Over the next eight weeks, in the final build up to the London Marathon I’ll be blogging some ideas you can use to stay on track and ensure your mind is as prepared for the marathon as your body is. This blog, with eight weeks to go, suggests you will really benefit from have a training diary. And not just an excel spreadsheet, or an online tracker, but something you write in, which has loads of space for things beyond the usual: 10 miles run at 8mm pace!

A training diary has so many benefits. Not only will you be tracking how many miles you have run and at what speed, but also the cross training you are doing, any niggles or stitches or stomach cramps you noticed, how your head is feeling on each run, whether you loved, or hated, a certain session, whether you felt the session was beneficial, and what thoughts were going through your head as you did it. In short, it means as well as keeping track of what your heart and legs are doing, you can also keep track of what is going on in your head.  

This will help you spot trends. Physically it is a great way to see if certain runs are causing you stomach cramps, or if you enjoy some types of training more than others (perhaps outside you feel inspired, treadmill leaves you stressed). These are often things you realise over time but noting everything down into a training diary speeds up the process and means you can learn much more about yourself and your training, and adapt things to give you the most benefit.  

There are some great training diaries out there but you can also make your own just from a notebook and adding the following questions in to answer after each run session.

1.       The goal for this session was…..

2.       Did I achieve my goal?

3.       What I did well in this session…

4.       What I would do differently next time…

5.       Any niggles or cramps?

6.       The negative thoughts I had were…

7.       What I have gained by doing this session?

The process shouldn’t be onerous and often the answers may just be one word answers. It should not take longer to fill in your diary than it took to do your run! But running through these questions should help you to reflect really well, keep track of any issues, and will give you some great evidence to use when you get to the start line and need to remind yourself of all the great training you did in the build up to the marathon.