I activated the Garmin Coach "Jeff Galloway" for Half Marathon Training in Garmin Connect for my Forerunner watch (945 LTE to be precise, but that is not important here I suppose since the Coach is the same for all watches I suppose, hence I am posting this in the "Garmin Connect" section of this forum).
I know from various books as well as from experienced "real life" running mates that when preparing for a FULL Marathon, you should do some "long runs" around 28, 30 and up to ca. 32 km in the weeks before the Marathon event. However, for a HALF Marathon such long runs are usually not foreseen during the training/preparation phase - you typically do not run (much) longer distances than the half marathon distance during training.
So I was surprised that the long runs that my Garmin Coach recommended to me (and that I actually carried out as suggested) were in the range how you would expect it for preparation of a FULL Marathon. Here's a record of my Garmin Coach "Long Easy Run" training sessions:
- 20 Mar.: 13.3 km (11.3 km + warm-up/cool-down) - Duration = 1:25 h
- 19 Apr.: 19.2 km (17.7 km + warm-up/cool-down) - Duration = 2:12 h
- 12 May: 22.3 km (20.9 km + warm-up/cool-down) - Duration = 2:16 h
- 28 May: 25.4 km (24.1 km + warm-up/cool-down) - Duration = 2:51 h
- 12 June: 28.5 km (incl. warm-up/cool-down) - Duration = 3:39 h
- 3 July: 31.6 km (30.6 km + warm-up/cool-down) - Duration = 3:38 h
- 15 July: Finally: The Half Marathon Competition - Duration = 1:57 h
I told my running mates about this and they were sure that this must be a bug in Garmin's Coaching program. They said such long runs are typical in preparation for a Marathon, but absolutely not for a Half Marathon. Exactly what I thought.
What do you think? Is this a bug, or am I missing anything? Thanks!
