Mark: Well, welcome back to another triathlon training explained. Today, I'm talking about
training diaries, what they are, what they're for and why you should definitely be keeping
one. [music]
All right. Well, let's start with what a training diary is. Now, on the simplest level, it is
somewhere to record your training. That can be to log the training that you plan to do,
you're prescribing to yourself, or even recording the training that you have done, that you
can then look back on and reflect on and analyze. By this point, you've probably come across
things like TrainingPeaks, Strava, MapMyRun, various other apps, all of which tend to have
a training diary incorporated into them. A training diary can be as simple as a note
on your phone or a book where you record your training. I actually used to have a separate
physical diary book that I would record my training in before technology took over. Some
athletes have also been known to go as far as creating their own digital diaries and
planners using Excel or an online calendar, but it definitely does not need to be quite
that fancy. [music]
If it doesn't need to be fancy and digital, then what does it need to be? Well, for a
training diary to actually be of any use at all, then you need to be documenting and recording
each of your daily training sessions. Now, on a very basic level, that should be the
distance or duration or both, and the intensity. For instance, I've been for a nice easy 30-minute
run today and I'd probably score that about a 3, maybe a 4 out of 10.
If you can, then recording more information and more detail can be really valuable. I'll
explain a little bit more on why that is later on. That could be things like your paces,
your splits, your power, and so on. I'm not trying to sell the online training platforms
for you, but they are quite useful in the sense that they can actually record that data
nice and easily for you rather than you having to manually write that out and a lot of your
GPS devices and computers can automatically upload all that data for you.
[music] Okay, now for the big question, why should
you keep a training diary anyway? Well, there are a load of enormous benefits to a training
diary. Otherwise, why would so many people be keeping them in the first place? The big
one is the fact that you can track your progress. If you are keeping a detailed record of your
training, along with things like your splits, paces, and so on, you can look back at that,
and hopefully you'll be able to track and follow your progress, or at least see where
maybe things have gone wrong. It's also really satisfying looking back at
all that hard work that you've done. The same goes for races. Make sure you get all that
information down in the training diary. Analyze it, pick it apart, what went well, what didn't,
and that also can serve to be very valuable in the future. Another benefit to the training
plan is the fact that it allows you to also plan ahead. Rather than just waking up one
day and going, "Oh, I think I'm going to go hard today," and then the next day waking
up and going, "Oh geez, yes, I'm quite tired today, I might take it easy." You can start
adding a bit of structure to your training so that hard session, you're really prepared
to go hard in. The pre-planned recovery sessions, they're planned in. They're meant to be there
and they're going to help your training. This is also going to transfer into when we're
looking at some of the longer-term goals. Say maybe you've got an Ironman coming up
this year, that can be quite an overwhelming goal, particularly so when you're looking
at it maybe months in advance at the start of all your training. It's also quite far
into the future so it's hard to keep that motivation going in training. Whereas using
a training plan, we can start to break it all down into nice bite-sized chunks that
are manageable, easy to digest. We can actually start adding in some little micro-goals that
you can then start using to track your progress along the way. Not only is that going to help
your motivation, but actually having it all written down, you're far more likely to stick
to it. That is talking from personal experience. One of the biggest benefits to keeping a training
diary, in my opinion, is the fact that you've got everything logged there so you can start
looking back through the archive, seeing what's gone well, what hasn't gone well, maybe why
you're performing well at the moment, maybe why you're not performing well at the moment.
Maybe you've got your taper totally wrong going into a race. If you've got it all recorded
here, you can completely pick that apart. I've got a really good personal example. I
went through a phase of having really bad cramps particularly so when I was swimming
and I'd get it really badly into my calves, so much so I'd have to stop swimming. I did
everything I could to try and stop that. I was recording what I was eating, how much
sleep I was getting, the training I was doing day in, day out. It boiled down to me just
running a few hours prior to swimming. Once I cut that out, no cramps so I've got a lot
to thank for the training diary really. Now, clearly, there are a number of benefits
to a training diary, but how do we actually use one? As I mentioned already, good planning
goes hand-in-hand with good performance. You want to use this training diary to plan out
your time between now and your future goal, race, Ironman, whatever it is, and break that
time down into bite-sized chunks that you can manage. As I've mentioned already, maybe
setting those small goals along the way so you can track your progress and motivate you.
The big thing you really want to make sure that you're planning into that is your recovery.
Whether that's a day off per week to recover or maybe breaking it down into three or four-week
blocks and then you will take a recovery week after because no matter how resilient you
may think you are, I'm afraid, we all need recovery.
[music] We know that planning is important, but how
do we know that planning is actually working? Well, this is where some benchmark tests can
come in. These can serve as those little goals along the way that I was talking about before.
For the swim, it could be the critical swim speed test, the CSS test. On the bike, it
could be the FTP test. On the run, a 5k time trial or a threshold test. You want to perform
these maybe once a month or once every six weeks at the absolute most. The important
bit is get it down in your training diary, in your training plan. Then you can use that
to refer back to previous tests, maybe look at your test this time last year, see if it's
better. Maybe your FTP on the bike is better during the offseason now than it is when you
were in peak fitness during the race season. Whatever it is, that is where the training
diary really comes into its own. Hopefully, by this point, I have sold the
training diary to you. Now, I know I said you didn't need to do this earlier on in the
video, but I would actually really recommend going the full hog with your training diary.
Try and record as much as you possibly can. That doesn't mean you need to go as far as
recording your personal weight each day or what you've been eating, but at least the
information from each of those sessions along with some subjective feedback, how you felt
in that session. That could be as simple as one word, good, bad, or a couple of lines
just detailing how it went, the paces, et cetera. That's not only going to help yourself
when you're looking back through your training, but also your coach if you have one.
Well, I hope you have enjoyed today's video. Give it a Like if you have. I hope you've
learnt something from this and you start using a training diary if you haven't. Make sure
if you're not doing so already, you are subscribed to our GTN channels.
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