be that you are adding miles too quickly. And what about your shoes? When did you buy those shoes? Could it be that the tired feeling in your legs, even after a day or two’s rest, is due to the cushioning in your shoes being worn out? If you noted in your log when you bought a new pair you could quickly calculate how many miles are on them and decide whether or not a new pair are in order.

Finally, in the week before a major race, if you are anything like me, you are a bundle of nerves, with a very annoying little voice telling you that there is no way you can run as fast as you plan to. One of the best things to do at that point is to look over your log, remind yourself of all the training you have done, and give the little voice the finger.

So, what should you write in your log? Well, there are the obvious entries - mileage and time taken, the route, time of day and if you are running alone or with someone else. If you have the necessary gadgets you can record pace and heart rate. Weather conditions are useful to record, because a slower than normal run may be caused by 50km/hour winds, icy sidewalks or even very hot and humid conditions.

Other information you may want to include is resting pulse (best taken before getting out of bed in the morning) which is useful for tracking the effects of training, and how you feel on the run, which is important for monitoring recovery and catching early signs of overtraining. For example, if you are still feeling the effects of a hard workout two or three days later, then you need more recovery or the workout was too hard. You could simply write that the run was awful, or hard or great, or use a perceived effort scale from 1 to 10 with one being awful and 10 being the best run ever.

Whether you use an online log, or the old fashioned paper version, I believe you will get a lot more out of it than just a record of your running, although that, in itself is worth the effort.