by Ujena Fit Club Coach Barry Anderson  Scribble it down with your own shorthand in a spiral notebook. Note it carefully in your neatly columned runners log books—including resting heart rate, body weight, and other pertinent details of the day. Or, use the Ujena Fitness Log to enter it to share with other members and for weekly prizes. What ever your do…keep it, your workout results, in a workout log of some type.

One of the important things related to a successful fitness program is to maintain a reliable way to record your daily workouts or activities. The workout log can also be used for noting other activities like a round of golf—with a notation of walked or rode. Keep the information you enter concerning your running in some detail, particularly if your plans include running as one of your primary forms of exercise and/or are intending to run races.

The information you enter can be used to plan your future training schedule and to establish or evaluate short and long-term goals. When you race well, your training log information can help you review your running in the weeks prior to the race and provide insight for future race preparation. Finally, when you have the misfortune to experience an injury or excessive soreness, your first source of information about possible causes should be your training log.

I have been keeping a diary for years. It has really helped me get through injuries (knowing what I did before) and to plan for races. I also now post deaily on the Ujena Fit Club. I know I have run a lot of extra good miles because I want to reach the next level of points. How about you?
Bob Anderson 6/26/12 9:55 am

I have been using my garmin to keep track of logs and its really helped me keep my motivation levels up along with preparing for my races. I used to run without loging my runs and in every case I would quit after a few months. I think its very important to keep track of your progress in order to keep going with your workouts.
Steven Richardson 6/27/12 11:00 am

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by Ujena Fit Club Coach Barry Anderson  One day when our high school cross country team was running 40 x 440 on our school’s cinder track in a cold pouring rain, the excuses for why we shouldn’t be running were flying everywhere from each of us on the team. Some were even hoping for lightening.  Surely the coach would let us go inside then. Our coach had one simple answer to all of these objections—”You are getting one day ahead of your competition because they aren’t working out today.”

When you look at those who have a problem with being consistent in their workouts it really does come down to something just a simple—though perhaps not as extreme. And, at times, consistency will be a problem for nearly every one of us who is pursuing fitness through running or other activities.

 Each of us can always find twenty excuses NOT to run, but we only need to have one reason TO run. Make sure you find your one compelling reason to run and you will have no problem overcoming the excuses.

Barry Anderson was the women’s track coach for 10 years at Kansas State University. He organized the first women’s Big 8 conference championship, and coached over 30 athletes that earned All-American status.

Photo: the oldest person to finish the Ujena 5k was 97-year-old Migel June 16 in Puerto Vallarta.  He is still walking and running regularly.

This is a very intresting article. Reading through this I thought back to a few times when I cut my workout short or just didnt run and some of the times when I just didn't want to run but did. I never really though about why I ran and why I didn't but after reading this article I relized the answer to that question. The days I quit or didn't run I had no reason to run besides just running the days I pushed myself to run was to prepare for a upcomeing race. So I defiently think this article is a great one and is defiently true.
Steven Richardson 6/27/12 11:05 am

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