Diary

Mark Alexander

I read in this months C+ that many cyclists keep detailed diaries. Does anyone here do the same? Can you suggest what info seems to work? Do you write it or put it in the Computer?

Mog Uk

I automatically upload mine from my Garmin forerunner onto the PC. Useful for achieving targets/specific goals, monitoring heart rate, average speeds etc and using the GPS data I can see where my weak points/strong points are on particular routes.

BeaconRuth

Yes. Sad as it may seem I could tell you precisely what training I did on any day in the last 4 years. It's so important to me that my training diary stays within arm's reach of my favourite spot on the sofa at all times - and it's constantly referred to.

What do I use? I use the free one I get from the Institute of Physics every year - a humble pocket (paper!) diary. A friend who is a rather good cyclist was having a good old laugh at my expense the other day because, apparently, I should be keeping a far more sophisticated diary on the computer. But it works for me.

Ruth

nottscobb

This last year I have been using www.mycycling.co.uk to log all my rides.

It gives the option to enter pretty all the data you might want to log including comments of the ride. It can store a list of routes and bikes used and you can use it to look back at various statistics per month etc.

There are a few more sites offering similar facilities so it's worth doing some searches on google but this one works for me.

andyp

BeaconRuth wrote:

Yes. Sad as it may seem I could tell you precisely what training I did on any day in the last 4 years. It's so important to me that my training diary stays within arm's reach of my favourite spot on the sofa at all times - and it's constantly referred to.

What do I use? I use the free one I get from the Institute of Physics every year - a humble pocket (paper!) diary. A friend who is a rather good cyclist was having a good old laugh at my expense the other day because, apparently, I should be keeping a far more sophisticated diary on the computer. But it works for me.

Just 4 years? Pah! I have paper diaries detailing my training going back until 1992! :shock: :oops:

SteveR_100Milers

1992! Pah!
I have kept a log since 1989, and even all the results sheets I had! Mind you it stopped in 1992 and only restarted last year. But are we talking a diary as in log of rides etc or written prose describing weather, conditions, your feelings thoughts etc etc?

hugo15

I keep a diary too. Just interested to record my miles and look at how I am doing. As I am an accountant mine is obviously logged in a spreadsheet with graphs to compare against previous years

Matchstick Man

simple excel s/sheet - each sheet covers 3 months which is broken down into columns.

So column A is the date, column B is a brief description of what you did, add in a comment for details
Break it down into 7 day weeks and pop in your weekly hours

At the top you can have the heading of month with the total monthly hours to give you a brief synopsis to see if your training load is increasing

Anyone wanting a copy of the template PM me with your e-mail address and I'll pass it over

I have spreadsheets that show Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, July-Sept, Oct-Dec for the past 15 years. This 3 month split fits in nicely with Oct-Dec (winter/off season), Jan-Mar (pre-season) and then racing season (Apr-Sept).

I also fill in the races I want to do in the future and can work back from that in terms of weeks,etc.

Simple.

SteveR_100Milers

I also keep an excel spreadsheet, and use a timex datalogger software programme into which my HRM and GPS downloads and produced lots of nice coloured charts and graphs....

andyp

SteveR_100Milers wrote:

1992! Pah!
I have kept a log since 1989, and even all the results sheets I had! Mind you it stopped in 1992 and only restarted last year. But are we talking a diary as in log of rides etc or written prose describing weather, conditions, your feelings thoughts etc etc?

I have the complete set from 1992 to 2007.

What's in them depends on what I'm doing in terms of goals each year. When I was racing seriously I recorded resting heart rate, a one to ten scale on my mood and my weight plus my training sessions and lessons learnt in races. :shock: How did I have the time?!

Nowadays it's mainly a log of time spent on the bike and writing this I'm not sure why I persist with it. I can only conclude it's for posterity. These days I ride my bike for enjoyment and if I follow a structured training plan I soon find that the enjoyment goes.