Adaptive training for marathon in 6 months time

Update after the first 18 days with the 955.

To put this into perspective i am rebuilding after taking time off from my last race, also the watch has landed during "holiday mode"- 2 weeks enjoying seeing my brother for the first time in 4 years, and then a few days podding with my OH. During that camping break i came down with a stomach bug of some kind which laid me out for 36 hours. 

After the very first easy run the watch scaled back my suggested training somewhat. The base runs were reduced 43 to 30 mins and the long run down from 1 hr 12mins to 1hr. This is understandable really, i was not running as well as my history would suggest.

After poor sleep, high stress and/or too many beers it occasionally scaled back my daily suggestion from a base run (30mins) to a recovery run (15mins). Without the watch experiment i may have pressed on and logged more miles. The golden question is whether this has helped me gain fitness in the past or actually has little training benefit only wearing me out for poorer later sessions.  

When i was ill, the stress responses (e.g. 85% stress while i was asleep), low HRV and poor sleep scores (29 lowest) were indistinguishable from when i had had too many beers with my brother. Ahem!

The suggestions given (and completed) have been 5 runs per week, one long, one speed (interval or sprints) and the remaining as base runs bringing total to about 20 miles a week. I probably would have started back at that level but would ramp it up a bit quicker at the beginning. However, the last 3 weeks have hardly been good training, just keeping the legs turning over. My CTL (tracked elsewhere) has been pretty flatline, TSB just about reaching zero towards the end of the period. No change in VO2Max. No real surprises there.

Stress, sleep, overnight HRV, RHR, seem to track spookily well with how i've been "not living like a pro" e.g the 7 day RHR is about 8 bpm higher than when i am being more conscientious.

HRV status is not reporting yet, that takes 19-21 days to collect baseline data. I fully expect that baseline will improve over the next few weeks! Best HRV overnight average has been 63ms, worst at 18ms. At that low level sustained it could indicate a chronic underlying issue! 

The highest 5 mins average HRV is also reported, mine shows 110ms which would be deemed pretty healthy if sustained for the whole night. 

The training feedback doesnt always make sense. Occasionally it says 'training is balanced' but on another screen 'you need to add more intensity/variation'. I think this is seen elsewhere but it is early days, i wont take too much notice until i get to 4 weeks use.

I haven't run for long enough yet to test the stamina predictions, showing ~2 hours and ~13 miles for me. It feels about right for restarting training, training in the loosest possible sense.   

The solar charging is a nice technology, but not certain it is adding much significant for me yet. Nice to see some solar activity on the graph when out though. Maybe when i'm out more then......

The watch arrived with 80% charge and i've charged it twice in the 18 days. I'm using one second recording and GPS All + Multiband, so high battery drain in those regards. 

Will see what happens over the next 3-4 weeks when more sensible and the HRV status will kick out some feedback.

I have a planned a half marathon in October in Garmin connect, when I received the watch I started following the 80/20 plan, but after 2 weeks I decided to stick with the garmin suggested workouts, due to 2 reasons: hard workouts seemed much more fun (hard ;-)) and the watch probably (?) knows better my current fitness, rest and strain.

Aditional comments, the long runs seem to be a bit short to my liking, more or less 1 hour; maybe because my current fitness is not really that good and because I setted up as long day runs saturday and sundays; so the watch is probably trying to build up fatigue with 2 days of long runs in a row.

Other things to consider, the profile for which those suggestions are created to, maybe a 2h30min marathoner is not the athlete is focused to. DC Rainmaker already made some comments on this topic.

ME

Estuve siguiendo los planes sugeridos pero ahora mismo veo poco sentido utilizarlos ya que no puedes configurar las zonas de pulsaciones y por lo tanto la carga que te marca es mayor de lo que realmente es. Entreno en zona 2 casi todo el rato, unos 40-50 minutos y me sale un TE:3,3, por lo que decidí no utilizarlo hasta que corrijan ese error 

Was wondering about something similar too so thanks for experimenting/sharing.

I'm a bit surprised "adaptive training" would kick in 6 months in advance and the suggestions don't seem that great. So far ahead of the race you'd probably want to built the best possible base, especially if you're starting from a low fitness level, to be able to add harder work as you get around the 3 month timeline.

If you want to have have some "fun" wit harder runs, I'd do some speed work, the Daniels R-Pace sessions, and rely on the proven 80/20 system.

It will be interesting to see more feedback on Garmin's adaptive plans as more people use it to prepare races.

It seems to be suggesting something very suitable for base building and close to following 80/20.  One long run, three base runs, one fun but not too arduous speed work. 
In Garmin’s own plan summary it says now is the preparation stage before the base building starts later. This far out though it hardly matters so a good time to experiment. 

The only thing I’ve seen so far which could be a concern is if an athlete does have a stressful life, doesn’t sleep well then the progression offered could be extremely hampered.  

Hi!

I am also training for a HM in mid-September. My long runs did the same in the beginning; but now, four weeks in, my long runs are +100 minutes on Saturdays and +75 minutes on Sundays. So, don't worry. They will get up there if you stick to the schedule throughout the weeks. 

I just entered the "Build Phase" today, actually. So curious to see what is awaiting me! :) 

Where do you see these phases ? Everything is on the watch, right, nothing in GC Web or Mobile ?

Yes, on the watch, scroll down below the 7 day suggested workouts. 

Good stuff, let us know how the build phase changes, expands. 

Exactly as the_meek says:

When starting a Run workout and presented with today's suggestion, proceed (START) and then scroll down to "More Suggestions". That will show you the next seven days. Below that you have "Plan Overview" and "Settings". The latter is about whether you want to go by HR or Pace, but the former is the plan itself, where you can read more about the different phases.

You can also find the information via Training -> Workouts -> Suggestions.