The weather had turned overnight from perfect for running to pretty cold. This was my first run of the season in gloves. I did an out and back course that totals about four miles with the intention of adding some distance at the end to run five miles, but I should have known this was unlikely. I guess I thought I would warm up ever so slowly, and feel great by the time I hit the turn-around. See, I’m really trying to maintain that positive attitude. The run wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t great either, and by the time I got back to the end, I was done running. I just felt kind of blah, which matched the gray skies.
I’ve been trying to locate one of my workout logs from 2010, when I ran the Boulder Backroads fall half marathon in what was a pretty decent time, for me (1:51- at altitude on dirt roads- my PR is 1:50 at sea level, on pavement). I want to see what kind of times I was running for track workouts and tempo runs back then, and the fact that I can’t find it is driving me berserk! I am sure I organized one day and it got alphabetized, chronologized or otherwise sorted, making its location a total enigma.
My problem (one of them, anyway) is that I have not been consistent about how I keep track of my workouts. I used to use workoutlog.com, which I think is quite user-friendly. I still have an account with them somehow for free (not sure if this is kosher, but I won’t tell if you won’t tell, thanks). Although I never update it, I like that it exists for me to go back to as a reference, since I was using it from about 2005 to 2007, and I really can’t remember back that far. I’ve also used the Training Peaks website intermittently from 2009 through 2011. I don’t think the user interface is very intuitive,but it gets the job done, and while I don’t record workouts there currently, I do like it for reference. At other times, including now, I have used a spiral notebook (such as the one I wish I could find) and a Word document on my desktop.
I wish I would have been consistent in tracking my workouts in one place over the years instead of having everything all over the place. When I trained for my first marathon in 2000-2001, I am sure I would never have believed it if you’d told me I would like to have notes from my training cycle over a decade later, at which point I would have completed several more marathons, in addition to ironman triathlons, and too many other races to count over the year. I distinctly remember crossing the finish line of my first marathon and thinking first, Where the hell are my friends (they slept too late and took too long at IHOP if memory serves me), and second I will never, NEVER do this again. Sometimes it’s good to be wrong.
What method do you use to track your workouts? Are you happy with it?