Garmin Coach Amy: questionable strategy with low paces?

Hi Achim,
I cannot rely on "Amy", but it´s a normal approach to train slower on long training runs and faster in a few short intervals.

On a marathon you also don´t go for the full distance and pace before.

Hi HerrRiebmann,

thanks for your reply. Yes, I know other training plans that also follow that rule, but usually the short, fast intervals are faster than your destination pace.

With Garmin Coach Amy, there were lots of trainings with "destination pace" intervals, but this "destination pace" was 0:20 to 0:40 min/km slower than my real destination pace.

That truly is strange!
All of my interval trainings have been faster then the wished destination pace. That´s the reason for intervals

I´ve took a look into the plans, a while ago. But nothing fitted into my requirements.
So I just googled some plans and configured them into my calendar manually. Worked great for 5km <20min or nearly for a marathon below 3:30. But that was not the plans fault, there have been to many slow people in front of me.

But creating every training manually is a lot of work

I agree with you. I even contacted Garmin about it and they said that the paces were as expected. I haven't finished the plan yet, and quite like the general thrust of it, but I've been getting concerned that the longer pace intervals are far too easy. About 1 minute/mile slower than I was expecting. If there's no taper either, then I think I might well give something else a go. It's a shame they're not a bit more transparent about what's coming up in future, as it would be nice to know what you were letting yourself in for.

Agreed - I also like the way the length builds up and how trainings are scheduled, but the pace is just ridiculously slow. I absolutely cannot go this slow and to not think it helps my stamina

Hi Adam,

I see with Amy you had an extremely demanding week just before the race.

I'm now 3 weeks before my HM and Amy is suggesting over and over again the same workouts (already for the last 3 weeks, and going to be the same next week), consisting in a much lower workload than usual.

Now, I understand the importance of tapering, but does it start already 1 month and a half before the race?! Plus, having read your message, it looks like after tapering...boom, up to the maximum workload just before the race.

Did you have a similar experience (=reduced workload) 6 to 1 weeks before the HM?

Hi Marco,

Strangely, your experience is very different than mine. In my case, the months leading up to the race was a gradual increase in intensity and distance, increasing each week. I did not have the same week over and over like you. 

Regarding tapering: Tapering begins 2-3 weeks before the race, with a small decrease in distance at first, leading to a larger decrease in distance as the race approaches. Short, high intensity workouts are typically maintained through the taper. Beginning 6 weeks in advance is far too early. 

it sounds like in both of our cases an error occurred in the training plan, with different, bad plans being created. 

 Also I am confused about the pace suggestions. I am in week 12 for 17 weeks 10k @59min goal.

"Steady State run" is 13k with a 6.22km center part ~6:00-6:30 min so quite a challenge for me.

"repeats" are set 3 times 8 mintues at 6:29 tot 6:42 min/km which is very easy for me.

Long runs seem to be tougher than intervals. I normally expect that to be the other way round 

I'm 12 weeks into my 10k plan and haven't had a single day of running more than 6.4k. I switched from Jeff Galloway at week two of his 10k plan because it was too complicated and had me running almost 12k on week 2. I'm not particularly worried about pace but I also wasn't even given the option to choose a goal time or pace for coach Amy's 10k, and I did have that option for coach Jeff.