Have you ever noticed that running has a case of multiple personalities?

Running can be pure joy as well as true heartbreak. It can be painful and triumphant. Science and art. Easy and hard. Light and heavy. Simple yet enigmatic.

There is a way to get to the bottom of how running affects us so differently from week to week or day to day so we can master its many personalities …

A good old fashioned running training journal.

You do remember what a pen and paper look like, right? For less than $20, you can solve all your running problems … or at least have more insights to help you determine strategies and solutions to maximize your performance.

“[A training diary] can be a coach and a crystal ball. It can provide a wake-up call and a slap on the wrist. A training diary is one of the best tools you can use if your goals are to improve. Performance trends and patterns that cannot be seen by observing one day at a time become clear in a diary.” ~Lynda Wallenfels via active.com

Keeping a running training journal that documents meaningful and detailed information about your running and workouts can be an immensely beneficial tool to help you answer running questions that keep you constantly asking “why?”

Why did I feel so bad today? Why did my easy run feel so hard? Why did I run faster than I thought I could today? Why was my stomach so upset? Will I ever feel better running in this heat?

I keep both a written training journal and one online. Here are a few ways keeping a training journal can help your running.

Benefits of Keeping a Training Journal

1. Identify patterns that can help you solve problems. By recording your training details on a daily basis, you can look back over time to notice factors that may have led to strong running or feeling less than your best. You may notice that certain pre-run meals, lack of sleep or running at certain times of the day impact you better or worse. By keeping a running training journal, one of my coaching clients recently realized that running on the treadmill and running too late in the day really negatively impact her running, especially from a mental perspective. This motivated her to make sacrifices to wake up even earlier than she had been to get her runs in sooner in the day and to avoid the treadmill.
2. Determine the best nutrition and hydration strategy that is right for you. By recording what you ate the night before, the morning of, during your runs and after your runs, you can begin to figure out what nutritional training and racing mix works for you. A training journal is also a great place to record results from experimenting with different kinds of race fuel, such as gels, sports drinks, salt pills, electrolyte replacement products and more.
3. Visually see improvements over time. Success in running doesn’t happen overnight. It requires patience and consistency during many weeks and months. Looking back at your training journal is a great way to find motivation and literally remind yourself how you are growing as a runner. Take a look back at the beginning of a training cycle and then where you are several months or even a year later. You may notice that once hard paces now feel easier and less challenging or that you feel stronger during speed work or less fatigued during hilly routes. Small victories are what running is all about, and celebrating those is a great way to keep you feeling positive and mentally charged.
4. Stay motivated. I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing I hate more than a blank entry in my running training journal on a day that isn’t a prescribed rest day. Sometimes, the simple notion of wanting to complete your weekly entries will force you out the door when you’d rather do anything but your workout.
5. Sound the alarm for when you need to rest or back-off. Identifying patterns in your training related to how you feel and how you’re running (mentioned above) can signal actions you may need to take. If you see that you are having trouble breathing, experiencing a higher resting heart rate, feeling really fatigued on multiple days or multiple weeks or are having a nagging pain that isn’t going away, you can assess your notes to determine the best course of action. That may be building in more rest and recovery time, icing, stretching and rolling more, being more diligent about daily hydration or even seeing a doctor. Earlier this year, I noticed my right IT band was beginning to scream at me a little. I realized that I hadn’t been diligent about the little things – deep stretching, foam rolling and other factors that help me stay injury-free. So I began incorporating regular restorative yoga into my weeks and was more diligent about foam rolling and sports massage. Sure enough, the minor ache went away within about 2 to 3 weeks and was a great reminder to not have a lapse in the “small things” that lead to great running.
6. Know when to get new shoes. Similarly, a training journal allows you to track your mileage and notate what shoes you were wearing and how far you ran in them. It will help you keep track of how many miles you’ve logged in your kicks to ensure you don’t overextend their life and lead to nagging aches and pains in the process.

What to Include in Your Training Journal

To really make a running training journal useful, it’s important to include enough details so you can identify patterns and see changes over time. Here are a few suggestions of what you may want to include.

• Prescribed workout and actual workout completed
• Distance covered
• Pace (average pace and mile splits to monitor consistency or inconsistency/trouble spots and to ensure you are running fast or slow enough depending on the workout)
• Time it took you to complete the workout
• Heart rate if you track it (this measures intensity and can assist in monitoring patterns over time … read more about heart rate training here)
• Other statistics related to non-running workouts (e.g. weight lifted and number of repetitions, cycling stats such as power, cadence, miles per hour, etc.)
• Where you ran and who you were with (this may help you see patterns for when you run well or when you struggle – e.g. hills, flat terrain, trails, with running friends or without, etc.)
• Elevation gained or lost
• How you felt both mentally and physically
• What you ate and drank before during and after the run, and possibly the night before (this can help you assess if you are eating enough/too much and what mix of fuel and hydration your body responds best to … read more about nutrition for running here)
• How you slept the night before

If you have a running coach or are considering hiring one, this information is also invaluable for your coach. As a marathon coach, understanding this data from my athletes helps me tweak their schedules each week and ensure their plans are working best for them.

Win a Motivational Training Journal from Journal MENU

Now that I’ve talked you into the importance of using a training journal regularly to track your running, here’s your chance to win one! The fine folks at Journal MENU recently made me a custom, limited edition running training journal, and I want to give this journal to one of you. Its design was inspired by some photos I took while running in a unique tunnel in Atlanta and carries my training and coaching mantra: Train Smarter. Finish Stronger.

Here’s how to enter (you can do one or any of the below options):

• Share a link to this post and/or the this (below) photo on any of your social media networks.
• Post a comment at the end of this post about how you track your daily training.
• Follow rUnladylike on social media.
• Follow Journal MENU on social media.

You must use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter and track all your entries (mandatory). Simply log in with your Facebook account or email. You will receive one entry for every action you take.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here is the image mentioned above you can share on Instagram. Be sure to include a link to this post.

What I really like about Journal MENU’s training journals:

• You can customize your own cover to make it personal and motivational to you, as well as the color of the binding. You can use a favorite photo, design, mantra or inspirational quote. The coolest part is that they don’t charge extra for your custom design.
• You can customize the pages you want to appear inside your journal (adding or subtracting certain pages like goals, race plans, running guidance, etc.) to fit your needs.
• Inspirational quotes appear on the top of each page to keep you energized.
• You get to approve a proof of your journal, and they will even send you a sample. Check out this awesome FAQ to see all the things they offer.
• They make great gifts for friends, training partners, coaching clients and others, especially since you can make them personal to the person you’re gifting it to.
• Journal MENU is a small business (team of two) and it is awesome to support passionate entreprenuerus. I also love that they are taking some of my constructive feedback into account (see below) and using it to make changes and updates moving forward to provide the best product.
• They ship internationally!

What I’d like to see Journal MENU improve:

• Some of the pages offered by Journal MENU that you can select for your journal need to be improved. I don’t like the 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon plans or planning pages they offer. Stay away from those. I also don’t like the tracking for interval training. The great thing though is you can select which pages you want to appear, so you can avoid the ones you don’t like.
• Although the cover and back are very durable and I’ve had no issue with them, it is a paperback cover vs. hard cover and may not be as durable as other journals on the market.
• For the actual tracking pages, there isn’t enough space to write all the detail you may want because they currently have a section to track food and there are too many pre-prescribed information headers. I prefer a blank space I can write anything I want. Additionally, Saturday and Sunday use one entry vs. two. I’ve provided this feedback to Journal MENU and they are using it to upgrade this section for new journals. Yay!

If you’d like to purchase your own journal from Journal MENU, you can visit their site at www.journalmenu.com and use coupon code RUNLADYLIKE to save 15% off your order. Happy running and logging!

This sweepstakes is open until 11:59 p.m. EST on Sunday, July 19. The winner will be announced on Monday, July 20, 2015.

No purchase is necessary to win. Must be 18 or older to enter. The sweepstakes is open from Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at noon Eastern time until Sunday, July 19, 2015 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. To enter, you must complete at least one of the activities listed in the Rafflecopter widget featured on this page, and you must submit your entries through the Rafflecopter widget. To do so, you will need to provide your email address or log in with your Facebook information. You can complete all of the activities for multiple entries and to increase your chances of winning. One winner will be chosen at random and will receive the training journal featured in this post from Journal MENU, with a maximum total retail value estimated at $14.99. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning. The winner will be selected on Monday, July 20, 2015, and will be contacted via email. Winners will have 2 days from the time and date of the email sent to claim their prize. rUnladylike, LLC, has the right to obtain the winner’s name through the Rafflecopter sweepstakes widget and via runladylike.com. The winner agrees to allow rUnladylike, LLC, to share the winner’s name. The prize will be emailed to the winner from Jesica D’Avanza of rUnladylike, LLC. The winner and all sweepstakes entrants hold rUnladylike, LLC, and Journal MENU harmless in the event that the prize or sweepstakes in some way negatively impacts the winner, and the winner agrees to use the prize at his or her own risk. This sweepstakes is hosted by rUnladylike, LLC, of Georgia, who can be contacted at runladylike@gmail.com. Void where prohibited by law.

Please note: I was NOT compensated to write this post. I did receive one of the journals showed in this post from Journal MENU at no cost to me, a value of $14.99.

How do you track your daily training? Do you use a running training journal?