I was thinking the other day about how to use my filofax(es) to keep fit. Now, there is of course the weightlifting aspect to some filofaxes and just carrying them around could be helping to burn off a few more calories each day! I posted the other day about how fat filofaxes could be.
But, possibly more importantly, there’s also the organisation aspect.
Currently, I use mine in three ways – there’s the scheduling of exercise (which I do as part of my weekly time/task management); there’s a graph of my weight week by week, and then there’s a log of what exercise I’m doing. The log I’m using came with the City Dweller pack in my Gourmet filofax. It logs:
Date, exercise, location, start, finish, calories, duration (and then a series of boxes in 5 minute increments up to an hour).
Now, lovely as this is, it doesn’t really work for me. And also, do people really log that they have done 5 minutes of exercise??? Really???
So, I have had a go at producing my own sheets for logging my running. It’s a work in progress as I have never logged my running in my filofax before so I am trying to work out exactly what I want to record. So far, my list is:
Date, time, from, to, distance, time, pace, calories, music (as a symbol), weather, injury.
I don’t need to record what the exercise is (as I’m only logging running). The ‘from’ is almost always ‘my house’ although I will also be running at lunchtime at work. Distance, time and pace should be relatively obvious (I record pace in minutes per mile and have specific distance/pace goals I want to achieve by the end of 2011), as should calories. I realise there is redundancy there (if I know from and to and time, then distance and pace easily follow) but I like to be able to scan down the columns and compare. I put the time of day I ran in too, as I am trying to spot when my ‘optimum’ time is.
I record music (did I listen to anything and if so, what) just out of interest. I always feel that I run better listening to some particular tunes, but I don’t actually have the evidence to show that!
I record the weather because I run the fastest when it is overcast and fairly cool and the slowest when it is hot. If my pace is suddenly slower (or faster!), I can see whether it was particularly hot when I ran.
Does anyone else use their filofax for this kind of thing? And if so, how?
I used to keep a lot more information than I do now. I do make a note of what I did for exercise and how long. But I've yet to get into keep track of distance speed, or setting goals for either. For right now, if I get out and run, all that matters to me is how long I exercised. I am planning to do a few races in the fall, though, so that may all change...
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