Here is something I have learned after nearly 30 years of running — measuring your progress is fun and motivating…and can get addicting. I still review training schedules and race results from many years ago. It can be cool to see when I randomly beat my long-ago time in a race I’ve run 10 or more times.
Tracking your fitness progress is not about obsessing over numbers or comparing yourself to anyone else. It is about having enough data to know whether what you are doing is actually working, to celebrate real progress, and to make smart decisions about your training.
As an active woman over 50 I track my fitness in several different ways — some high tech, some beautifully simple. Here is exactly what I use and why they are the best ways to track your fitness progress.
Table of Contents
Wearable Technology
Garmin Forerunner 265 I have used a Garmin watch for over 20 years. It’s the centerpiece of my fitness tracking and the tool that has given me the most meaningful data about my training. The Garmin Forerunner 265 tracks everything — pace, heart rate, elevation, cadence, sleep quality, and recovery. But the features that matter most to me are Training Readiness and VO2 max tracking.
Training Readiness gives me a daily score that tells me how ready my body is to train based on sleep, heart rate variability, and recent training load. VO2 max tracks my cardiovascular fitness over time — and mine has improved by 3 points in four months of intentional training. That kind of measurable progress is deeply motivating and completely impossible to see without the right tool.
For serious runners and active women who want to train with intention rather than just effort the Garmin Forerunner 265 is the most impactful tracking tool available. It’s really comfortable to wear too.
Best for: Serious runners, women who want smart training feedback, tracking cardiovascular fitness over time
Training Apps
Runna Runna is my training app and it has changed how I approach every single run. It builds a personalized training plan based on my goal race, tracks how well I execute each workout, and adapts my training paces based on my actual performance. When I started using Runna it told me I was running my easy runs too fast — something I never would have known without the data. It pushes each day’s workout directly to my Garmin and delivers real time pace coaching through my earbuds. A genuinely intelligent training system that makes every run more purposeful.
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Best for: Runners training for a race, women who want adaptive coaching, anyone who wants to run smarter
Strava Strava is where I log every run and where I can see my progress over time in a way that is both motivating and genuinely useful. The heatmap shows where I have been running. The segment tracking shows whether I am getting faster on familiar routes. And the Local Legend feature — which I earned on one of my regular routes by running it more times than anyone else in the last 90 days — is a small but genuinely fun form of recognition that keeps me coming back.
The Flyover feature creates a beautiful animated aerial video of every run which is a surprisingly powerful motivational tool. Seeing your run from above makes every mile feel significant.
Best for: All runners, tracking routes and progress over time, community and motivation
Garmin Connect Garmin Connect is the hub that brings all my Garmin data to life. Every run syncs automatically and I can see detailed breakdowns of pace, heart rate zones, cadence, and run productivity scores. Over time the trends tell a story — am I getting faster, am I recovering better, is my training load appropriate. For Garmin watch owners this app is essential.
Best for: Garmin watch owners, detailed training data analysis
Lose It Tracking nutrition is part of tracking overall fitness and Lose It is the app I use for calorie and macro tracking. As a woman trying to hit 120 grams of protein daily as a pescatarian seeing my actual intake versus my targets keeps me honest and intentional about what I eat. The food database is enormous and logging is quick enough that it does not feel like a burden.
Best for: Women tracking nutrition alongside fitness, macro and calorie awareness
Body Composition Tracking
RENPHO Smart Scale The number on a scale tells only part of the story. The RENPHO smart scale connects to the RENPHO Health app and tracks body fat percentage, muscle mass, bone density, and more alongside weight. For active women over 50 these metrics matter more than weight alone — you can be building muscle and losing fat while the scale barely moves, and without body composition data you would never know your training is working.
Best for: Women who want more than a weight number, tracking body composition changes over time
Simple and Effective — No Tech Required
The Push Up Test One of my personal fitness benchmarks is simple — can I do 15 push ups? Not modified push ups. Real ones. This is a concrete and honest measure of functional upper body strength that requires no equipment and no app. Set a benchmark, track it monthly, and let the number tell you whether your strength training is working.
Pick your own benchmark — a number of push ups, a plank hold time, a specific run distance — and track it consistently. Sometimes the simplest measurements are the most honest.
A Running Journal There is something powerful about writing down your runs in a physical journal. Distance, pace, how you felt, what the weather was like, what you were thinking about. Over time a running journal becomes a record of your life as much as your training — and looking back through months of entries shows you how far you have come in a way that no app quite replicates.
The Gone For a Run Day-by-Day Run Planner is a popular choice in the running community with structured pages for daily training, weekly reflections, and goal setting.
The Bottom Line
You do not need to track everything. Pick the tools that give you the information that matters most to you and use them consistently.
For me that means the Garmin for training data, Strava for route tracking and motivation, Runna for structured coaching, the RENPHO scale for body composition, and a simple daily habit tracker to keep my consistency visible.
What gets measured gets improved. Start tracking and watch what changes.
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