Difference between adding a race to your calendar and doing a training plan?

I am interested in this "Adding a Race Event to my Calendar" feature.  It seems much more customized and adaptive, than using other stock training plans.  Has anyone tried it?

I'm currently using it now for an October race. My wife has the Vivoactive 4, so she is using one of the Garmin training plans.

Adding a race uses the daily suggested runs. It does change the runs, a lot! Sometimes it's good like when I'm not feeling well or I didn't sleep well. The watch knows and adjusts workouts. Other times it tries to get too fancy filling out the 3 bars from load focus. I plan on one run when I go to bed, wake up feeling fine and the run is completely different. Might not fit into my schedule that day.

My Wife's training plan shows all her runs on the Garmin calendar. They don't change or move unless you move them. If you're not feeling well you can click on the workout and reschedule it. But once you miss that day, the plan moves on. She's been scrambling late at night to reschedule runs so she won't lose them.

The other big difference is the daily suggested workouts have almost no rest days. I get recovery runs. Some of those I turn into rest days. The training plan has rest days built it. And it will warn you if you reschedule a workout and disrupt the rest days. 

I've also set a primary and secondary race on my calendar. My secondary rice was before the primary. The daily suggested workouts slowed down before my race, a mini taper. It was nice to do none of the planning. Let Garmin handle the schedule. 

Thanks Doctor.

A question: on your calendar with the "Race Event"

Can you pick "Days to run." "Day for long run." "Days to not run"

Are these options that end up guiding the "Daily Workout Suggestions"?

I know you can pick long run days. I have Saturday or Sunday picked right now as long run days. It will move the long run to the day that I'm feeling best. And if I don't get the full long run in, or if I choose Sunday's shorter run on Saturday the long run automatically get pushed off to Sunday.

I know when I setup the watch or calendar I think I did get the option to select days I was available for training. I would assume if you didn't check Friday it would become your off day. I just never assumed that  since I was available every day that it would have me run every day.

Got it. I am hoping it is a bit more granular. I'd like to hear about someone identifying a single race (say a 10K) at a certain time on their calendar, so:

In Calendar, entering a "Race Event": (10K, September 1, 2023.)

Identify it as my "Primary Event" for training purposes.

Then get asked:

• Which day for Long Runs
• Which days are available for running
• A target for "How many days/week" for running
• A target for a "10K finish time." 

These are the basics from the "Garmin Coach" training plans, but those training plans were crude and not very adaptive for me (or whichever runner was on the plan)