Weight, # hrs of sleep, results of fitness tests (e.g. FTP test, 10k races, etc), overall training load (initially by hours trained, then via TSS in TrainingPeaks which will spit out a bunch of metrics and pie charts).

I tracked diet occasionally but found it too much effort so track weight as a proxy. I've tried testing for other stuff but between work/gf/friends/training I don't really have time for other stuff and they fail my personal cost/benefit tradeoff.

Other things I track without realising:
- how much I'm spending on GrubHub and therefore how much crappy food I'm eating
- dumps, if I haven't sent a picture of an impressive one for a while then I know I need more fibre

Hahahaha awesome. Don't know that I'll be tracking dumps though...

Absolutely nothing.

Yeah me too. Life is complicated enough for me to stress about metrics. I just make sure that I'm logging in enough fun.

What I did (S B or R), how many minutes/hours I spent doing it, and if the session was an outlier (PR, or worse thing ever, or felt great, or felt like crap, or crashed/injured) I add that to the notes. That's all that's in my training log.

I leave tracking the HR/pace/W numbers up to the Garmin, but honestly I hardly ever go back to look at that.

Same, track nothing. Go by feel and what I have time for.

I record (swim/bike/run/weights) on a spreadsheet. I started doing it one year trying to avg swimming a mile / day. Then when I started B/R i just kept recording it but mostly for fun. My only concern is overtraining and getting hurt.

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"I think I've cracked the code. double letters are cheaters except for perfect squares (a, d, i, p and y). So Leddy isn't a cheater... "

I track distance (just a swimmer these days). Occasionally I'll write down what set I did, but 90% of the time, just the total # of metres.

Only reason I do it is because I track them on the Masters Swimming Canada website (mymsc.ca) and I get new swim caps for hitting milestones.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

This with one row per day and an extra column for body weight and general comments. Totals by week. Race days highlighted. Easy to track volume(s) up to race week. Use comments to try to prevent overuse injuries (tired, fresh, achillies starting to hurt, etc).

"Yeah me too. Life is complicated enough for me to stress about metrics. I just make sure that I'm logging in enough fun. "

This is clearly not an answer to his question:

"I'd love to hear from some of the really experienced people out there about what you track and what are the most important things are to track - like, what tracking led to the biggest gains?"


Unless you are trying to say the best way to improve is to not track anything, in which case it is a on topic post. It sounded like you were answering what the most fun way to train was, which is not what he asked.

Thanks bub for the clarification. I totally appreciate it.

There obviously tons of things you can track, and I think the overall objective is to evaluate training in a dose-->response approach.

The "response" part is pretty simple and a few other people mentioned it. Basically at regular intervals you systematically test your fitness. It would be something as simple as three time trials (a run, swim, and bike). The distances aren't incredibly important as long as they are consistent. I.e. always run a 5k, or a mile, or 10k, etc. It is obviously the most beneficial to do a time trial as close to your race duration/distance as possible. However keep in mind you don't want something too absurd otherwise it will interfere too much with training. So if you are a long course athlete running a marathon as a test is obviously absurd. Try to make each test as similar as possible. Same course, same time of day, etc. You want them to be as directly comparable as possible. You can also get more intricate. For the athletes I coach, I have them do several TTs of various distances. For example, a 1 min, 5 min, and 20 min full effort on the bike trainer to test avg power output. A 200m sprint and 5k run on the track. You get the idea. Even more in depth (though this is taking it very far) are doing lactate tests as described by Jan Olbrecht in "The Science of Winning" or on lactate.com. You get the idea that you can be as simple or complex as you want here. The point is to make it consistent and systematic. I would suggest doing them once at the end of every mesocycle during your easy week of that cycle (so once every 3-7 weeks or so). You can do two things with this data, use it to evaluate the effects of your last mesocycle (the "response" part of the "dose-->response") and use it to set your zones/paces for the next mesocycle (for instance using Daniel's Running Formula to figure out your VDOT and your various training paces or your FTP and zones according to Coggan, etc).

Then there is the dose part. This could theoretically be anything. One mesocycle you eat one egg for breakfast every morning, the next you eat two and your time improves. Hey! Looks like two eggs it is! Just being absurd to prove a point that there are infinite things you can vary to change the "dose" your body is getting and subsequently evaluate the response. However, the variables I would suggest tracking the most would be volume, intensity, duration, and frequency (some of these are interconnected like volume = frequency * duration or whatever). More specifically, I think the most important thing to track is your volume and intensity distribution (time spent in various "zones" you set yourself). If you hold the volume of your running constant, but increase the time spent in zone 1 and decrease it in zone 4, and notice you run a faster 5k, that tells you something valuable about your training. Or if you increase the volume of your bike but hold the intesnity constant and you perform worse, perhaps you are close to overtraining on the bike, or just reached a volumetric plateu. You can obviously track other things like sleep, the time of day you exercise, TSB, etc. Just remember the more variables you track and the more you change the harder it is to draw a conclusion about the dose based on the response. So I would work on changing as few things at a time as possible.

This is just a framework to make intelligent, systematic decisions about the direction of your training. It is always great to have a plan and then adjust it as you see what works and doesn't work based on this dose-->response methodology.

I track time in heart rate zone, by sport. I find a high correlation between volume and fitness, so my main goal is to monitor my volume, ramp appropriately, and make sure I'm still getting in the quality I need (thus the need to know time by HR zone). For workouts that are repeatable (track or well measured run, power based workout on bike trainer) I might make a note of times/power; but usually only when there is something "different". By "different" I mean either high or low; low can indicate too much stress and is important to note.

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2015 USAT Long Course National Champion (M50-54)

Heart rate before getting out of bed in the morning. I've read several places that if it's more than 10 beats above normal you should consider an easy day of training or a rest day. Has worked well for me avoiding illnesses the past 10 or so years. I don't record the number but check it almost every morning. Can probably count on one hand the no. of mornings during the past year that I didn't check the HR before getting out of bed.

I also log my mileage on a paper calendar and track my weekly training load (using the ST method of calculation) on an Excel spreadsheet. I've been training/racing for 40 years so my methods are definitely old school.

San Francisco Giants...and man did they blow it last night. 6-0 lead and lost in bottom of 12th. Wait...were you talking about tri?

Blew the save in the 9th, and the 12th. Brutal.

I don't like adding complexity to my already over-extended life by adding yet another task, logging workouts.

However, I feel that I am much more motivated and engaged when I consistently log my workouts with times and also a little qualitative data on how I'm feeling, etc.. I don't really know why.

Weight and resting HR.

Run pace using mile markers and stopwatch splits sometimes.

HR during hard intervals.

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Madison photographer Timothy Hughes | Instagram

I have done 7 IMs since 2006 and focus more on the training than on tracking my metrics after I train. However, while on the bike I have these 8 data points on my Garmin and watch those with an * very closely: 1) current power*, 2) average power*, 3) current HR, 4) average HR, 5) current cadence*, 6) average cadence*, 7) % grade, and 8) distance. I find while I focus on power and cadence, my HR will track them both. On 70+ mile bike rides I hate how my average power and cadence tends to get lower the further I ride (and especially after 50+ miles), however, on my strongest training rides it decreases less than when I am not as strong and more focused on simply checking box for target training mileage or time.

Hey, chill out, or you'll get called out for posting off-topic.