Why you need a hand-written log and not just Strava

Finn Melanson [00:00:10]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finn Milanson, and this is the Run to the Top podcast, the podcast dedicated to making you a better runner. With each and every episode, we are created and produced by the expert team of coaches@runnersconnect.net, where you can find the best run information on the Internet, as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget. There's a lot to be said about the benefits of quick and easy online logs like Strava, but is it possible you're missing out by not keeping a handwritten log as well? Coach Rory and Dylan think so, and in today's episode, they're going to discuss why exactly they think handwritten logs can be such a beneficial tool to improve your running. Some of the benefits they discuss are the ability to easily flip back over years and analyze trends. Handwritten logs, by nature, help you write down more thoughts and feelings and not just data so you have more insight into why you might have been running so well or so poorly, especially for beginners, too. It can help you understand the reason why you're doing things. This is a great back and forth episode between the coaches and something I think every runner can get something out of. Lo's Smart Protein takes the guesswork out of finding the optimal protein amount and blend for you by drawing data from your wearables and fitness apps such as Strava, Peloton and Apple Watch. To provide specific dosing recommendations after every workout, check them out at ELO health. This podcast is brought to you by Metpro Worldrenowned Concierge nutrition, fitness and lifestyle coaching company. Head to metpro. Co RTT to get a complimentary metabolic profiling assessment and a 30 minutes consultation with a Metpro expert.

Dylan Belles [00:02:12]: Hey, guys, and welcome to another episode of Uptempo Talks, brought to you by Runners Connect. I'm Coach Dylan Bellis.

Coach Ruiari [00:02:18]: I'm Coach Rory Moynihan.

Dylan Belles [00:02:19]: Today we're going to talk about training logs and their role and how to keep a detailed training log that'll help you track your progress over a lifetime, for sure. I think one thing is potentially not obvious, and that is tracking your training. I think a lot of us possibly don't do that, and it might be easy to have on your garmin, your app or even shava, but those are almost like a social media. I don't think that most runners keep a detailed training log or really tracking and analyzing their training from the perspective that we really want. And I think this is an incredible value for a lot of us runners. I know that you yourself keep a training log. What would you say a pro? If we're talking about pros and cons of a training log, what is a pro of keeping a training log?

Finn Melanson [00:03:13]: Yeah.

Coach Ruiari [00:03:13]: So if you want to talk the actual physical training log, I think there's just a satisfaction to writing it down, seeing it in ink or pencil, however you record it. And for me, it's become kind of a nightly routine. I like to wind down at night and just write down what I did for the day and we'll get into what kind of notes I include. But yeah, I think that makes it different. And yeah, like you're saying, I think we get so caught up in the automatic posts that just happened to strava, we kind of enjoy it that week or look back at it as people comment on it. They're like, oh, cool run, or Nice job, great paces. But I think having the physical training log and just being able to flip through it like this and then even going years back, I mean, I have this going on almost decades, probably since 7th or 8th grade when I guess my high school, middle school coach required that we kept a training log. So it kind of allows you to look at your training from 10,000ft up is how I describe it.

Dylan Belles [00:04:16]: I think it allows you to make good decisions, too. If you're able to look back and see things on paper and if you've made a mistake or if you've got injured, sometimes it's easy to just go back and be like, oh yeah, I was actually pretty stupid here. Maybe I ran too much or ran too hard or I was doing these things concurrently. So I agree. I think it works in a way. It's meditatively. It's kind of like a journal in a sense. So you write what you do and that in a way, kind of solidifies it and makes it real versus just keeping just logging your runs and it just goes into nowhere land and you don't look at it ever again. It's much easier to rationalize or create a positive approach to what you're going to do next if you can see what you did before. I think for a lot of beginning runners, it's easy to just go and run hard every day. But if you're able to actually see that and you're like, hey, this was hard. This was hard. This is hard, you'd be like, oh, that's maybe not as smart, and that's why I'm hurt or I'm feeling bad or whatever it is.

Coach Ruiari [00:05:20]: Before we dive in further, there's kind of two things I want to bounce off what you just said. First of all, if you're looking back and trying to pick up trends, let's say you can't really find a reason to explain a slump in training or why you did well, or why you had injuries. You might have a physical therapist or someone, a professional you can see and you can use that training log and the data and the larger picture, and they may be able to pick out something to help you stay on the right track with training.

Dylan Belles [00:05:49]: Yeah, I think it's important to realize that there's a flow of training and it's not equal from year to year. And that's why one of the key items that I think that you should be including within your training log is details not only the results, the splits, the time, the distance, but also the effort, how it felt, what was the weather like, where did you do that workout or that run? These things are all very important, but I also think that you can even dive a little bit deeper and really kind of write down some notes on those days, talk about everything that surrounded that run too. I know about you, but I've had periods of my life where I'm incredibly stressed out. I have a lot of things going on. My mind is not in it. And so I could look back at training from a year ago and be like, wow, I'm in so much better shape than I was a year ago during this time period, but maybe I was going through a really rough time or really rough period in my life. And that is important to include because that stress is also and should be noted because that is very representative of how you feel and how that flows over time. So if we're talking about flow of training, what is something that you notice from years past into your training today? So obviously a lot of things are different for you than they were five years ago, than they were ten years ago. A lot of things may be the same, but when you're looking back and reflecting on your training log, how do you connect those patterns? What are you connecting and what are you thinking about?

Coach Ruiari [00:07:25]: Great question. First, I would caution not to focus on a magical year. If you had a really good year with standout performances, you just can't replicate what you had done in all cases. So even though it's very tempting to just, oh, I did this many miles and I did this kind of taper. As you referenced, personal events happening in your life are really going to affect where you're at. And sometimes training is not linear. You could have just gotten lucky there, and you may be in a totally different spot. So first of all, I do like referencing notes and maybe putting what I was doing that week. So if I was on vacation or traveling, that might explain a dip in training or when I was teaching full time and I had finals week coming up and I had to grade a bunch of papers, I might be able to pick out something there where I was doing kind of mediocre runs when I was just tired and stressed out. So I'd kind of look for those hot spots, so to speak, throughout the year. Yeah, I mean, there's lots of things you could get into it.

Dylan Belles [00:08:29]: Yeah, I personally like to look at trends naturally. Training kind of progresses on its own rate to get better. You don't always have to continue doing more. And so sometimes once you've built up to a certain point, you don't really need to keep surpassing that. Once that aerobic house is essentially built over a period of a decade, you don't really need as much to get the same effect. So I like to see the trends of the breakouts, the times that I had run faster. I look back at my physical training log when, let's say, I was in high school. A big difference between when I was a junior and senior is that I ran more volume. And so I got into a habit of thinking like, okay, more volume is better. Well, I ran into a point to where that wasn't better, so that's a trend there. And then I maybe look at instead of progressing every week, I was just very consistent. One year I stayed healthy, did a lot of moderate workouts. It was great. Or perhaps I was more trained for a ten k because weeks or months before, I was doing a little bit more speed work, a little bit more strength endurance work. And I can see and connect these trends in which I can apply today. And of course, I'm not the same person I was five or ten years ago. Run much slower for my easy runs, but much faster in my races. And so I can look at those trends and see, okay, here's what worked for me. These are the things I was doing at the time. This is how I felt. What can I do today? Or what can I do from this build to continue to get back to feeling like that? And it can take a long time, of course, but it's something that's worth noting. And tracking those trends over time can help give you a clear picture of maybe a prediction of what you can do. What can happen in the Future.

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Coach Ruiari [00:12:27]: Yeah, great point. It reminds me what you said in a recent podcast about running fast, where I get more descriptive would be workout days, easy runs. I'll write down the pace. I really don't care about the pace most days unless it felt especially harder or as fatigued. So I run easy days, easy. But yeah, you can look for those splits and you might be like, oh, I had a really good workout. But make sure you have enough detail where you're noting the recovery periods and even what those paces were, because, yeah, you might be running the same times, but if you're becoming faster and more efficient, you may notice your recoveries are just going better. You're running faster, your heart rate drops quicker. Things like that are going to be really key. So you could argue heart rate variability if your watch is tracking something like that could be something to note.

Dylan Belles [00:13:20]: Yeah, progress comes from a lot of different angles. It's not just one thing. It's a lot of things added up, and it's very cumulative, and that changes over time. Like you said, it flows, I think, for the beginning, to the experienced runner, that this is probably the most important thing that you should be doing, because it allows you to reason with what you're doing and why you're doing it and to understand and see that progress over time and to track that and make those adjustments. And it's fun and it's motivating, it's incentivizing, and it sounds silly from the surface. Like, oh, I have to keep this journal, and I have to keep all these different data points and how I felt and my heart rate and sleep and stress, and it seems like a lot of work, but you can do it in five to ten minutes. And it's something that you will look back that year that you did it, or five years, or ten years like you do, and you're like, man, I'm really glad that I looked back, that I did this. And it just allows you to see yourself, like you said, from 1000 miles.

Coach Ruiari [00:14:25]: Up or 30,000ft if you're in play. But from what I've seen, a lot of athletes I coach, I'd say a lot of us are running nerds and may even go overboard with the data and what they're tracking and writing down to the point where it could just get kind of tedious. So I know we've kind of referenced what we write down. Do we want to just iron out what types of stuff we're including so I can kind of rattle it off and see if there's anything you might include? So over the years, it can change, especially as I've gotten better watches and have the premium strava account. I include more, but traditionally got to have the mileage, overall time less. So I think I tend to write pace as I've gotten into trail running. I'll track the elevation gain. I'll do cadence, heart rate, and then, yeah, I might reference how many hours of sleep I got. So those are things that come to mind for me. Is there anything you're including? Like, are you adding what you ate, food, stuff like that? Where do we draw the line?

Dylan Belles [00:15:26]: Right? Yeah, this can be an endless topic of things, and trust me, I know plenty of people who track.

Finn Melanson [00:15:34]: Absolutely.

Coach Ruiari [00:15:35]: Yeah. I didn't even reference shoes, gear, and that's fine.

Dylan Belles [00:15:41]: We cannot become so dependent on the numbers. My big thing is just you can't be obsessive over it. I want you to use it to your advantage and to allow this to help propel you. I don't want it to hold you back. And the people who get held back are the ones who are obsessed with the numbers. And it has to be perfect. It has to be this, it has to be that. And if it's not, then it just crumbles down. I've been there. I hate it. I don't recommend it for anybody, but for myself personally, I think that I need to do a better job at keeping a log. I always like to include my pace, my distance splits, of course. And I need to do a better job personally at writing down how I'm feeling and everything else is going on because I've had a lot of stress, a lot of areas that have concerned me and have affected my training. And unfortunately, I have not done a good job in tracking this and putting this on paper over time, although I know that it's something that I like to do. It's also like when you have something physical and you write it down, that's proven to ingrains it in your head. So you can almost go there and you can just write your goals down. And so it's like, okay, if I want to run a 212 marathon, I write 212 right now, I can't do that. If I just continue doing it, I just write it, write it, write it, write it. That repetition. It's one of those things where you can see it and you can believe it to be true based on just ingraining that in your head. So I think it's a great way to keep goals, to stay motivated, stay counted, and yeah, personally, I'll say right now that I need to do a better job. I need to do an absolutely better job. I do keep track of my sleep, and I mostly do that from this ring on the hand. Yeah, from the aura ring. But as an overall physical copy of things, I truly believe as an athlete, it's one of the things that I've limited myself.

Coach Ruiari [00:17:48]: Yeah, and one way you can kind of veer away from obsessing over the data. I saw some examples. I was just kind of checking out some resources online where athletes will, at the top of each week, write a focus or a goal or even an intention, what are they running for this week? And they may even go a little bit further and have a monthly goal. And then of course, they're going to have their overarching annual goals. So I think that's a cool thing. You want to have goals for each month or week that are non tangible.

Dylan Belles [00:18:19]: Or measurable, I agree with that. And you need to write it down. Those are all things that you can add to a training journal that will keep you moving forward. If there's so many people who are on and off runners and they just get into it, really into it, really into it, and then they fill out and it's like, next year, here we go, january 1, I'm back in. And same thing. So that's another way to kind of just keep you on track.

Coach Ruiari [00:18:44]: Perfect. And I think I'll include a link below. I think it might have been Runners World, but it was just featuring different training logs and yeah, one thing, have fun with it. Make sure you enjoy actually updating your training log. Use your favorite pen, different colors. That's why I'm going to include this resource, so you can get ideas for how to actually enter your information.

Dylan Belles [00:19:08]: Awesome, man. I think a lot of us need to understand that this is really important. And if you don't have a training log, get one.

Coach Ruiari [00:19:15]: All right, well, there you have it. We'll let you decide how you want to track your training. We definitely agree. You should we want to know about your system. Perhaps you have a physical training log.

Dylan Belles [00:19:26]: Do you do it digitally?

Coach Ruiari [00:19:27]: Do you have some kind of combination? What systems work for you? Please share that in the comments below on our YouTube video. If you're listening, you know how to get a hold of us, whether that's social media or email addresses. We usually have that information in the video description on YouTube. So just like anything with training, we can learn from other athletes and kind of improve our model and what works with training.

Dylan Belles [00:19:50]: All right. Well, that wraps it up. Thank you all for listening to today's Uptempo Talks episode, brought to you by Runners Connect. I'm Coach Dylan Bellis.

Coach Ruiari [00:19:58]: I'm Coach Rory Moyan.

Dylan Belles [00:19:59]: Thank you all for watching.

Finn Melanson [00:20:16]: Thanks for listening to the Run to the Top podcast. I'm your host, Finn Malanson. As always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider connecting with me on Instagram at Wasatch, Finn, and the rest of our team at Runners Connect. Also consider supporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify and Apple podcast players. Lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content, behind the scenes experiences with our guests, and premier access to contests and giveaways, then subscribe to our newsletter by going to RunnersConnect. Net podcast. Until next time, happy trading.