Body of Work

The Value of Keeping a Training Diary Alongside Data Uploaded to an App

Before the advent smart watches and their associated apps athletes would record their training data in handwritten training diaries. This would usually involve going through your watch, bike computer or heart rate monitor after each session and writing everything down straight away as, back then, most devices were limited in how much memory was available.These days most watches are capable of storing hundreds of hours of training data. The ability to upload to an app makes it easy to store and retrieve years of data, however, easier isn’t always better. The following looks at reasons why keeping a written diary alongside an app can be a great training tool and offers some suggestions about what sort of information to include.

Keeping a Training Diary Forces You to Actually Review all that Data

It’s now so easy to just hit sync and send your training data straight to the app that we don’t even have to look at it. Setting aside 5 minutes a day to write it all down is an opportunity to look at what was recorded. Was your heart rate higher than normal? Did your cadence drop during the last few K’s. There’s a well known saying that “If we don’t measure it, we can’t improve it”. I’d like to add that “if we don’t know it, we can’t use it!”

A Written Diary Lets You be Subjective

A written diary allows more detailed recording of subjective information such as how you felt during training as well as any factors that may affect how the session went e.g. hydration and nutrition, weather, life stress, injuries or illness. Reflect and PlanA diary is a good place to reflect after a key event- what you did well and what you’d like to improve on next time. It’s also a place where you can write your weekly plan and where you can state your short and long-term goals.

Accumulated Knowledge

A training diary is a great thing to look back at over the years. I was first introduced to the practice of keeping one in 1995 (feeling ancient) when we had to keep a training diary as part of our assessment for high school Health and Physical Education class. I’ve kept one ever since.

For anyone who looked at the accompanying pic and thought this post might be a shoe review, I hope you are still reading. Keeping a training diary will likely do more to improve your training than any shoe can. It will help give you deeper insight into the individual nuances of how your body and mind respond to training regardless of whether you have a coach, follow a plan or just wing it day-by-day. The knowledge you accumulate from weeks and years of training is a precious thing. Don’t just give it all away to whatever training app you use. Take note of what you observe and use it to guide what you do.