Forum home› Road cycling forum› Training, fitness and health

Riding diaries

Frank the tankFrank the tank Posts: 6,553
edited January 2009 in Training, fitness and health
Do you keep one?

I do, but I only record my distance, time, average speed, monthly cumulative milage & annual cumulative milage.

I compare various months/years data. More out of interest than any serious kind of reason.
Tail end Charlie

The above post may contain traces of sarcasm or/and bullsh*t.

Posts

  • redveeredvee Posts: 11,922
    I do but only record the data colected by the bike computer apart from the ride time, though I did consider this at the beginning of the year, I also had big ideas of doing some more miles this year, so far I've failed :oops:
    I've added a signature to prove it is still possible.
  • toontratoontra Posts: 1,160
    I've started taking my GPS with me on every run and uploading the tracklogs to a bit of software called Ascent. It has a calendar view so you can look back over your trips, then go to each day and view mileage, av.speed, etc., plus a detailed map of the route and the speed and altitude for each stage.

    463 miles so far this year (plus commuting).

    a serious case of small cogs
  • Murr XMurr X Posts: 258
    I have been using a training diary for 6 years now. Many find keeping a detailed diary a pain but it can help you see patterns in you're training that you may have otherwise have missed etc.

    On the turbo I very often do long intervals to check progress as there is much less variation than on the road, this is a great information to put in a diary and it allows you to see where you are in relation to where you had been and find out if recent training plans are working or not.

    I always keep as many ride details as I can (power, duration, how I felt, etc) as well as things like how my mental well being is, how stressed I was over work, my morning weight, sleep patterns, timing of meals relative to training, what I was eating, colour of urine... etc.

    I find that there are many things you may or may not have control over can affect training/racing and motivation too. With a bit of knowledge and patience a diary can help you spot these things, of course you may be someone that gets no benefit from one at all.
  • singlespeedexplosifsinglespeedexplosif Posts: 1,564
    yeah, both a detailed one for my coach, and I put some basic details on cyclogs to keep track of my mates
  • rb1956rb1956 Posts: 134
    I don't consider myself "in training", but I record details of my rides, including my commute, shopping etc. It's just a spreadsheet though, into which I enter the info stored in my comp, plus brief comments. It's encouraging to see my average speed over the same journeys gradually rising, or to read that a particularly bad time was caused by road-works (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).
  • garmingarmin Posts: 31
    I use a garmin 305 with a heart rate monitor and cadence sensor.Just plug in to computer and download to program.gives me everything i need to know.best bit of kit have .
    Litespeed Vela
    Dawes giro 400 [winter bike]
    Diamondback S3 full sus

    no pain no gain.
  • iain_jiain_j Posts: 1,941
    Like rb1956 i'm not "training" but i record distance, time and speed from my computer, plus notes on the weather and how the ride went. I used to put it on a spreadsheet but a couple of years back i changed it to an access database to make it look a bit better.

    Didn't really know why i put so much "on record" when i first started doing it, but i find it interesting now to look back at rides i've done and what i was up to (distance and difficulty-wise) this time x years ago.
  • iain_jiain_j Posts: 1,941
    edited January 2009
    Duplicate post
  • phreakphreak Posts: 2,693
    I log all of my rides and it's useful for analysing distance and speed over a period of time.
  • Russell SmithRussell Smith Posts: 229
    MY Cycling On Line

    http://www.mycycling.co.uk/guest/about.aspx
  • fuzzynavelfuzzynavel Posts: 718
    garmin wrote:
    I use a garmin 305 with a heart rate monitor and cadence sensor.Just plug in to computer and download to program.gives me everything i need to know.best bit of kit have .

    I'm with you.....Although I have the 705 with Cadence and HRM and you are right....it is the best bit of kit I have bought too. Just connect by USB to the computer and all the rides are downloaded and sorted by date.
    If you put them into WKO+ then you have lots of handy charts etc too that you can manipulate.
    17 Stone down to 12.5 now raring to get back on the bike!
  • BronzieBronzie Posts: 4,927
    There's a fairly detailed Annual Training Diary as an Excel file that I came across on the TimeTrialling forum:
    http://www.timetriallingforum.co.uk/ind ... ntry404025

    Think you have to be a forum member to view.
    It's a Lifestyle! -+-+- Coggan Training Levels
  • SCR PedroSCR Pedro Posts: 912
    I keep an excel spreadsheet containing:

    Date
    Workout (Road/Turbo Trainer)
    Type of workout (Base/Tempo/Intervals)
    Distance
    Avg Speed
    Max Speed
    Duration
    Avg HR
    Max HR
    Calories
    Time spent outside of zone
    Weather
    Route
    And any other comments (Mood/Tired/Stressed)

    I also have a couple of graphs showing average speeds and distances so I can easily see if I'm improving on either.

    It seems a lot, but it's really good to have this information available if you want to identify patterns or areas to improve upon.

    Pedro
    Giant TCR Advanced II - Reviewed on my homepage
    Giant TCR Alliance Zero
    BMC teammachineSLR03
    The Departed
    Giant SCR2
    Canyon Roadlite
    Specialized Allez
    Some other junk...
Sign In or Register to comment.