Running Log Template

Seven columns

Date, route, distance, time, pace, average heart rate, notes. Fifteen to twenty-five rows on a page, and the whole sheet switches between kilometres and miles — the unit prints in the header so there is no ambiguity three weeks later.

The two columns that matter most

Pace is the one to fill in even though it means dividing time by distance in your head at the end of a run. It is what makes two runs comparable when they were different lengths, and it is the number that shows improvement long before your race times do.

Notes is where the actual information ends up. "Hot, felt heavy from 6k" or "new shoes, left calf tight" explains a slow run that the numbers alone make look like a bad week. Six months later, when something hurts, this column is the only record of when it started.

Heart rate, if you have it

Leave the column blank if you do not, and nothing is lost.

If you do wear a monitor, average heart rate alongside pace is the pair worth watching. The same pace at a lower heart rate over a few months is fitness improving, and it is a more reliable signal than pace on its own, which moves around with weather, sleep and how much you had for lunch.

Why paper, given the watch already knows

Your watch records more than this sheet does, and shows you less.

An app holds every run in a scrolling list nobody scrolls. Twenty runs on one page, in your own handwriting, can be taken in whole — and writing the numbers down by hand is itself a short honest review that tapping "save" is not. Runners who keep paper logs tend to notice the pattern in their bad weeks. Runners who keep app histories tend to notice at the physio.

Kilometres or miles

Pick the one you think in. Britain runs in a muddle — road races in kilometres, conversation in miles — and there is no right answer, only the cost of mixing them in one log, which is that no two rows can be compared without arithmetic.

Beyond running

The columns suit cycling, swimming, rowing, walking, with almost no adjustment. Route becomes pool or river. Pace becomes whatever your sport counts in.

Print a page a month and keep them in order. A year of this is a training history, and it takes about thirty seconds a day to build.