Team RunRun coach Jay Bates shares his experience of how to keep a running journal and why it’s so important on the journey to becoming a better runner and living a more enriching life. 

“The habit of writing for my eye is a good practice.  It loosens the ligaments.”   
        —Virginia Woolf 

Let me start with a basic truth: I learned to write by writing, and I learned to run by running.  I know of no alternative, and I’m openly suspicious of anyone who might have the moxie to claim otherwise. When it comes to running—as with so much else in life—there is no better teacher than experience, although as the Norwegian proverb says, “the tuition is high.”   

That, in a nutshell, is why I keep a running journal.  It is to my running experience what an account book is to my money: a record of my actions and habits, my gains and losses.  It tells me the story of me—of my glorified failures and my failed glories.  It tells me a story that I didn’t know I knew until after I experienced it—until days, months, or even years later, when I read my journal and learn from it.  

With that in mind, here are four reasons to keep a running journal.  

Quantitative data never tells the complete story

When I say the words “running journal” I do not mean a “running log.”  I mean something with words in it—full sentences, even.  A running journal keeps record of the real story, the deep story, the truest of all stories, using anecdotes and observations that make up our qualitative assessment. We might look at our Strava account and read our distance, pace, heart rate, and relative effort, but what the data does not record is our mood—be it our worries and frustrations or our confidence and ambitions.  True, there is a space in Strava to comment on our workout but given our audience of followers we often shape our words to envy those who are watchful of our training.  The private running journal is a place to speak your truth, unhinged and uninhibited. 

We learn and gain wisdom by keeping a running journal

The great baseball player Tony Gwynn once said, “Just when you think you’re where you want to be you’re no longer there.”  As runners, we are forever seeking growth and betterment in our craft.  The moment we finish a marathon we barely are through the finishing chute before we think about running the next one.  Essential to this desire for self-improvement is the self-knowledge necessary to know what it is we need to strengthen.  The running journal serves the role of breadcrumbs—it leaves a record of how we processed our training, nutrition, rest, and mindset.  Reading a collection of entries that we wrote in the moment gives us heightened cognition of our trends and tendencies.  From there we either choose to repeat or revise them.  

We gain deeper cognitive processing with a running journal  

This is especially true when we write a journal by hand.  Instead of typing on a computer, grab a pen and notebook to physically write your words.  A single entry where we write our running goals by hand deepens the connection between the mind and body, engaging the motor, sensory, and visual areas with more activated brain regions.  Recent research about students who use digital devices to write instead of pens have concluded that conceptual understanding is lessened with digital tools and enhanced with pen and paper.  I have observed this to be true as a teacher.  The relationship between mind and body is tighter when we write by hand about our running.   

We preserve who we are in a running journal

It is the footprint of our existence and a letter to our children (and perhaps our children’s children) documenting who we are and how we live.  As with anything in our lives—our home story, health story, work story, love story—we move through peaks and valleys.  We have periods where the groove is effortless, the connection with others is real and easy, and periods when we feel more awkward than in our junior high days.  As we move into and out of these peaks and valleys, we leave in our wake a storyline, a plot development, maybe even a Shakespearean five-act dramatic structure for those who live after us to read and remember and maybe, just maybe, understand something deeper about the collective human condition. We do not have to be artists to tell these stories; we simply have to be willing to tell the truth the way we know it.  

How to start a running journal

• Buy a lined notebook journal at a stationary store.  Moleskine is a good product.  So is SUQJOY and Paperage.  These can also be found on Amazon.  Buy a pack of pens (or pencils, if that’s your jam). Something comfortable in your hand.  
• Write the first entry. Record the date and your location.  A good first entry would be where you state your reason for running, whether that is your short-term or long-term goals, your desired purpose, or what you want to achieve from running.  Not everything is a race.  
• Conduct a workout and write about it.  Write the relevant data from your workout app.  Follow this with a written question about the data.  Actually write the question.  Examples: How do I feel about this workout? How did I prepare myself for this workout?  What does this workout mean?  The process of answering your own question will propel you to write more reflective content.  
• Fill the page.  No need to write a novel—although if you feel a rant unraveling, follow it to the end.  But one page is sufficient.  Many people are self-conscious about reflective writing and find it difficult to fill the page.  In the same way you struggle to finish a workout, struggle to fill the page.  In the end, it will be valuable to you.  
• Close the notebook and on the next day repeat.  

What my running journal says

I just thumbed through my running journal.  Last year I was feeling great.  I was fit and fast and on my way to running a BQ time at the 2025 Eugene Marathon.  This year has been the opposite.  

Why?

The answer is in my running journal.  The Eugene race took its toll on me.  And once I found out in September that I missed the actual Boston Marathon cut by forty seconds, I started to spiral with existential questions.  I wrote: “Why work so hard to come up so short?”  I’ve been fighting my way back from this, with my running journal as a tool, and I am determined to return next year to the Eugene Marathon and not come forty seconds short.  

But who knows. A year from now I may be facing another difficult period of running—maybe an injury, maybe a funk, maybe low self-esteem.  I know that the confidence I’m building today will lead to an eventual fall.  This grace is unsustainable.  

But like what Virginia Woolf said, the journal keeps my ligaments loose, literally and figuratively.  It gives me perspective to keep from taking the highs too seriously, nor the lows too sardonically.

I can appreciate where I am today because I recorded where I was six months ago, and I can trust that where I was six months ago will be temporary when it happens to take place again.  I can do this because the evidence of my history is recorded in the words of my journals—and while I would like to say these journals lead me every year to be a better runner, a better teacher, a better coach, and better writer, the truth is that better is relative and it may not be there.  

But one thing is for sure, I will be wiser. 

And I’ll take wiser any day.  

Jay Bates is a seasoned running coach.  He is also a runner, writer, teacher and wannabe podcaster.  Follow him @coach_bates_says on Instagram.