Weekly Training Log Template

Copy this page into a new file for each training week (or print it), fill it in, and keep the old ones.

Why bother logging

You cannot diagnose a training-load error in hindsight if you never wrote the load down.

Almost every running injury and every case of burnout has the same forensic signature: a spike in load, or a niggle that was ignored for a fortnight, or a run of bad sleep alongside a heavy week. All of these are obvious in a log and invisible in memory. Memory reliably tells you the week you got hurt was "normal", because memory is not a training record. Your log is.

A log also does three quieter jobs:

• It tells you what your actual intensity distribution is, not what you intended it to be. Most runners who believe they run 80/20 are running considerably more moderate work than that - and the log is the only thing that will say so. See The Easy/Hard Rule.
• It records the early warnings - resting heart rate creeping up, a niggle logged three times in ten days, sleep quietly falling apart - which are only signals if you can see them in sequence. See Injury Prevention.
• It shows you progress you cannot feel. The easy pace you were running in January, at the same heart rate, is usually a much more honest measure of improvement than how fast you feel.

Two rules make a log work: fill it in on the day (not on Sunday from memory), and be honest about the runs that went badly. A log that only records good weeks is a scrapbook.

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Week Summary

Week of: YYYY-MM-DD | Training week #: ___ of ___ | Phase: Base / Build / Peak / Taper / Recovery

How I felt this week (1-10): ___ (1 = wrecked, 10 = flying)

Niggles (anything that hurt, however minor):

Log the niggle even if you are sure it is nothing. The whole value of the field is spotting the one that keeps coming back. A niggle appearing in three consecutive weeks is a plan change, not a mystery.

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Daily Log

Filling it in:

• Planned - what the plan said (e.g. "Easy 5mi", "6 x 800m @ I pace", "Rest").
• Actual - what you did. If they differ, that difference is the most valuable data in the log.
• Pace - average pace, or the rep pace for a workout (e.g. "3:42/800").
• RPE - honest effort 1-10. Easy = 3-4, marathon pace = 5-6, threshold = 7, intervals = 8-9, all-out = 10. If your "easy" runs are logging 5-6, that is the finding of the week.
• Notes - weather, terrain, how the legs felt, what you ate, who you ran with, what hurt. Short is fine. The notes column is where you will later find the reason a week went wrong.

Example row:

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Week in Review

Answer these at the end of every week. Five minutes, honestly.

1. What went well?

(One session, one decision, one thing that worked. Name it so you repeat it.)

2. What did I skip or change, and why?

(Life, weather, fatigue, injury, laziness? Be specific. "Skipped Thursday - third bad night's sleep" is data. "Skipped Thursday" is not.)

3. Was my easy running actually easy?

(Check the RPE and HR columns, not your memory. If more than about a fifth of your mileage was moderate, fix that before you change anything else in the plan.)

4. Any niggle to watch?

(Anything from the niggle table that is the same or worse than last week. What are you going to do about it this week - not next week?)

5. What am I adjusting next week?

(Volume up/down? Move a workout? Extra rest day? Write the decision down so future-you knows why the plan changed.)

6. One line for the record:

(How the week felt, in a sentence. These are the lines you will read back in six months.)

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Race Log

Keep every race in one table for the life of your running. This is what you will use to set training paces, pick goal times, and see the actual shape of your progress.

Notes column should capture: how you paced it (splits - did you positive or negative split?), how you fuelled, what you would do differently, and how the training block that led into it actually went. A race time with no context is a number; a race time with context is a lesson.

Personal bests:

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Quick Reference: my current paces

Fill this in whenever you re-test, and date it. Paces derived from your most recent race or time trial - see VDOT and Pace Tables.

Set from: ______________ (race/time trial + date) | Next re-test: ______________

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Next: Injury Prevention