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Garmin daily suggested workouts for ultra run & hard workouts

Hi all,

I have two questions for this community as I am starting to prepare for a 55km ultra run with 3300m elevation gain

1. Is it better to launch a Marathon self-guided plan from Garmin or to use the Garmin Daily Suggested Workouts for that race?

2. I just tested a bit the Garmin Daily Suggested workouts but I find the workouts pretty intense e.g., I need to do 1 min at 3min55/km while my interval pace is 4:30min/km and when I need to do base training it suggest 165 bpm while this is already in my threshold zone (nothing is in zone 2 which I would like to try and work on as my heart rate is my weak point).

Happy to hear your thoughts!

0 Cooad over 1 year ago

I used Daily Suggested Workouts to prepare for a half marathon, starting from scratch.

I think it went pretty well, there are just a few rules/tips I learned while using it.

1. Make sure your max heart rate is correct. The default value for that is 220-age, but that can be very inaccurate for some people. Based on that formula, my max heart rate should be 189, while in the reality it's somewhere around 175. If you need to adjust it, leave the HRmax auto detection feature off for a month or so, otherwise the watch will just come back to the previous value.

2. Do a lactate threshold test if you can (you need a chest strap in order to do that). I think the watch has some internal heart rate zones it uses to create suggested workouts, and it doesn't care what your custom set zones are. Making sure you set up a correct max heart rate, and lactate threshold values aligns these internal zones to reality.

3. Use training based on heart rate, not pace.

4. Don't look at your heart rate in hard interwal workouts, just do your best efford. I mean, if you have 1 minute reps, just go with a max pace you can hold for 1 minute (same for 2 or 3 minute interwals). That will probably get you to the desired HR zone in the last quarter of the interval. What I did in the begining was to try to get the HR to the desired zone as soon as possible, which just meant I overshoot and crashed miserably.

4. I can't be sure, but I think DSW use the goal time you set on your event. I haven't found that piece of information anywhere, but I think I noticed the training got a bit harder (a bit more volume) when I changed my goal from "just get to the finish line" to "finish in 2 hours".