Jan 2 2015 update

Everything below from the original post still applies. The link immediately below is for a MS Excel 2010 version so you don’t have to put up with “compatibility issues” of the old log. I hope you’ll like it. The MS Excel 97-2003 version is far below if you’re still using that version of Excel.

Blank Run Log Excel 2010 version

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This is a much updated version of the year long Excel spreadsheet running log I had posted two years ago. You may want to refer to that post for some instructions. Thank you to all of you who had downloaded it, used it, suggested improvements and recommended it to others. If you liked that log, I think you’ll love this one! This new log has some great features I think you’ll love like a spot for your training plan next to what you did. While the focus is on running, there is room for other exercises and things you might want to track, like sleep, injuries, supplements, heart rate averages and maximums, etc. There is a race predictor using Jack Daniels’ running formula, with a short, simplified, but effective and practical explanation on how to use it. There is a calculator to determine any of time, distance or pace you need to run if you know 2 of the 3 variables. There is also a routes table to help calculate routes you take that are not your normal ones, but piece together bits of various routes you have ran. There is no new “summary” feature where what you input is number crunched, but that was because I didn’t perceive the need for any. Otherwise, most cells you shouldn’t touch are still locked up, but you have the ability to manipulate some partially for your use, like if you write a long comment one day and want to show it all rather than have some of it hidden away. As you use this spreadsheet, change the view size if the info is too small for your comfort. It can be at least twice as large. Don’t strain your eyes over using this or feel like you have to put on glasses to use it. You’ll use it less frequently for every little annoyance like this. The best way to see all this is to jump in so here goes! There are a lot of features to this log so don’t be intimidated by all the description. You need very little instruction to start and the rest should be pretty intuitive once you get going. Please click here to download the Advanced Excel Running Log by Minh Tan, 2011 version 2 (2.1 MB) The file is MS Excel 2003 version for greater compatibility for people. If you use a version later than this, please do a Save As and choose the latest version so you won’t get the “compatibility” pop-up each time you close the file.

Setup

When you first open the file, it will open to the SETUP worksheet. You need to follow the instructions here first before you can do anything if you want things to work properly. You can go back here to set up more information as you determine it. After this, wherever you close the file after you use it, is where it will open up the next time you use it.

Data

The DATA worksheet is where you enter all your workout data. There are two things you definitely need to know about this worksheet. 1. There are a lot of boxes for information, with some guidance. Use them as you need if what is provided is not sufficient, especially for information like intervals and such that are not calculated and just meant for record keeping (examples later). 2. You need to enter something in the Distance Ran column for each day that passes (more below). The log determines where you are in the year that way to properly give you your summaries. A “0” (zero) entry is just fine.

To the very left are are few columns to track the weeks and date. Date is optional. Then comes the green header columns that is your planned workout. If you’re training according to a schedule or plan, you can enter it to save from having to go back to a book, photocopy or wherever you keep that information. There is room for distance, pace and time, whichever you choose to fill in pending how your plan works. You may need to run 10 miles one day, an hour the next on an off day, and 10K at a certain pace on a harder workout day. These are not calculated other than a sum of your weekly distance at the bottom of each week to give you an idea of mileage load. If you need to work out something, check out the CALCULATOR worksheet part further down this post. Finally, there is a space for any notes you need to make for yourself regarding your workout. You get 2 workouts per day from this log, though it is not recommended you use them both everyday! 🙂 You may notice there is a Week Zero in the graphic. That’s residuals like the first few days of a year or your training that do not fit into a full week and could mess up your average. It is further explained in the Setup worksheet. To the right of your planned workout are three blue header columns (two headers, 3 columns). Put in your distance ran (#, then mor kfor miles or kilometers, respectively), then your time in the format shown. The two white headed columns to the right will calculate your pace per mile and kilometer once the information is in place. You need to fill in a distance for each day (just 1 distance, not 2 necessarily), to tell the log how far along it is in your usage. As you move to the right, the worksheet will scroll, but keeping the days at left and headers at left so you don’t get “lost” in the grid.

To the right of your pace calculations are other details from your run like how much high intensity time you ran. This is for people who warm-up and cool down but don’t want to count those parts as separate runs. This “time” value is not summarized in any way. Just for you to know. There is a CALCULATOR worksheet where you can do some math with it to get distance and/or pace, but you keep that in your notes. Otherwise, use one of the other workouts the sheet tracks to track the two part of your run separately. Maybe record the high intensity in the Distance Ran column and track warm up and cool down mileage in one of the “other workouts”. Those “other workouts” can be set up in the SETUP worksheet. You can put in a shoe code you designate for each pair of shoes if you want the log to keep track of mileage you put on your shoes. In Run Routes, use names you give to various routes, or describe them, code them, whatever works. There are room for 3 splits and 10 intervals, like if you did sprints or fartleks as part of the workout. These are just for your note. They are not number crunched in any way. With the two workouts per day, if you only do intervals for one, you can always write distance in one box and time below it, or vice-versa. Be creative with the boxes if you don’t use them all as intended, but need extra spaces otherwise. To the right of all that is two columns with red headers for average and maximum heart rate (HR). You can enter data there but there’s no value to number crunching them for anything. You can look at the trend down the spreadsheet if you want to analyze anything yourself, like compare them for two similar workouts in different conditions, or later in your training, etc. A long Comments box allows you to put any comment you like about your run.

To the right of the Comments is a separate column I dedicated to that most unfortunate, but important, part of comments we should track, which is injuries. This saves you from looking through your comments for injury notes, if you put it where it should be. To the right of Injuries are columns for non-running exercise you do. The wide cell is for descriptive stuff. The other cells will have headers you input on the SETUP worksheet, and these should be numerical. They can be anything you want to track that is numerical, whether it is sleep, which is very important, or kilometers biked or push-ups or whatever. To the right of injury notes is miles walked. I kept it just in miles to be simple. You can use the CALCULATOR worksheet to convert to kilometers if you like. I just find it easy to estimate quarter miles or 400m roughly in my estimates of how much I walk. Some people spend a lot of time on their feet so this is useful to record as it may impact your running, no pun intended. The SUMMARY worksheet tabulates your total in both miles and kilometres so you can get an idea there. Then comes 4 columns for “other workouts”. In reality, these are anything you want to record and count, which is why I have example categories like “sleep”. You set up your own in the SETUP worksheet. You can record these “workouts” as volume, like how many push-ups, or frequency (insert a 1). You can even use this to keep track of supplements you take for up to 4 supplements like Vit A-D, putting a 1 for each day you take each. Be clever in how you use this for your needs! The column for your weight is next to last. You choose the unit you want to put in. All it cares is the number so systems like kg and pounds work since the numbers just get bigger like the way you count. Systems like stones don’t, but there is a converter in the CALCULATOR worksheet to either pounds or kg if you want to use it. Your weight is graphed by average per week, from the average at the bottom of each week, in the WEIGHT worksheet. Just a word of caution, though. Beyond losing some initial weight, you’ll level out and may not meet your set goal if you didn’t set a realistic goal for your body type, age, gender, etc. Weight is not the ultimate indicator of health. Finally, a little spot for supplements taken.

Summary

This worksheet summarizes a lot of things for you. The weekly summaries include the obvious like distance, time and average pace ran. There is also a running average, if you’ll forgive the pun, that is the up to date average per week for the year. Your 4 other workouts are also recorded for totals, as well as the number of entries of each. For example, you might have done 200 push-ups in 5 sessions that week, so you’ll see the 200 as well as the 5. Pending the workout, sometimes frequency is more important than volume. The ongoing averages and totals for these extra workouts are at the bottom of their columns.

The year, day and shoes summaries tabulate what data you gave the log. Remember, the log summaries are only as good as the data you enter. Did you ever want to know so much about your running and training??? A caution on the shoes to go on how they feel rather than the number here. That’s only for a secondary indicator unless you’re a nut like me who retires his shoes at 1,000 miles to prevent injury. A lot of these features are graphed on other worksheets in the Graphs section coming up next. But first more summaries about your training…

These summarize the type of week you had, like how many weeks you ran 30-39 miles, how many 40-49 miles, how many with 5 workouts of a certain type, among all kinds of other stuff. Just in case you’re interested. I think it’s good and useful to know.

Calculator

The Calculator is really easy to use. Pick your conversion, enter in the white cells. Look at the results on the connected yellow cells after you hit Enter or Tab or move away from your cell.

Routes

If you run in the city where you segment lots of streets and areas, this will be great for you. Measure point to point distance once and record it. There’s a link to G-maps Pedometer to help you with that if you so wish to invest the time. It’ll be worthwhile because you can paste the data here into a blank spreadsheet next year if you come back here to download another blank copy. When you run a route, put in how often you ran that segment (like 1 for once, on the way out or home, or 2 if twice like both out and back, and so on). The tally at the bottom tells you the total distance of the segments you indicated you ran! Of course, on your staple routes, you won’t need to do this time after time. You’ll know the distance and just give it a name on the DATA worksheet. But for when you deviate, or piece together routes, this I have found to be very useful. Finally, keep in mind that cities with grid street layouts have pretty much the same distance for parallel blocks. That way, you don’t need to enter the distance for the same 5 blocks on 45th, 52nd and 71st streets, say. Just use one as a guide. It’s not like the distances have to be super exact cause you probably can’t whiz through them all like in a race where pace and time really matters that much.

Race Predictor

Don’t be intimidated by all the numerical tables which stretches below the view shown here. This is part of Jack Daniels’ Running Formula (lots of detailed explanation and usage instructions in the link). I just have simple, but effective, instructions with this worksheet below the tables. It’s a way for you to see your fitness level over various distances, and maybe set targets for improving on others, with caution that the course, weather, how you feel that day, etc. can affect your real result. But it’s nice to have a scientific guide. There is room below the instructions for your notes as you work with the table over time and different races.

Races

This is your race log. You can keep it over many years as you have space for 198 races. Just copy and transfer the data to next year’s blank worksheet. The screen scrolls and saves its place of last view so you don’t have to scroll down to the bottom of the list each time. You record all the information you need, including a VDOT value from Jack Daniels’ Running Formula on the PREDICTOR worksheet. It’s just for your records because conditions vary too much to consider any “trends” to be completely valid. It may be partially true, like increased fitness with time, but it could be more or less pending conditions of your races (weather, course difficulty, etc.). I also don’t include a “predicted” and “actual” space because there is no correction factors (in my simplified use) for the predictor formulae. You can write that out in the comments if you like.

Graphs

A lot of the numerical features recorded in this run log are number crunched and graphed, as you can see below. Sometimes, it’s just nice to see the results over time on a graph rather than looking through the numbers. These graphs appear on separate worksheets, which you can reorder into any order you like (as with any other worksheet), by grabbing the worksheet tab with its name at the bottom of your screen, drag and drop before or after the one you want.

The graph above shows your mileage ran over the weeks, in both miles and kilometers, as well as miles walked.

This graph above shows how your pace has changed with time. If you run in a place with truly different seasons, you’ll probably see your pace vary with the temperature as you pile on or take off more clothing to run. The new graph actually has two lines rather than being a bar graph. I just made this change to this year’s log so I don’t have a picture to show it.

This graph shows how much running time you did per week over the year.

This graph shows whatever you choose to record as your alternate workouts, and how they varied over each week throughout the year. This graph above shows your average weekly running routine with respect to the different days of the week, like how often you ran each day and how much mileage compared to other days. There is also a graph showing how your average weight each week, as you recorded it, changed throughout the year. I just added it to this year’s version of the running log so I don’t have a picture to share. So that’s it. I hope you will enjoy using this log. If you have questions, please leave it as a comment so others can see and possibly benefit from the answers, which I’ll do my best to provide. Enjoy!