Big changes to Garmin Cycling Plans

We have some big additions to Garmin’s cycling training plans, almost certainly these are for the Edge 1050 which I expect to be released tomorrow (25 Jun).

Latest: Garmin Fenix 8 and Fenix “E” Leaked

The new plans cover target distances and target race types plus possible tweaks to existing adaptive training. #Cool

Source: @JohnW, thank you!

Century Plan

A Century Ride is usually one that covers 100 miles in one day.

Garmin is about to introduce a fixed Century training plan. It’s not adaptive in any way and progressively increases your training efforts in terms of speed, power and distance.

Problems and Benefits: I did a Double-Century ride over the weekend and effectively did less training than I’d normally do for a Century ride. I was certainly a finisher rather than competing for anything, however, the point is that once you can do these sorts of distances (100 miles) it’s not that much more difficult to complete significantly greater distances.

That said, if your goal is to RACE over 100 miles then I would guess that this sort of plan might be lacking somewhat. I take the example of ride London which is a closed-road 100-mile ‘race’. Even someone like me can ‘easily’ do this in well under four and a half hours. However, that’s only possible for me if I have the bike ‘skills’ to stay in a group and that involves being able to sustain quite significant bursts in speed to stay with groups and take my turn on the front rather than simply maintaining a constant effort for the duration as you might aim for in an Ironman.

My guess is that Garmin’s Century Plan does not cover the ‘race’ type of century where you need repeated bursts of effort. From bitter experience, just training for the distance will lead to abject and painful failure if you try to race only on your endurance abilities! However, Garmin seems to have you covered for shorter, faster distances as we will see in the next sections…

Cyclocross Plans, Crits and more

Perhaps Garmin is addressing the concern I raised in the previous section as other types of cycling plans are also included which combine speed changes and endurance. Cyclocross and Criteriums will both get specific plans.

MTB-focussed workouts are also added for the former, as appropriate.

Metric Century Plan

A metric century is 60 miles/100 km. If you ride regularly that’s…err…a Sunday ride?

This plan is also not adaptive.

Time Trial

The time trial plan is rumoured by Garmin to also include ‘expert-approved’ training. The implication is that the other plans aren’t approved by experts?!? 🙂

Triathlon-Cycling Plans

I don’t have the full details here. I was hoping to see a fully adaptive triathlon training plan. But that’s a hard ask, although Garmin seems to be edging toward it.

Anyway, something is brewing in changes to adaptive cycling plans that also accommodate running. The training adaptation component of the plan is slated to include fitness, training load, recovery, sleep and jet lag.

Take Out

These plans seem impressive at first glance. However most appear to be non-adaptive, so probably not especially difficult for Garmin to add.

It’s still great Garmin has innovated here and gives riders of all types and abilities hope of more to come.