My Evolving Exercise Diary - Version 1.01

I cleaned up My Evolving Exercise Diary a little bit on Google Docs this morning. The only significant thing I did was to eliminate the need to sort the SH Key in the Entry Types sheet and I got rid of the SH Key check column in the Diary sheet itself. It's such a small evolving change. (It's shared to view so you must save it before you can edit it.) There are introduction and help sheets with it and even previous posts that describe it more.

My Evolving Exercise Diary can be used as it is by replacing the sample data with your own diary events. For those already using it though upgrading is not a painless process. Since spreadsheets combine data with formulas, upgrades need to add in the user information from the old diary without overwriting the new formulas. Here's how to go about it:

1. Save the new Google Docs spreadsheet so you can edit it.
2. In the Entry Types sheet: Cut and paste to match your old version. (It's all data and no formulas.)
3. In the Diary sheet:
1. Make new rows or delete some so that the number of rows in the new diary match the old.
   (Do not copy rows from the old diary into the new diary! You must copy rows from the new diary and paste them into the new diary. There are formulas in the rows and they need to be the new formulas.)
2. Copy the SH Key column from the old diary into the new one.
3. Copy all the green user input columns one at a time except for the Training Cycles column from the old diary to the new diary. (There were no changes to the formulas or the data in the Training Cycles column. I just changed it to blue.)

Alternatively, you could figure out what changes were made and make them yourself in your old diary. (Hint: Each VLOOKUP function has a new additional parameter ", false".)

If anyone is using this I sure would appreciate a comment. I think it has a certain elegance missing in other workout spreadsheets.

An exercise diary of power and grace

While fooling around with Google Docs Spreadsheets the other day, I came up with a fun little exercise diary. Here's an image snag and a bit of a description.


My Evolving Exercise Diary, as I call it, is a worksheet containing sequential entries where each entry is a row with a type defined separately by the user. This approach lets the user create a personalized chronological list of diverse but organized information. I also built in conversions between English and SI units which helps me on my trips abroad.

Here are some of my current entry type definitions.


I can now keep track of both cardio and strength workouts as well as other information that I usually just have scratched in the margins of my workout log. It's been transformational.

I might publish this here if anyone expresses interest. Google Docs Spreadsheets are great.