Garmin Coach changing workouts throughout the day

Hi all,

I am testing this new personalized Garmin Coach workout plan and noticed, that the workout is changing even throughout the day.

Yesterday and today morning it showed that I should take the day off today, but now at the evening it suddenly shows that I should do a base workout.

I find this weird. Is this a bug or a feature ?

Regards

Volker Jordan

  • Is your target for the half marathon within reach vs your current fitness level? i.e.not too ambitious. It sounds like the garmin training plan is trying to build your base fitness first before giving you more difficult runs, otherwise the training load will be too much. Have a look at your running load. 

    FYI you can select and bring forward any workout you see in your daily suggestions list, like an interval in your case that is scheduled for later in the week and run that today, look at you daily suggestions list and select what you wish to do, then "Do workout" option

  • Is your target for the half marathon within reach vs your current fitness level? i.e.not too ambitious. It sounds like the garmin training plan is trying to build your base fitness first before giving you more difficult runs, otherwise the training load will be too much. Have a look at your running load. 

    FYI you can select and bring forward any workout you see in your daily suggestions list, like an interval in your case that is scheduled for later in the week and run that today, look at your daily suggestions list and select what you wish to do, then "Do workout" option

  • For me it is the opposite. I have the target in the training plan set on 2:15 but Garmin claims I can do 1:50 and is clearly pacing the base runs for that time.

    I would prefer that they advise a faster target based on my results but let me decide if I want that.

  • Strange its pacing your easy runs faster than the half marathon pace target, they should be slower.

    What does it say your training status is? Productive, unproductive, overreaching etc?

    Also Acute training load, is its status Optimal?

    Force one of the intervals or long runs it has planned later in the week for earlier in the week and see how you get on and how the training plan responds.

  • Strange its pacing your easy runs faster than the half marathon pace target, they should be slower.

    What does it say your training status is? Productive, unproductive, overreaching etc?

    Also Acute training load, is it's status Optimal?

    Force one of the intervals or long runs it has planned later in the week for earlier in the week and see how you get on and how the training plan responds.

  • Training status has been maintaining for the past 4 weeks, after a month on productive. Load is between 650 and 1100, with the ratio circling around 1. Load focus is almost exclusively high aerobic (210 an, 2904 high, 324 low).

    I did go for a run with some colleagues two days ago, ignoring the training plan, and today it actually scheduled a sprint. Will definitely be doing that.

  • Load focus targets are different person to person but it appears your High Aerobic is way higher than the Low Aerobic, almost by a factor of 10x. I suspect its telling you High Aerobic overage or something to the effect.

    Enjoy your sprint session today, but next time it gives you a base run, just run it slowly, no matter what its telling you the pace is, keep your HR Zone 3 (green one). That'll give you more Low Aerobic which will balance out and free up capacity for the intervals and long runs etc.

  • Yes, it does indeed tell me that. I will be going into taper phase in a couple of days, so will mare sure to actually slow down as much as I should for well rested legs on race day, 2 weeks from now.

    Thanks for the suggestion , makes much sense.

    Ignoring the plan to make sure that I get a balanced load kinda beats the purpose of following the plan.

    I’m very surprised by the apparent lack of feedback the Garmin coach program is taking from the available data:

    - My heart rate is far too high

    - the training effect after a run is a mismatch to the intended effect while execution is good.

    - exercise load is out of balance 

    - I provided negative feedback several times in the post-run smileys thing

    Nothing of this seems to be used for improvement of upcoming training buildup (lower pace/shorter distance). All that happens is extra rest between workouts and more base runs that are not actually base runs.

    I really hope they will be able improve on this in the future but I will be trying something else for my next half marathon in October.

  • This is very helpful because often the tempo or interval suggestion was bumped to the next week. Thanks!

  • Yep, it's total madness, unusable.

    Thought I'd give it a try, been training for years off set plans.

    Three weeks in, this isn't workable, changes on the day and the entire week's schedule without any way to select the workout that was planned originally, or rejig if required.

    And per the other comments, it's way too quick to jump back to base / recovery sessions.