Week 7 of my half marathon plan with Garmin Coach, only 13 weeks till my first half marathon! Eindhoven, I’m coming! This week I am back on track, no skipped runs, no extreme disappointment. Just me and Coach Greg, training.
Training 20 – Progression run
First training of the new week is a short progression run. First 30 minutes at easy pace (8:00 – 8:38 min/km), then 10 minutes at goal pace (7:17 – 7:29 min/km). I ran the first part at an average pace of 8:31 min/km and the second part at 6:47 min/km. The second part was definitely a too fast, but I felt like I could hold the pace, so why not?
Training 21 – Goal pace run
Training 22 – Easy run
Training 23 – Long easy run
My revanche on last week’s long run. Coach Greg seemed to agree that my 2 hour run last week was not up to his standards and he simply put it on my schedule again. I was happy to get a new try and was sure I would do better. I tweaked last week’s route a little bit in the hope that there would be less sandy roads. Last week I create my route through Garmin Courses with the setting trail running, today I made a new route but set it to running.
I had a plan when I started this long run, I would start slowly at a pace of 9:00 min/km and slowly increase the pace, but keep it at an easy, sustainable pace. This was going really well until about 45 minutes into my run and my watch started beeping that I had a left turn coming up. I instantly knew I could throw my plan out the window. This path looked more like a beach then anything else. The sand was horribly soft and the beachy path was way longer as I thought it would be, but I managed. The last 5-6K of my route was exactly the same as it was last week and it was really nice to realize that I wasn’t struggling so hard on these paths as I was last week. I definitely enjoyed this run a lot more!
In the graph below you can see how my pace and heart rate are slowly increasing up until that left turn after which you still see my heart rate slowly increasing, but my pace is slowly decreasing.
My foot pain was still lingering, but it wasn’t bothering me too much until I stopped running and walked home. I iced it and it feels fine now. Maybe ice is the magic solution?

Summary

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.