Logging On Your Progress

The best way to track your progress toward your goals is to keep a training log. This log is a notebook, journal, or even just random piles of paper in which you record key information about your running (see the following figure).
A training log gives you an objective record of your progress as a runner. A lot of runners, including me, regularly consult their training logs to look at the work they’ve done in the past to provide motivation for the future.
The changes that running causes are subtle on a day to-day basis, and memories are notoriously selective.
Taken together, those two things can make it hard to get a sense of how your running is going. But if you mark key information a few times a week in your log, you have an undeniable record.
When you’re feeling down and thinking that you’re not making any progress, you can look back and see that the run you just got back from that seemed to be a disaster would have been a major accomplishment just a few months ago. Many runners lack confidence in themselves and their abilities, and they downplay their accomplishments. By providing a visible manifestation of your running, training logs are great psychological comforters.