Keeping Track

Obviously, keeping track of your progress is good for knowing if you're being successful, if you're getting anywhere.

Today I ran 9km for the first time and it felt GREAT!! And according to my plan I am going to run 9km again on Thursday, and hit 10 on Sunday next week! So I wanted to be able to compare this run to the next run, so I added an extra worksheet to my Training Log.

I love Excel (or actually, Open Office Calc, but that's neither here nor there), and so I have several worksheets that help me train and track my progress. Now, I admit I did not program these initially, someone else did the hard work to get them started, but they help me immensely, and I have customised them to suit me where needed.

First I have a chart that calculates my running program based upon a percentage of the total cumulative distance I want to run in a week, with no more than a 10% increase in distance in a week, so I don't have to do any math or thinking.

I also have a Triathlon Training Log chart that keeps track of my swim, bike, run distances on a daily and weekly basis that displays each onto a line graph to show how far I am going. It's pretty nice to see the line sticking up really really high! Sad to see the swim ones though, they stick up like little goosebumps on the bottom of the chart, where the cycling is up often near the 80km mark each week.

It also has a heart rate tracking section, but I don't have a heart rate monitor at this point, but could be very interesting when I do start checking that. It also has a "reward" column where I track how many sessions I have done and pay myself $1 per session. The cumulative total is great! I'm ready to spend some of my hard work! This is one of my additions.

I have now added a chart that tracks each running effort at different distances, 1 to 20km with efforts 1 though 10 for each distance, and finally an average time for each distance run. What is excellent about this is that I can see if I am at least working at a 6 minute kilometer pace or better, by looking at it, and it also converts my pace to km/hour. Thank goodness I only had to go through the process of figuring out the maths for that conversion once! Now the computer will do it for me! :)

Most of the time I am running OVER 10km per hour, which is pretty good! I am aiming for 12km per hour for my race pace over 12km and I have 187 days of training to get there.

Now, just keep running!

Oh, if you're intersted in these spreadsheets, let me know and I can email you a copy.
Cheers!