Have you ever had an injury that kept you out of running for a few weeks or even months or years?  Can you pinpoint exactly when or why that injury occurred.  Unless the injury was a result of a freak accident such as a twisted ankle or a pulled muscle then my guess is that you cannot pick out the exact moment you became injured.  Many running injuries are a result of the continuous pounding your body takes as you run step after step.  Because of that fact it is very important to keep a training journal. 

     A training journal offers you the opportunity to examine previous training cycles.  By doing this you can figure out a lot about your training and how your body responds to that training.  Creating a training schedule that works for you is basically trial and error.  By recording information about each training session in your training journal you can review it at a later date and determine how effective that workout was for you.  You also may be able to determine if that particular workout was the cause of an injury that might have appeared weeks later.

     So you know that it is important to keep a training journal, but what exactly should you write in it?  Here is a list of common things that you may decide to include in your journal.

     1.     Distance, Time, and Pace- This one may seem kind of obvious, but many people will only record the distance they ran.  There are many reasons to record your time and pace.  One reason is that it offers a boost of confidence when you look back years later and see how much you have improved.  Another reason is that it can help you detect overtraining.  Overtraining is a common problem with runners; especially runners who coach themselves because it is very hard to take an objective look at your own training.  If you begin to notice that your times and paces for workouts begin to slow down even though your training has increased over time you may be showing signs of overtraining.

     When you keep track of the mileage you run you can also learn how quickly you can add mileage and how high you can take your weekly mileage before you start having problems with injuries and overtraining.  Some people can run 100 miles per week or more while others can only run a maximum of 30 miles per week without becoming injured.  By recording your mileage you can determine if you are the person who can safely work your way up to 100 miles per week or if you must stay at a maximum of 30 miles.

     2.     Weather- By including the weather conditions you may be able to determine if a workout went bad because of the weather.  If you run a mile repeat workout, but you average 15 seconds per mile slower than you had planned you probably need to determine the cause.  When you try to decide whether or not you reached your goals for the workout you need to take weather into consideration.  If you tried to complete your mile repeat workout in 90-degree temperatures with high humidity then that could have been a big cause for your slow times in the workout.  As a result you may have needed to modify your goals for the workout and the slower pace may still have met those new goals.

     3.     Feelings and Effort Level- You should record how you felt on each run.  Did you feel great and every step felt effortless, or did the entire run seem like a death march?  If you become injured then you can go back and examine your training journal.  If you begin to see that you are writing that you felt tired and sore while running on a regular basis then you can probably determine that something about your training was not working as you had hoped.  There are days that you feel great and there are days that you feel horrible, but you shouldn’t feel bad everyday.  If that becomes the standard entry in your journal then you should know that you need to change something about your training.  Some people have created a scale that they use to rate how they felt while running.  This is basically your perceived effort level.  “1” means that you felt like it was a walk in the park.  This would be a run that might be slightly faster than a walking pace.  “10” on the other hand is an all out effort.  It can give you a boost in confidence when you look at your training and you see that a pace of 8 minutes per mile used to be rated at 7 when you first began running, but not it is regularly being rated as 5. 

     4.     The Days Events- Recording the days events can be beneficial because it will tell you how much stress you were experiencing in your life away from running.  Running stresses the body just like other stressful events in your life.  When you are under a lot of pressure at work or school and you add the stress of training on top of that it may become more than your body can handle.  As a result you may become sick or injured. 

     5.     What You Ate- When you record what you eat each day you learn a lot about your body.  Some people can run shortly after eating almost anything.  Others cannot eat for several hours before they run without experiencing stomach problems.  Still others can eat some foods, but not others.  When you record what you ate in the running journal you can decide exactly what types of food will help you in your quest of running a PR.  If you write in your journal that something always make you sick feeling during a run then you will remember that you can not eat that particular food within several hours of your run. 

     6.     Route- Recording the route you run helps you judge the success of one workout as compared to other workouts.  If the workouts are on the same course then it is easy to decide if the workout was a success.  If you run one workout on a hilly course then you should not become too worried about the fact that your time was much slower than a similar workout that was run on a flat course. 

     7.     Training Partners- When you write down who you ran with then it becomes easier to determine the success of a training session as well.  If you head out for a 10 mile run with a friend you may run at 7 minute pace, but then the next week you run with a different friend, so this time you run at 9 minute pace.  If you are looking back over your training journal later you may think that the 9 minute pace run was an indication of loss of fitness or of an injury until you see that you ran with a training partner who can not run 10 miles any faster than 9 minute pace. 

     As you can see the training journal is very important.  The things above were just a few of the common things that many people include in their journal.  There are countless other things that you can include.  Your training journal is kept for your benefit, and you can include any piece of information that you think is important. 

Darrell Lewis is the owner of Peak Performance Running. Through his company Darrell offers runners of all ability levels the ability to receive coaching from a certified running coach.  To receive coaching from Darrell please click on the button below.