Garmin Coach Half Marathon – Week 14

Week 14 of my half marathon training with Garmin Coach was short, hot and in a foreign country. I love exploring new routes, but the temperature difference definitely adds an extra challenge. This week’s part of the training plan was done in Croatia.

I may have mentioned this briefly before, but the workouts that Garmin Coach is providing me have been on repeat for several weeks now. I get four different workouts a week, but each week is the same as the last. It seems to be a bug in my Garmin Coach plan and despite several contacts with Garmin there is no solution yet. I know more people have the same issue, so if it sounds familiar: contact Garmin!

Training 48 – Tired run

I didn’t want to reintroduce four runs a week during my holidays, so I skipped the tired run. Hopefully I can try this next week again.

Training 49 – Easy run

Today is just a short easy run. I was out the door by 6:00 in the morning and it was already 24°C, so I knew this was going to be a slow run. I picked a route that connected two different campsites together through a boulevard by the beach. The beaches in Croatia are mostly made of small stones which makes it a bit uncomfortable to run on. This route provided a mostly nicely paved road with some beautiful views. My pace was extra slow and I definitely used on of the many beach showers along the way but I managed 4K at an average pace of 9:07 min/km.

Training 50 – Speed repeats

I am usually an early morning runner, but late nights with cocktails and/or wine made an early run a little less interesting. After two days of not running I got restless and put my running shoes on after a long, but fun day at 21:45 in the evening. I haven’t run at the end of the day in years so I had no clue what to expect.

I thought it would be fun to change up the always repeating 30 second speed repeats and turn them into hill repeats. 30 seconds fast up the hill and then slowly back down. The problem with this plan was that I was covering more ground in the 30 seconds uphill as I was in the 30 seconds downhill, so after a few repeats I ended up on top of my chosen hill and had to get a little more creative. I think I managed pretty well, but damn this was hard! It was kinda fun seeing all the people struggling to walk up the hill after dinner at the beach, back up to their accommodations. And me in the middle running up and down the hill. I must’ve been entertaining for them too.

Training 51 – Run

Usually I do my long runs on Sunday, but this Sunday I was flying back home. If everything had gone according to plan I would be home on Sunday at midnight. That meant I could get in a 10K run on Monday before going back to work on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the 1:30 hour flight home didn’t go as planned and we ended up home on Monday morning at 6:00 having slept about 30 minutes in the plane. I did not feel like a 10K run would be anywhere near possible, so I went to bed, did a little laundry and some grocery shopping and felt really bad about skipping my long run (again!), but I didn’t run.

Summary

So, while I am happy that I got a few runs in during my holiday, but I would’ve been more happy if I had managed my long run as well. With six weeks to go, I’ll need to step up my training soon.

No confidence level this week as I’m writing this about a week too late and I didn’t take a screenshot in time. But, as I mentioned last week already, it’s still increasing which seems to be related to the bug so I’m not taking it too seriously anymore.

Read how I did last week on the Garmin Coach half marathon plan or start from the beginning at week 1 of my half marathon training.

My Runner's Life