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Coach Jeff - Long Easy Run - Room to Grow

Former Member
Former Member over 5 years ago

I have just started a half marathon training program and am pretty new to running so any advice would be much appreciated.

At the start of the 2nd week now and just completed my first 'long easy run' which was just over 11km.

I'm slightly confused as to what 'easy' should be. At first I was trying to keep my HR within the blue zone 2 which is labelled 'easy' but this was basically a walking pace and ended up completing the run with around 45% of the time spend in zone 3 and 42% in zone 4.  The run felt easy enough but should I be avoiding the higher HR zones entirely? My average for the run was 147bpm which is at the top end of zone 3 and pace was 9:30/km (compared to my usual pace of around 6:15/km).

After completing the run virtual coach gave me 'Room to grow' but it's not clear if this was because my pace was too slow or because I was training at too high intensity/HR.  Any ideas?

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    I've noticed this the easy run/long run pace is too high. Use a calculator like this and ignore the room to grow.

    www.runnersworld.com/.../

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to 7567726

    Thank you so much !

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Did you figure it out? I had the same message today.  My only goal for my easy run was a pace target, no HR target - which seems odd. I hit it, but feel it's faster than what it should be. My HR was mostly zone 3. Perhaps even though it gave me a pace goal I should have focused on zone 2 HR. Next easy run I'll focus on hitting Zone 2 HR not the given pace. 

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to crissy_jo

    I became frustrated with the Run/Walk/Run idea so changed coach in the end. It does seem strange though that neither coach plans I have tried put any focus on HR training. It would be great if Garmin incorporated this more into the training plans!

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

    I'm following the plan with Coach Greg. And I agree, why not incorporate HR based training. PearSports has a good app for this, but it won't interact with Garmin Ant+. I have to wear a Bluetooth HR monitor with their training plans. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

    Today I ignored target pace for my long easy run and tried to stay Zone 2 for 40 minutesI thought I did really well, but analysis showed zone 3 for 21 minutes. I got another Room For Improvement rating. This summer heat and humidity makes Z2 running hard.