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?