Most elite athletes, including Eliud Kipchoge, keep a training diary. A training diary can either be in book format or electronic format. Electronic formats can be used to track lots of different things, there are many apps into which you can input different stats. However, for the qualitative things nothing beats a diary.
What to record in a training diary:
Training diaries can be used alongside Spreadsheets, detailing training load, etc to give a really clear picture, they also track qualitative factors that influence your running such as mood and motivation.
Giving you a sense of perspective
Perhaps the most useful aspect of a training diary, is that it gives you a real sense of perspective. If you are training for a challenging race, it is useful to read back over your diary the week before. We tend to obsess over the runs we did not do, but it gives us a picture of the sessions we did do, how they went, how they have built you up.
15 June, 2020