With the New Year come transitions. People make resolutions, clean things out, throw things away, and embark on new and lofty goals while I simply switch to a new training log. I created an Excel spreadsheet back in 2007 to track my exercise hours and distances. In 2008, it evolved to simply recording time for most activities, but recording distances for biking and skiing. Those distances help me to determine whether I’ve improved and have been doing enough.

It really helps to look at my training log. If I see a large gap, it’s a sign that I haven’t exercised for a week or more for whatever reasons. That gap is a great motivator to get back on track.

Looking at the spreadsheet makes me realize that I do a lot. I had to include a great number of columns on the spreadsheet, but one sport is divided into types, since that is my primary sport:
• Cycling: Mountain, Road, Cyclocross, Commuting, Spinning
• Skiing (I cross country skate ski)
• Kayaking
• Snowshoeing
• Hiking/Walking
• Weight Training
• Trail Work

Cycling

Cycling is divided into five categories because of my ingenious reasoning abilities. Mountain biking, road riding, and cyclocross use different bikes, tires, and terrain. It simply is not wise to compare one’s time on the road bike with that on the mountain bike. Commuting is separate because it is simply that: commuting. I am trying to turn it into simple, enjoyable time on the bike, but I really don’t like carrying a backpack. Spinning is recorded in minutes only. The only purpose of spinning is to get time on the bike, and you really can’t [accurately] measure distance on a spinning bike. I only spin when absolutely necessary.

Skiing

Our skate skiing trails are marked with great signs, so distance is not a mystery. It is also nice to see how fast I can get around a loop. Distance and time are recorded to gauge improvement, just like with cycling.

Other Activities

The other activities either can’t be gauged by distance, or are activities that shouldn’t be gauged by distance. I figure it’s bad enough that cycling is a highly competitive sport, for me, and skiing is kind of treated as such, even though I refuse to ski race. Winter is my time off of racing. I record the times for the other activities, however, because it is a good way to measure the amount of exercise I am getting. It is also a good indicator of whether I should hold back on the food a little bit. I record trail work hours because I have a goal of at least 20 hours per year to meet my volunteer efforts for the Michigan Mountain Biking Association and the International Mountain Biking Association.

Get the Spreadsheet

This year, I consolidated all of my sports onto one spreadsheet. My spreadsheet is designed to fit my widescreen monitor, but it may work for your computer if you like micro words and numbers, or if you also have a widescreen monitor. If you are computer literate, you can make it work for you.

Click here to download the 2009 spreadsheet.

Click here to download the 2010 spreadsheet.

You must have Microsoft Excel to use this spreadsheet. It was created with Microsoft Excel 2002. I suppose there may be other spreadsheet programs out there that will read this file, but I will leave that up to you to find out.