Garmin Coach: Confusing Easy Running Pace

this morning i focused on the HR and ran with HR < 145 instead of the (for me) fast pace 6:19 to 6:56 mi/km. the result: room to grow. actually i don't care about that specific "room to grow" but what bothers me is that the next session is still an easy run at easy pace with 6:19 to 6:56 mi/km. is it totally normal or should i just not care about those wrong calculations ?

Considering that an "average" half marathon pace for males seems to be around 6 min/km (based on quick googling), could it be that your goal pace of 5:40 min/km is a little too fast? That could explain why the program tries to coach you into runs where the goal pace and HR don't seem to match for you?

yes, of course it is ambitious. maybe too ambitious, you might be right.

but also with a pace of 6:00 mi/km the easy pace is at 6:41 to 7:19 min/km - which is about my current race pace. I mean 6:00 mi/km (or 5:40, however) is the goal I want to reach in 15 weeks and not an insignificantly slower pace already in week 2. 

there must be something wrong in calculations ?! i mean i understand that my easy pace would be 6:41 if i would run at 6:00 as my current race pace. but that's not the case today, maybe in 15 weeks it will be the case.

Did you ever figure this out? I have the same problem. Garmins "Easy run" pace would be a Hard run for me at the moment. Should I try to maintain it and fail the purpose of the excercise (easy) or just run at my actual easy pace and fail the suggested pace?

Nope, didn't figure it out, except that i quit the coach plan and creating my own workouts now, 80% easy, 20% hard, polarised and periodised.

Depending on your current state of Fitness i would recommend you to stay in the easy zone, except those 20%. Some day it will be your easy pace, just be patient and listen to your body.

As i see retrospectively, i increased my race pace by 1 minute in 8 months of training. Not that bad I think 

Thanks for the tips! My easy pace (zone 2) is now something like 9-9:30min/km and Garmin is suggesting I would take an easy run at 6:37-7:14 min/km. The goal is to run 10km in 1 hour.

That's the biggest garmin Trainingsplan issue, imo. They are geared towards beginners, but a 12 week 10K training plan with goal pace requires some basic fitness. I'm finally scraping that sub60 mark now after 3-4 months of "doing my own" workouts.

You'll reach that goal, for sure, but maybe not in 12 weeks. However, stay patient, train smart and consistently / frequently.

Hi.

So this is surely too late, but other people might be finding this thread, so i would like to answer anyway.

You should pick a time goal like 60 min/10k and see if the suggests pace and effort match.

If not you need to adjust your goal throughout the training plan.

For example I started out with a HM in 2:06h and now 12 weeks later I am down to 1:48h.

The training works wonderful for me.

I ran 6:38 min with an average HR of 147 in November and today I ran 6:17 with 133. Progress!

If possible you should try to train more often. I now run 5 times a week. Only twice a week is fast.

It is very important to stick within the recommended heart rate zones. If your supposed easy run is hard then the training won't work. Even the most elite runners will spend 80-90% of their time at a very easy pace.

For most people the easy runs are too hard and the hard runs are too easy.

Also: Your body has an easier time to adjust with more but shorter runs.

Say 6k, 4k, 6k 16k is way better than 10k, 10k, 12k.

I hope this will help für this year's goals.

Tage care

I basically agree with your post. The time goal was probably really a bit too ambitious, although it has long since been achieved. Several times.

But what I find difficult are the general statements regarding the number of training sessions and their distribution. Sometimes less is more and more recovery also means "safe adaptation". Sure in the sense of injury free. the suggested 30-32km per week are certainly not for couch to 5K or 5K to 10K beginners. i myself run today every other day, so 3-4x per week and distribute my load of 35-45km per week. But that's just now, 1.5 years later.

I also find it difficult to compare. My progress is definitely not as huge as yours. 80% of my runs are RPE 4-5 and there I rarely reach a pulse below 150 HR, but that's also difficult when you live and run in hilly terrain ;)