I love my running journals – something I started in 2019, so not something that I’ve been doing for years, but definitely something that has evolved over time. I think I’m on my 7th now.
The layout I’ve settled on, that works well for me is to use a double page spread for each week. Top left I create a summary table that I note down:
Date, Type of exercise, Distance travelled, Time taken, Effort (or RPE).
Then underneath I’ll write a short series of notes / summary / anything I noticed during the run, ride, swim, lift. I get a niggle / injury – a letter N or I circled at the top of the page.
What I found helps is physically getting my thoughts down, as opposed to typing insights into Suunto’s Movescount or Strava. For me, there is still something a lot more powerful & effective in the act of putting pen to paper and recording my thoughts. This may not always be the case for younger generations – or those to come – who may never get the chance to write in school as recording is done verbally or via typing electronically. But for me that isn’t the case.
Part of why I then find this helpful is I’m more confident that somewhere the information is lodged in my brain and without having to rely on a specific memory I can use a sense / feeling to go back and read what was happening at the time.
Case in point was this weekend. I’ve been rehabbing / strengthening the right hand side of my body (which involves doing the left as well). As part of that I’ve been reviewing how I approached running Boston in 2023 & my training for the UTMB Snowdon race – to see what I could learn for this year’s London marathon & the UTMB PDA race in July. It was so incredibly instructive to combine a sense of distance / perspective to flesh out a general sense of what was at the time.
In terms of Snowdon last year, I knew I hadn’t been strong enough – what I hadn’t really understood was the chaotic & unbalanced approach that I took. Not strong enough, wasn’t helped by too little strength conditioning & too often trying to run, leading to breakdowns as not strong enough and so unable to train my running as I would have liked. A lack of down time – or forced downtime due to a breakdown in my body that was never truly addressed. This reinforced by how strong I felt going into Boston, this a result of a lot of strength work off the back of an injury. The error I made here being one of mistaking feeling strong / fit for being marathon conditioned.
Perspective like this was so refreshing & valuable. It has allowed me to be reflective without feeling less than. Doing the wrong thing for me, seeing the results and what appears to be a torch pointing the way I may need, something I wouldn’t have been able to access without the running diaries I have.
There’s no point having the past if I never use it to reflect upon objectively.
