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Garmin Coach – new race distances and harder plans added

Garmin coach was introduced almost a year ago relatively quietly. Even at its launch it offered tantalisingly ‘adaptive’ training plans. Potentially it would re-schedule workouts during your ever-changing week at work and maybe even adapt an individual workout on-the-fly should your run start off either too fast or too slow.

I had a look at the time and partly followed one of the plans to check the sanity fo the recommendations and to see that if it really did adapt to what I was doing…or not doing.

Garmin Coach – Any Good ? Free Adaptive 5K Running Plan

The initial plans on offer seemed somewhat limited, only covering 5k training plans for people performing up to 25:00/5k. I wasn’t all that convinced that the plans were truly adapting either. Clearly, Garmin was never only going to only keep that level of plan and I expected to see over time a gradual increase in race distances covered and ability levels catered for, perhaps even including a triathlon plan or two.

Well that has started to happen (29 April) and here are the headline changes showing the scope of all plans covered

  • Running – Garmin Coach extended to cover new distances of HM and 10k
  • Running – Garmin Coach extended to cover higher ability levels to those running up to 7:00/mi which is approximately 21:00/5k, 42/10k, 1:32:00/HM.
  • Running – Standard (non-adaptive) plans added to cover higher abilities, training up to 7 workouts/week and distances up to Marathon (Levels 1, 2 and 3)
  • Cycling – Standard (non-adaptive) plans to cover Century, Metric Century, Gran Fondo, TT, MTB and ‘Race’  (Levels 1, 2 and 3)
  • Triathlon – Standard (non-adaptive) plans to cover Sprint and Olympic distances. (Level 1 and 2)
  • Supported Models: Initially the GARMIN COACH adaptive plans only worked on Vívoactive 3, Forerunner 645 and Forerunner 935. But the list now includes Fenix 5 (and 5 Plus), Chronos, MARQ, 945, 245 and Forerunner 45/45S

You can access them online through your CONNECT account and they appear to be free. Enjoy ! although having said that perhaps only the GARMIN COACH plans might appear on CONENCT MOBILE

Connect Web

 

One of the great benefits of following these types of plans is that the structured workouts are sent to your watch or bike computer with sufficient instructions to follow the plan through calendar scheduling on your watch and in-workout cues and alerts.

Thanks to: @BrianS, @ColdBeer

More Info: Garmin

 

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23 thoughts on “Garmin Coach – new race distances and harder plans added”

  1. It seems as Garmin Coach is limited to a bunch of devices. With my 735XT, I’ve got just the standard training programs (not Coach, nor adaptive in any way).

  4. I can’t understatng why all Garmin Coach programs have threshold alerts just by peace and cadence and no alerts for heart rate zones. All Garmin devices has setups for heart rate zones and it will be mor usefult make alerts for heart rate zones which are best controling intensity. Like it is in regular garmin’s training programs.

    1. that is a good point
      possibly it could be related to the accuracy (or lack of it) with oHR ??
      possibly that people set incorrect zones and/or that auto zones are often wrong.

    2. I have HR alerts on my 935. I have it set up to auto calculate based on my LT. I find them fantastic. If I am doing a Z4 threshold run or an easier long Z3 then it will tell me if I have entered the zone above or below.

  5. There is a cool new feature in garmin connect where workout planned march the effort done like advanced tp features would do

  7. Are they any third party adaptive training plans that are compatible for upload as scheduled workouts to Garmin devices? I’m looking for an adaptive marathon training program like Garmin Coach for my Forerunner 935. Thanks.

      1. I think I’ll try Training Peaks. It’s not adaptive, but at least it offers a streamlined way to automatically get structured workouts and my performance from the workouts on/off my Garmin watch via their Connect IQ app.

      2. have a quick look at final surge.
        i dont think they do that but might be simialr functionality to TP buit cheaper 😉
        plus they ave interesting stuff coming up i believe

  8. Completed the 5k adaptive plan for fastest available time if 22:00. It was fun, kept the injuries at bay.

    Ran 23.12 on race day with bad splits. Probably am in 22 shape. Pacing was all over the place and I feel the plan would have benefitted from more thresgold runs or eace pace drills to get pacing dialled in.

    (Overweight & returning fitness, younger dats could pace accurately without looking at watch and was in sub-19 shape).

    Probably going to try the more general RED plan from Jack Daniels to get my frequency up, then come back to 5 or 10k training.

  9. My mom is looking to get into running(With zero previous experience), would this program be better than Polar’s Running Program?

      1. Perfect, my train of thought was for her to do something like couch to 5k first, then go for Garmin Coach. Thanks for the response!

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