Garmin Coach Questions

I'm not sure I correctly understood all your questions, but here's my take:

1) No, coach Greg workouts are time based.

2) "Unproductive" means your weekly workout load has increased, but your VO2max seems to be dropping. Which typically happens when you start doing new workouts your body hasn't yet been accustomed to (or your load is too high with too little recovery, etc.)

3) The Garmin Coaches' pace goal are goals for the average pace in each phase of the workout. But when you say that your "final pace is much slower than usual", do you mean the average pace of the whole workout? That includes the warmup and cool down phases. You should look at the running intervals' average paces in Garmin connect (or the watch).

Thank you for this.  I really appreciate it.  Here are my responses.

1) Thanks.  I'll have to deal with it.

2) my V02max is 50 and has been there all along.  Hasn't changed.  My pace is overall slower as I am following Coach Greg's suggestions...which are slower for me.  Would that make a difference?

3) For example, i usually run 9:30-10:00min/mile.  Coach Greg says to run 10-11min/mile, so i run slower.  Despite running at a slower pace, the 945 gives me an alert saying my pace is too high (usually seems to indicate I am running at 845-900min/mile.  I then slow down more and more until the 945 says I am in the target pace...which really feels slow.  After the run, the final result indicates that my pace was 1030-1100min/mile.  My body is telling me my pace is good, but my watch says my pace is too high...but it is not.

For 2), the watch will also use fractional changes in VO2max for the training status, even though it shows the VO2max as an integer value for you (you can use Runalyze to see the VO2max estimate with two decimals). So it could be you VO2max is dropping a little (or the watch thinks so), but not enough to show in the rounded integer value. I also have a feeling that Garmin's VO2max algorithm underestimates the VO2max a little when the pace is slow. Or maybe we both have a problem that our running efficiency is worse when running slower.

For 3), I still don't quite get what's happening. What does the watch show as your lap pace when you run? And what does Garmin connect show as that interval's average pace afterwards?

Bitti there is some definite truth to the end of your point regarding slowing down. I myself have a 71 VO2 Max estimate, and started doing my recovery runs at 8-9 minute pace even though most calculators, (either Mcmillan or since I've moved to triathlon Matt Fitzgeralds 8020 calculator) say that my recovery pace is 9-7 minutes. My thought process is how much difference is there really between a 7:11 recovery run and a 7:10 zone 2 easy run. The answer I came to is not much, it's mostly an arbitrary target I set for myself that ultimately the difference in effect is not much if any. However the difference between 70 minutes at 8:00 pace and 70 minutes at 6:45 is pretty drastic and gives me the change in effort and fitness I'm looking for. When I first started the process of slowing down my recovery days my heart rate still wasn't much lower than when I was running 7:00 pace, (7:00 might be 142, 9:00 might be 134) though after making that adjustment for 6 month, (and the weather starting to break for sure) that same run that might have been 9:00 at 134 is now about 7:50 at 122. Even though it's slow you do have to train at that level in order to efficiently run at that level. 

That long winded story is mainly to point out that you are correct about efficiency being worse when running slower until you slow yourself down and do it. You are also correct that the watch does round the number a bit which is why the training status might say unproductive despite your VO2 max not reflecting a change. I'd also note that while certainly training cycle place plays a role in your training status so does nutrition, sleep, stress, recovery, and weather conditions. 

While we put in place a control for heat, wind, air quality, elevation during the run are all factors that can attribute to your training status that we just aren't able to entirely factor in yet. One thing I had to get over personally was that not every run needs to generate a VO2 max estimate. 70% of my max heart rate is 136 which is what I need to hit to generate a VO2 Max. Perhaps aiming on focusing on keeping your heart rate under that 70% threshold on your recovery runs will allow for enough recovery on your runs for you to run on the higher end of the speed workouts to get that VO2 Max to climb. 

I'm not a coach, and these are just the thoughts of a fellow runner, follow the coaching plan on the watch it's designed to get you to improve, but keep in mind that even though it gives you a range it's perfectly fine and probably better to run at the low end of that range on your easy days so you can run at the top of the range on the hard days. 

Thanks a lot for your reply and confirming some of my guesses. Sigh, it just means that I really have to learn to run slower. It's difficult! 

Honestly, this is one of the coolest replies I've seen yet on these forums. You gave a really honest answer as an employee that wasn't some copypasta. Very refreshing to see. Thanks for your write-up!

Sorry to kinda hijack your post but I followed the Garmin training plan for a half marathon with Coach Greg, the only time I ever received any alerts was during stride repeats - if my cadence was too high. 
I’m a novice runner and hoped I would get alerts when doing other runs, to sslow my pace for example, but I never did.  

I was also seeing the unproductive message though to begin with, until I slowed things right down and then it changed to peaking & productive.