Tag: garmin coach

Categories
running

A Running Update on Running #6

Why the hell am I numbering these?

Last night right when I was about to go to bed, I made a change on my phone that changed my life forever.

Is that clickbaity enough?

In short, I’ve had Garmin Coach up with a training plan for my 10k in July. When you set up a training plan, it gives you a “goal” with two basic options: Completion, or Goal Time. Completion is what you think it is. Actually, Goal Time is too now that I think about it.

When I signed up, I opted for Completion because I wasn’t sure how I’d do at running 6.2 miles. In return, GC and my grandpappy Coach Jeff Galloway set me up with a very simple workout routine, consisting of two cadence and “Acceleration-Glider” drills (aka strides) a week plus the trademarked Run Walk Run®, which was never more than 2.5 miles.

This was … fine. Boring, but fine. But I’ve done it for a couple of weeks now and it didn’t seem to want to get any harder, which I was desperately seeking.

“Just fine, Josh? Is that right? Is my training plan just fine to you? Listen here you little whelp, I won the Honolulu Marathon in 1974, before you even a glint in your daddy’s eye. I went to the Olympics. Have you ever been the Olympics, Joshua? I didn’t think so.”

So last night, laying in bed, about to go to sleep, I futzed around with GC and decided to enter my Goal Time for my 10k, because I have one now, and it’s slow as hell: Goal A (or ideal goal) is 1:15, which is a 12:04/mi, abysmally slow but something I’m capable of doing. Goal B is 1:30, and Goal C is just to complete it. I’m at a point now where I’m pretty sure I can complete it. So I look up the goal times on GC and discover that my Goal A is the absolute last goal you can pick on the app. So I picked it.

Folks, the app comPLETELY changed my workouts to actual god damn workouts. Look at this:

This is what I did this morning! Cadence drills, strides, plus the “magic mile” for pacing purposes and 6x 800m runs at goal pace with 3 minute recovery periods. An actual workout! With distance!

I feel great. This is my long run, technically (more on that in a second), and being able to run/walk over the 10k distance without feeling it too much is awesome. Plus, according to Garmin, my 10k time for this workout alone was 1:21:53, which means I’ve got 1:15 in the bag and will likely have to move my Goal Time up a bit. We’ll see how the rest of the week progresses.

Meanwhile, I tried to reschedule my long runs to Sunday, the proper day, and ended up fucking up my entire training plan for the next two weeks. Now I have four workouts this week instead of three, and it added another long run this Sunday that’s ELEVEN MILES. And then the next week is all rest days, and I can’t change it and I don’t know why. It’s a mess and I’ll probably have to skip a workout or add unscheduled workouts to my phone or something. I have no idea how I’m going to do 11 miles this week. It’s honestly too much and I’ll likely have to skip it and try to move it to the week after. It’s much more than a 10% leap and I don’t want to injure myself.

Update: GC now shows the long run as 7 miles, not 11. That might be a little more manageable. We’ll see.

In other news, I’ve begun filming a “day in the life” video for YouTube. Why? I have no idea. Just seemed like something to do. My life is pretty boring but I felt like maybe it would be neat to see what I do on a regular day. I have no idea when it will be edited and uploaded to YouTube.

So: This week is going to be intense. Lots of running and significant drills for hills and speed practice. Like, actually training me for stuff. I’m hoping my legs can carry me through it.

This weekend’s just a parkrun and then in a couple of weeks I’m 40. I haven’t dwelled on it at all…

Categories
running

A Running Update on Running #5

This week is about reining it in a bit. I pushed myself a bit too hard on cadence drills last week and my hamstrings are reminding me of my mistakes. That, plus running a parkrun AND a 5k race, both of which having hills, was enough to create some real soreness in my legs.

These squiggles aren’t as helpful when they’re just a screenshot. Oh well.

This morning’s workout is another Run Walk Run from my grandaddy, Coach Jeff, with a 2 mile run this go around. I opted for 90/30 splits instead of 60/30 this time, just to see how it felt. Turns out, it felt alright. If anything, running 90 seconds instead of 60 helped me develop a better cadence, which was solidly in the 158-162spm range when I ran. This feels like it will become my “easy run” cadence and this training is helping me to find that.

It kind of feels like Coach Jeff’s training plan is just to get me to a healthy baseline, rather than ramping things up for a 10k. This makes sense the more I think about it, as I need to have stronger legs and endurance to run farther, and running longer (at this point) isn’t going to help. Nobody runs the full distance of their race before their race, after all, so me running consistent 2-3 miles for the next few weeks before, I hope, gradually building up to a 4 or 4.5 mile run, feels like what I need.

My only regret is that I wish I had opted for a 4-day training plan and incorporated parkrun into it. I’m not sure if the Garmin Coach thing recognizes that I’m also running on Saturdays too.

Anyway, the rest of the week are drills. I think I’m going to do at least one going east (aka 3% uphill) because I desperately need to train hills, and 3% is a slight enough grade that I don’t think it’ll hinder my progress at all. Next Tuesday is another RWR at 2.5 miles. Not entirely sure why GC isn’t putting these on Sundays, which I marked as my long run day, but whatever.

The plan for drills is easy and slow this week. My drills last week were too fast and my hamstrings are mad at me. My first and fastest split then was 6:15/mi-ish pace–wild!–but I really do think I overstrided and probably pulled my hamstrings a bit. So every subsequent run will be done easily, except I suppose for the Lilac Run, which I may purposely run slow on just because. We’ll see. Race day is race day, after all.

I do hope that GC eventually gives me some alternate workouts. Drills and RWR are fine but I know they have hill workouts and other stuff loaded in there somewhere. Put me in coach! I’m ready to play (clap clap clap) today!