Brick Workouts

I understand the importance of keeping a training log, I really do. And I jot down time and distance for every workout I do in Joe Friel's Triathlon Training Diary. The problem with the log is that it doesn't help plan your week, and you can't go back and look at the data in any meaningful way. I don't want to have to go log on to a website and enter my data, and I've said before that I can't deal with a detailed spreadsheet telling me exactly what I need to do every day. What I CAN deal with is this: "I need to work out 15 hours this week." So all I need is a simple way to track my weekly hours.



Voila.

The red stack on the right represents the number of workouts I need to do for the week. A "workout" is VERY loosely defined as 1 hour, with lots of rounding. So a 30 minute run and an 80 minute run count as 1 workout each, but a 3.5 hour bike ride is 4 workouts. Every time I finish a workout I add bricks in front of the red stack, using colors according to the type of workout: blue=swim, yellow=bike, white=run, grey=strength. I always know how much training I've done for the week, and how much more i need to do. At the end of the week, the stack gets sorted by color and moved over to the left so I can see my history.

You'll note that because of my knee injury, I've spent more time swimming than biking. That's a little odd and hopefully that will change soon.

You can keep your expensive personal trainers and complicated computerized workout programs. This suits me just fine.