There are a lot of good things about Garmin Triathlon Coach. I thought I would mention a few positives before getting negative. I live in a hilly area, so I like that I can set it up to do run training by heart rate instead of pace. Swimming Tues/Thurs for 30-60 minutes fits into my schedule, so it is great that I can also set that up from the beginning. It (Garmin Coach) is well integrated into Garmin Connect, it is nice to not need another app or pay for an additional subscription. It seems to provide the general training structure I am looking for to get better over time. However, there are few frustrations that have me close to giving up on it. I'm hoping someone can offer suggestions or if nothing else, encouragement to stick with it:
Minor complaint 1: Running length, too much too soon. I have only been a cyclist for the last decade (not swimming/running), so instead of setting a time goal, my input to the Garmin Coach was that I wanted to train to "Finish" an Olympic Triathlon in 6 months figuring it would be a gradual build-up. Nope, it had me run a 10k (the full distance of the Olympic distance run) on week 2. Not an issue if I don't get injured but it doesn’t seem right.
Minor complaint 2: The plan is too fluid, workout schedule is constantly changing. It’s annoying that you can't look at your whole week and plan your life around it. I’m not sure you can even trust the workout for the following day. I finished a planned double day, and the plan updated to say it should have been a rest day. I wish there was a way to adjust how frequently you want the training plan to ‘Adapt’. Is there?
Minor complaint 3: You can’t move workouts around. On some occasions, I’d like to swap workouts to do them in a different order. You can do a workout early, but you can’t push a workout to a later day. This would be a nice feature to have.
Main complaint 4: Completing workouts on Zwift. This one is a potential deal breaker for me. I had a Zone 2 ‘Base’ ride scheduled for Wednesday, which I completed perfectly in Zwift. I hit the time/power targets exactly. When Zwift uploaded my ride to Garmin Connect, the planned workout almost immediately disappeared from the schedule, which I believe means that the coach has successfully identified that the workout was completed and no longer needs to be done. However, where it goes wrong, is the ‘plan’ then updated to incorrectly show Wednesday as a ‘Rest Day’ and replaced my scheduled Friday ‘Rest Day’ with a run. Now I have three straight days of running with no rest days. This has me losing confidence in the Coach.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
