The Advantages of Keeping a Training Diary
The importance and value of a training diary cannot be overstated. The progress you make in your training and the success you have in competition will be a direct result of the structure of your training activities and preparation. This includes everything about your athletic lifestyle like workouts, diet, sleep and recovery, and the specifics of your daily training activities. I like to put to my riders this way.
“If you have a really good ride we want to go back and see exactly the training that produced such a great performance. We then have a successful example to follow in the future. If, on the other hand, you have a performance that is unexpectedly poor, we want to know what factors contributed to it so they are not repeated.”
Whenever I start with a new rider I ask to see their logbook. If they do not have one I am immediately suspicious of their commitment. I enjoy the challenge of working with ambitious and intelligent riders who are involved in the process. They want to see if they are getting stronger and coming closer to their goals. Since I cannot be with my riders all the time, without a detailed training diary the best I can do is guess.
A training diary can be as simple a notebook with places to write stuff like: date, type of training, weather conditions, hours and quality of sleep, training highlights/lowlights, food and water intake, general feeling for the day. The more information you gather the better job you and your coach can do at managing your training. You may need to do a block of tempo training to boost your aerobic endurance a bit leading up to a stage race. You will want to back off on the hard training in time to rest up and get fresh for the start of the race. If you really nail it and have a good ride you will want to know “exactly” what you did leading up to that race.
The Power of the Written Word
The written word can be very inspiring at times. It can be motivating to go back and look through your diary over the winter when warm sunny days seem so far off and you need some motivation to do your umpteenth trainer workout. There will also be those times when a less experienced rider asks you a serious question about training and needs your advice. With your diary in hand, you can say, “well when I had the same problem I did….. and it seemed to work well for me”. You not only have the proof to back up your advice you also have the chance to influence a developing rider about the value of good record keeping. Mission accomplished!
A rider receives motivation from their training diary without really realizing it. Once you get into the habit of logging in your training data your diary acts as a silent motivator. You find yourself encouraged to get out and train so you can log the data in your book. After a few months your training plan is dependent on the daily information you put in your diary. And after a few more months your discipline is rewarded with improved performance and race results. As your goals come a go your training diary will help you answer some very important questions and keep the progress going.
How many days in the year did you train?
How many days in the year did you complete?
What was you biggest combined week of training and racing?
How many days were lost due to illness or injury?
Did you have enough rest built into your training plan?
What kind of training benefited you the most?
What kind of training benefited you the least?
During which periods were you training hardest?
What was you hardest training cycle?
During which periods was your racing the strongest?
Looking at these details can help you analyze things in a more detailed way. For instance, I would expect to see a hard training cycle followed by improved fitness and performance after 2-3 weeks of adaptation. By tracking the volume and intensity of each week you can see which combinations produce the best results.
From season to season your records will tell you how you are progressing through the many different phases of your development. For instance, as a new rider your training will bring rapid development but the increments of improvement will be smaller and smaller as the years go by. You will reach plateaus that will only be surpassed by changes in training regime based on what you have done in the past.
Finding and Using Patterns
At points along the way you will begin to see patterns of development based on the data tracked in your diary. This is useful information for assessing goals and predicting peaks. Patterns are useful for planning the beginning of each season. Based on the previous spring training cycles and early season fitness they produced you will be able to plan your off-season training with confidence knowing you are on the right track.
One of the most important things a diary will give you is a picture of the quantity and consistency of your training and the specific information regarding the volume, intensity and frequency of your program. How much do you train at all levels? What heart rates associated with your training? How often do you repeat certain workouts?
If you are performance testing on a regular basis, and you should, the data gathered from your testing will not only tell you how you are doing but will determine the heart rate intensities for future workouts. This is a lot of information to keep stored in your brain.
When I examine the training diary of a new rider one thing I look for are short periods of big volume followed by long rests. This can show a pattern of over-training followed by forced rest time to compensate and recover. This tells me that the rider is not following a good pattern of periodization and is lacking a rhythm for training and recovery that stimulates consistent adaptation and progress.
Keeping a Watchful Eye on Weight and Resting Pulse.
There are a few more details I ask my riders to keep track of starting with pre and post training body weight and resting pulse. Endurance athletes are remarkably resilient and are prone to doing too much sometimes. By looking at these two simple parameters plus the “general comments” or “daily rating” information I can often tell if the athlete is getting over-worked.
The resting pulse data can be very telling. After a really hard training session or a race, I expect to see comments like ’solid/hard work’ or ‘tough but worthwhile’ in the comments. I would expect to find that their resting pulse was a few beats higher than normal the following morning. After an active recovery day I would expect to see the resting pulse back to normal. If I see the resting pulse remaining above normal for 2-3 days and after a scheduled workout the reaction in the comments section reads “still feeling tired”, “really hard work today” or “unable to get my HR up”, then I know the athlete has hit the limit and is over-reached, over-training or possibly getting sick.
Weight Control
Cyclists are often concerned about their weight, sometimes for good reason. Hauling surplus kilos up the hill is a lot of extra work. I am less concerned about a riders climbing ability that I am about their health. Reasonable fluctuations in body weight are normal throughout the season. I expect a rider to gain a bit in the winter and trim back down during the season but loosing too much weight too fast can be very unhealthy. If a rider wants to drop a few pounds then I help them develop an eating plan to trim about 1lb/week and they keep track in their diary. Once they reach their weight goal we have a detailed record for future use.
I also ask my riders to track their weight before and after training in hot weather because of the risk dangers of dehydration. A loss of 1 pound of body weight from fluid loss requires 20oz of replacement immediately after training. Recording weight twice a week is often enough, 2-3 times a week in hot weather.
In Conclusion
When a rider is young and the learning curve is steep a training diary will provide the information needed to keep their development on track. As they get older it will serve as a valuable guide and motivator. And when they finally get to the age that racing becomes more about telling stories and sharing their experiences it will serve as a memoir of lessons learned and goals achieved. What began as a simple tool to improve their training turns into a personal history, an archive, of their life as an athlete. Compared to the thousands of hours you will spend on the bike in your competitive lifetime the few minutes a day it takes to make your diary entry is a small investment that pays huge dividends.