Adaptive training for marathon in 6 months time

Will do! Today's Threshold WO isn't much different from the previous phase; but I am doing sprints on Thursday, which is a first. Wasn't a part of the first phase. The first phase consisted of base (Z2) ~three times a week, one threshold (Z4), one VO2Max (Z4>Z5) and one Long Run (Z2 +70min).

Thanks for detailing the menus. So I programmed a race for October and it built something up quickly indeed.

I added a second race in November and saw that you could set up a primary objective, nice.

You can set an objective but I'm not sure how it compares it to the time it thinks you can achieve with your current fitness.

Would be curious to know; but I think(!) it sets paces/distance/runs per week running after the goal time you put in when you created the event. 

So based on a formula of your (predicted) HM finish time you get you benchmark paces. Similar to how the structured plans work (Coach Greg or Jeff, etc.). I suppose. 

I’ve set an ambitious goal time for my HM, and based on my current threshold runs compared to my goal time, I won’t make it  

But - for all runs longer than shorter intervals (>2 mins), I run by heart rate. Which you can also setup in the suggested workouts. And alternate for sprint workouts, etc. (Although I actually saw the watch being smart enough to do that by itself when I had some shorter speed sessions last week.)

Hope this helps :) 

Good points, it does get difficult if your goal is very different from your predicted time. The Daniels plans have you knock off two units from your Vdot when you start the plan and then add them back in as you go along.

There Garmin have the benefit of knowing all your metrics so can adapt the paces/HR as you go along.

I've noticed that with a race on the calendar I no longer get suggested bike training sessions when I select a biking activity. Makes sense I suppose...except I'm injured right now and can only bike ;-)

I hope you have a speedy recovery!

Never biked a day in my life outside of city-biking, casually getting from A to B. Considering getting a proper bike and racing a bit. We’ll see. 

So I was watching a Garmin video the other day and it turns out the "goal" you set is just a way to see how far you are from your current level, i.e. it's not used in the calculations for the plan, just as well !

Anyway I did my first workout this morning, just a 38' base run@5'05 with 93% execution, looks like a good number, what are you guys getting ?

My main race is an HM at the end of October and I have a prep race at the beginning of that month. I've set that accordingly in GC but I'm a bit worried because that prep race is shown in the "peak" phase of the plan so probably without any taper for it.

webvan, oh that’s interesting. What are they using the goal time for then? “How far from my current level” - where and how does that show? Do you by any chance have the video?

The Exexution scores vary with me. I have everything from 95-100 on my long runs and 70-95 percent on my speed sessions. From the instructions, everything above 66% looks “Good”. So i don’t out too much emphasis on it. 

About the calendar, have you played around with “Primary Race”? Perhaps you need to change that? But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Since your goal race is the one in the end of October, the plan doesn’t put any taper in for the race in the beginning of October. If it did, you’d have two taper periods within a month for a plan of three months?

About the Acute Load, I am struggling to keep up. Doing all runs and to great execution. And yet, I can ALMOST not stay in within optimal zone of Load. Have you any experience with this? Perhaps I’m just Kipchoge, who knows

Thank you for the link

About recovery, you don’t get one or two recovery days in your 7-day plan? I think i have five runs and two recovery each week. I don’t run on recovery days. Usually some cross training. And typically “only” four runs per week, thus also taking a full day off. 

This is the best way in my opinion; I have the 955 for a  month now and I followed the suggested training for a mile race; I found it way too easy, but I choose to follow it.

I was not surprised when my time was a minute per mile slower than my time Garmin suggested I will finish at. Now I keep the daily suggestion but I use my own training schedule. 

One other thing I noticed, was the suggested workout sometimes changed form a day to another even if I didn't have any other exercise in between; at one point I had 2 days of rest scheduled  doing around 95% execution score for the workouts and initially on what I could see for a week ahead, there was only one day rest.