Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I was playing with the Nike+ website, looking at the runs I’ve done over the last year. I bought my Nike+ at the end of July last year, so I have a number of runs to go back and look at. Here is what the last year looks like:

That tall month in December, I walked 54 miles on the treadmill. That’s when I walked so much that I ended up with black toenail. It kicked my mileage down quite a bit. January, I ran my 30 miles like I promised on my resolution, but I was in pain the whole time. I just didn’t want to go back to Weight Watchers.

Now, I’m back at Weight Watchers. Rather than a noose around my neck, it feels liberating. I have been gradually increasing my mileage. If I follow my program correctly, I will beat the December mileage without sacrificing my newly grown toenails.

I never really kept an exercise log before. I wrote things down in my food journal, but I didn’t keep as much data as the Nike+. Now, I can look over it and see how far I’ve come and what I can do to beat my “best” month. Runner’s World always recommended keeping a running journal, but I never realized how powerful it could be. Seeing my runs stack up like this makes me want to create a year where the mileage just keeps increasing.

You don’t need to own a Nike+ to keep an exercise log. You can keep that information anywhere. I used to keep it with my food logs, but to compare this kind of thing on my own, I would have to wade through all the food to find my workouts. It would have been better if I had kept track of my workouts in ONE place by themselves.

If you’re a crazy spreadsheet fan, like I am, you could keep track in Excel, letting it graph your progress for you much like the Nike+ has done for me here. Of course a Mead notebook would work just as well for you. The most important thing is to keep an exercise log because it can be more inspiring than I ever thought it could.