This Is The Time to Start A Training Log

We touched the 60’s over this past Friday and Saturday. We almost broke a 100 year high record here in Denver, and would you believe over 200 inches of snow In Steamboat. Yes beautiful weather and I lay flat on my back with phenomena. Yes with every breath taken it sounds like I’m gargling, as I watched the groups of cyclists going by. Like I say timing is everything.

While I have been attempting to get around this week, I got out my log book to close out 2010 and get ready for 2011. Looking back through there was good news as well as disappointing. The most disappointing is the fact this will be the first month I haven’t rode in, in over two years. I enjoyed looking back at rides with fond memories of friends and the boys. The bright spot is to be able to see the improvements that are right there in black and white and cannot be disputed. Having a log book that documents effort and improvement is one of the best motivators there are. You may forget about the little victories but when you have the ability to lay them out in front of you, it opens the world before you as to what you can accomplish. This will be a big year on the bike.

There are a few good ways to have a log, I’m going to give you my favorite 2 online sites that are free. The tall son likes Daily Mile (www.dailymile.com) and I used it the last half of the year. It keeps a running account of your mileage with some fun things thrown in, but very basic. You have your choice of activities, i.e.; running, walking, cycling, weight lifting or other exercise. Drop down menus let you pick your sport, and then fill in where you, in my case, cycled, your distance, your time, and how you felt. It gives you a good space to write about the workout and if you click on more details you have more choices, including heart rate to add. It gives you a calorie burn rate for what you have done and you can post it publicly for all to see. At this point it becomes a minor social network without a lot of the annoyances. There are communities where you can get that have challenges. The challenges are fun and let you measure your mileage against others from around the world. I am in two, 2011 miles in 2011 and 1500 miles in a year (this one with my 10 year old). They have a very large assortment to fit all fitness levels. The down side is, people may fudge to make their selves look better than they might really be. A couple of examples are a rider in Newcastle GB who has already rode 690 miles this month. A rider from Vancouver who has put on 898 miles or the two from Indiana that have rode 415 and 370 respectfully. I am not calling them untruthful, there are some extreme riders out there and I respect the hell out of them but I did check what the weather has been in those places and I am, personally, not buying all of what I read. This translates to, there are people who will attempt to win absolutely nothing at any cost and the real efforts are lost in the shuffle. You all have just had a face come to mind.

The other good online log book is through Bicycling (www.bicycling.com) a training log link is on the home page. What I feel is a drawback, a few too many key strokes to get to your own log. Once you get there it is straight forward, no communities or challenges just your stats. It keeps an upfront visible log of your weekly, monthly and year to date mileage. A fun thing is the total Stats in time, hours, minutes, and seconds then converts it to days. You can look at your week in a graph that is set up for what you would like shown. You may also add your routes which is easy if you have a Garmin computer that downloads. If not you are given the tools to make them from scratch on the site. That is not always user friendly and the programs satellite is about a year or so behind so you may not find your route or path. I used this for about 9 months and was happy.

They both work well and are actually fun to use and keep your rides documented. The Daily Mile challenges will not accept anything prior to the time you start a challenge but both have the ability to add previous workouts in. My favorite is a hand written log and I will talk more about that later this week.

Till Then

Ride Safe, Ride Warm, Ride Fast As You Can, But Ride

G