Unsure about using Garmin Coach

I’ve got some races coming up this year so I decided to set up and try Garmin coach.

My running had always been on trails and I live in a mountain valley, so lots of elevation involved.

Through advice I changed the coach from pace targets to HR targets, as obviously pace doesn’t translate for trail running.

But as I’ve been trying to follow it a bit more, I’m starting to question everything!

Coming up, for example, is a threshold workout and it wants me to run 18 minutes with a target HR of 168bpm. I’ve experience power hiking up mountains and pushing the heart rate (not even then not sure about sustained around 170?!) but I just am not sure I have the mechanics to run hard enough to get my HR up to and staying around 170 on a flat run? Or maybe it’s just mental and I can’t get my body doing the run?

Obviously as a threshold run it’s supposed to be hard and really push you, and granted a lot of my running has been more casual.

But even my last very hard run where I tried out my shorter race course, I averaged 153 but only peaked at 164.

I guess, maybe, my max HR could be off (I let it constantly adjust and it does - currently set to 188). But… yeah, I just don’t see how I can realistically accomplish the run in the target HR for that long?

0 kathryn6271 3 months ago

I have the same issue with the cycling coach - the HR targets are way into my zone 5, sometimes wanting me to do this for 17 minutes at a time. I wonder if the AI needs tweaking. I find it very inconsistent and more than a little frustrating. Today for example, it wanted me to do 3 intervals at 157 bpm, which for me is way into zone 5. I did it in high zone 4, but then it records it as a "base" activity rather than "threshold" and tells me I have a "high intensity" shortage in my training. The same ride done a couple of weeks ago, with the same average HR and performance was scored as threshold- it's just not consistent. I think Garmin need to look at the algorithm...

0 kathryn6271 3 months ago in reply to kathryn6271

OK, I've done some reading and I think the problem with the stupidly high HR targets in Garmin coach is because my watch thinks my max HR is 178, when it is nearer 165 (220- age, a rough guide, but as good as I've got at the moment). If you go into your watch settings on Connect and look at User Settings, it gives you the option to change your Max HR. Don't know why this isn't automatically correct as when I look at the zones in each activity, they are correct there. Surely it should all sync? But clearly not. I'm optimistic that my ride tomorrow might have target HR's that make sense and don't want to kill me!

0 Kaitlyn 3 months ago in reply to kathryn6271

220-age is just an arbitrary calculation as a guideline. And obviously cannot be right for everyone.

The modern garmin watches all auto-adjust the max HR based on the activity data. I would expect it to be more accurate, though I suppose an abnormally high HR reading off a bad wrist reading could inflate it... but mine has also adjusted multiple times. Granted it's adjusted to a HR I've never seen myself hit... but yeah.

0 kathryn6271 3 months ago in reply to Kaitlyn

Yes, I know it's arbitrary, but I'm happy to use it as a rough guide for now. ( and I wear a HR strap to negate issues with wrist readings). I think the issue here is that whatever Garmin believes my max HR to be, Garmin Coach is wanting me to train for extended intervals (this morning, it was 2 x 15 mins) in what is high Zone 5, which should not really be possible (or desirable).

0 Johnny Hardtail 3 months ago

So, my friend who just got an Enduro 3 is training for her first marathon as a beginner runner. She approached me to ask about some of her workouts, as even though I haven't ran in over 20 years, I regularly use the biking workouts. Since Garmin won't let you view other workout plans while in a current one, I created another account to view the Garmin Coach Workout plan on the Connect website. Her watch was telling her to a Threshold workout with 19 minute intervals at Zone 4 pace in Week 4 of her beginner training plan. It occured to me that this is way off what we do for Garmin Coach training plans. With my separate account, I was able to preview plans... in the actual outline of the plan, the intervals are 4 minutes, 90 second rest with 19 minutes being the length of the total section.

Do you think some of the issues you are experiencing could be related to what seems to be this error?