I’ve been running for about two years now, but I’ve only been keeping a running log for about six weeks now. What other information could I track in addition to what I already have.
On a daily basis I record my body weight, muscle percentage, and fat percentage – regardless of whether I run or not. On days that I do run I have slots for distance run, time spent running – not including warm up and cool down – average pace, average heart rate, recovery heart rate, time of day left and returned from a run, and of course the date.
On each sheet of graph paper, which is what I use to chart all this information, I’m able to fit six weeks worth of data; at the end of every six weeks I record my weekly mileage for each of the six weeks and how many miles I ran on a treadmill and how many on the road. What else could I add to this six-weeks summary section of my log?
Eventually, after compiling a few more months worth of data, I plan on graphing some of it to see if I can find any correlation between any two types of data (e.g. How is my average pace affected for every pound I gain or lose?).
For your purposes, issues that can effect your run would be important such as weather conditions (temperature, rain, snow, heavy wind), if you run different routes, which route you took, how you felt during the run, how much sleep you got the night before.
If your warm up and cool down are consistent distances you don’t have to include them but it is running. I don’t understand recovery heart rate unless you are referring to how long it takes your heart rate to return to normal. Finally, they are studies already published on how weight effects running, things like every 5 pounds adds 2 minutes to your half marathon time though, of course, those are generalizations and if you want to have data specific to you, what you are doing is the way to go.