How to plan and track your run

By Pete Cooper, co-founder of Coopah

When it comes to tracking your run, runners have a range of tools which make this possible. These tools are great for logging your distance, pace and even heart rate however they don’t help you to plan your run training. In today’s blog, we will take you through the options you have to track your runs and then the options you have to plan your training.

Plan your training

It is great to track your pace and distance but ultimately what is the why behind doing this? It is usually because you have a goal or race in mind. This could be to run your first ever 5k run or to beat your PB.  Therefore, you want to be able to log your runs, which will help you plan your training.

What’s the best way to track a run?

There is no right answer for this. You may have one app which you love but others may hate. Our recommendation is to try a few methods and see what works for you. If you are new to running, you may want to use a smartphone app rather than purchasing a smartwatch.

Smartphone apps

There are a large range of apps out there which let you track your running pace, distance and elevation for free. A few will offer you premium services for a small free or even a short free trial period.

• MapMyRun is good for tracking your distance and it is usually accurate. What’s great about this app is that you can use their interactive map to measure your route so you have a route before you leave the house.
• Strava is more of a multisport app but it is the most common app. You will see memes about their distance being very off at times but it is a very easy to use app and a great place to start. You will probably also find friends and colleagues on there too. If you don’t want people seeing your times, you can make them private.

Smartwatch

If you are training for a race and want ease of use, we would strongly recommend investing in a smartwatch. Popular brands include Garmin, Polar, FitBit and even the Apple Watch. It’s usually a good idea to get a watch with built-in GPS, as this means you don’t need to carry your phone with you.

Paper log

Some people are still using paper logs. They may have a PDF training plan on their fridge where they tick the runs off each week or a calendar where they log their runs next to what they were meant to run. This is certainly an option but it can be time-consuming, risky as you could lose it, and the plan will never adapt for you based on your training.

Microsoft Excel

We have also seen other people log their runs on Excel and then check back to see their progress. Again, this can be time-consuming, as you need to log your runs manually onto your spreadsheet. It also isn’t adaptable, as your plan still won’t change unless you have written it yourself.

Coopah Training App

Coopah was created because the founders were annoyed at how time-consuming and static manual training plans were. Coopah not only creates your training plan for you based on a few questions they ask but their smart app also syncs directly into Garmin, meaning they offer an end to end solution.

You can load your Coopah training plan directly from your app into your Garmin so that each day your watch tells you what to run. When you finish your run, the stats load directly back into Coopah. This means your training, training log and progress is all tracked without you having to do anything.  

You can download Coopah today and also trial it for free for one month by using our partnership code RUNFORALL22.