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Race event training plan

JohnTheRunner
over 2 years ago

Just wondering if anyone tried the race / events for marathon training on your Garmin watch? I have the 965 and wondering if it’s accurate enough for training sub 4 hours for a marathon.

One thing I just noticed with this is garmin has you running every day. If I skip a day, I’m assuming garmin will adjust the training plan?

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    I'm using the Race Event widget to train for two fall marathons. I'm about three weeks into it and so far I'm enjoying it.

    I've followed 10-18 week training plans and worked with two coaches in the past, but I haven't felt the need to tweak many of the workouts Garmin has suggested (other than extending some 45 minute base runs to an hour). I'm using the workouts based on heart rate and not pace, and have the marathon goal set to 3:30 (which is slower than my best races but faster than I ran my spring marathons undertrained).

    I've noticed the future workouts change quite often based on how I recover from earlier workouts, and I've also been given rest days (but not every week). There seems to been at least one recovery run every week, which you can also swap with cycling.

    It's not critical that I hit any time goals this fall, so I'm planning to stick with it and see what happens.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    I’ve got 5 upcoming races plugged into the calendar, and set a trail Ultra as the primary. I even put in the course so that it knows the course profile, as suggested.  Maybe the training suggestions are good for a 5K but, frankly- I’m not seeing much difference in the 5K suggestions (that I had previously done) and the Ultra trail run suggestions.  Also- you can have it suggest either Pace or HR… both of which are annoying as ***.  Might be fine if you’re running on generally flat terrain, but actual pace varies too much when going up and down hills, so it always beeps at you.  So I switched to HR… but even that gets annoying with hills, heat and lack of consideration of HR drift on longer hot runs.  

    and- I have more complaints.  I’m trying to build my volume.  Been 55-60mpw for some time, but the suggestions never really give me that much.  So, I’ll do the 34min recovery base run at an easy pace, and then do a few more miles, also easy.  But since I overdo my recovery runs in its mind- it just continues to push off the speed work and still give me recovery runs.  And- it does this when my training readiness is 85! And my recovery time is 0hrs, and I feel fine (and I’m not young).  

    I also find the pace ranges ridiculously fast for the short interval/speed workouts.  Maybe since I’m an endurance guy?

    so no.  It’s fun to have some suggested workouts, but so far, I don’t recommend using the built in training plans.  

    I find the Body Battery to be scary accurate, and the training load stuff generally pretty good.  But the training readiness- and the suggested workouts are fun, but far from optimal training suggestions.  Don’t count on them.

    would love to hear others’ experience with them.  I’m still playing.  

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to morey000

    Yes, I agree, following the suggested workouts is not the best strategy. It might be "ok" if you are doing a more standard road race, but even there you will get better results by adapting a plan from a good coach, or hiring a coach to plan it for you.

    For myself, I always like to look at the recommendations, and sometimes I laugh and sometimes I am surprised when it matches with my plan. Even if the Garmin suggestions were good (which they are not), they are very coarse when compared with a "real plan", they don't contain pointers about elevation, technicality of terrain, using hiking poles or not, practicing nutrition or not, running on a empty stomach or not etc. - a good training plan for a (ultra) trail run will contain specific sessions to practice down-hills (and to get tougher legs), sessions to practice fueling, sessions to practice poles (if you want poles for your race), sessions where you start on a empty stomach to improve fat burning, and of course lots intervals to practice uphill, with varying levels of steepness (depending on your race), some where you power-hike, some where you can run, some where you learn to switch smoothly between running and walking etc.