A marathon training log is one of the most
important aspects of your training sessions.
When you are training for a marathon it
will
take you between 3-6 months of training to be at a level to complete
your marathon, depending on your fitness levels prior to the race. This
may seem like a long time, however keeping a marathon training log is
one of the easiest ways to keep your motivation going during the
build-up phase of training.
The reason for this is that by taking a
glance at your marathon training log you will be able to see just how
far you have come. You will be able to see just how many miles you have
covered in your training sessions to date and you will also get a sense
of your commitment to wanting to finish a marathon.
Your marathon training log should be
specific to what you want to get out of your marathon. Some items to
include when logging your training sessions is obviously the date of
your training session, how many miles you covered and how long it took
you to complete the distance.
However, apart from this you may also want
to include in your marathon training log other factors such as the
terrain, the weather conditions, how much effort you thought you put
into the session, your weight and even comments you want to record for
yourself.
For example, just say you went out and did
a
10 mile training session, you would record the date you did this
session and the time it took you to complete the session. However, if
you were running a hilly circuit and it was pouring rain then your
training time would obviously be worse than normal. This is why it is
important to record other factors in your marathon training log because
it gives you a sense of how your time may be slower for the mileage you
covered.
It is also a good idea to record your
comments on your training session. For example, you may notice that you
enjoy training in the mornings better than the evenings, that you had a
late night the night before and this effected your performance for that
session, that you felt fresh because you had followed the routine or
that you noticed that running with a straight posture improved your
performance and made it easier to run.
The idea here is that during your training
sessions you can experiment to find a routine that works for you so
that when it comes to the actual marathon race there are no surprises.
You have simply tweaked your performance and know how to prepare to get
the most out of your marathon.
The other great aspect of keeping a
marathon
training log in the lead up to your marathon is that you are able to
look back and see just how far you have come. For example, during the
last 3-4 weeks before your marathon you should be in the taper period.
This means that each week you will be training fewer miles. It is
common during this period that you could start to worry that you are
not training enough to finish your marathon. However, if you go back
and study your marathon training log you will have evidence that you
have in fact been putting in the mileage to more than finish a
marathon.
The other important point is to fill out
your marathon training log as soon as you finish your training session.
The reason for this is that if you let it slip you will tend to forget
how many miles you trained and how long it took you to train those
miles. However, if you fill out your marathon training log as soon as
you complete your training session then you will have done whole and
complete work and later be able to look back on just how far you have
come when either your motivation is lacking or you are questioning
whether you have done enough miles to finish your marathon.