Garmin Coach Half Marathon – Week 9

Week 9 of my half marathon plan with Garmin Coach was hot and sweaty. I live in the Netherlands which reached record breaking high temperatures this past week going up to around 40°C for three days straight. I run in the early mornings, but they were a lot warmer as usual as well! I’m kind of relieved I agreed with my physical therapist that I would be running maximum 8 km per run and only three days a week instead of my usual four workouts a week. Still no speed work either. This is all meant to ease the pain in my foot and hopefully ensure I can start fully training again soon. With only 11 weeks to go and many training runs that are not going according to my expectations (or my virtual coach’s), I’m slowly getting nervous about finishing my half marathon. 

Training 28 – Tired run

Today is the first day with extreme temperatures in the forecast (+40°C), so I made sure I was out the door by 6:00 and stayed in the shade of the trees. It was really quiet outside and the sunrise was giving me some beautiful views. Coach Amy’s tired runs have no pace goal and are meant to be ran as easy as necessary. I simply enjoyed being out, took lots of walk breaks and ran 5,3K with an average pace of 9:21 min/km. Definitely slower as normal, but check out the view!

Training 29 – Cadence drills

Since I’m not supposed to do any speed work and need to skip one workout a week anyway, I decided to skip the cadence drills. I am definitely missing the speed work, but I know the pain in my foot will worsen if I do it. 

Training 30 – Easy run

Friday morning and I’m out by 6:00 again. After three days of approximately 40°C temperatures inside my house have reached about 30°C and at 6:00 in the morning it was only slightly cooler outside: 26°C. This will be fun. I brought a 0,5L soft-flask water with me in my Flipbelt and decided to just see what will be possible today. I ran/walked the trails, stopped to watch the sunrise and I finally got a decent picture of a deer. Looking at the picture now, there were even two of them!

When I noticed my water was nearly half empty, I turned around and made my way back home. I ran 5K with an average pace of 9:48 min/km, which is definitely one of my slowest runs in a very long time. My physical therapist can be satisfied. 

Training 31 – Negative splits

After last week’s failed negative split run, Coach Amy was giving me another chance. I’m not entirely sure what she wanted me to run and unfortunately, it’s not possible to review your workout steps after you’ve completed the workout. At least, not if you didn’t fully complete it. Especially with the workouts with goal paces it would be nice to be able to see the pace range you should’ve been aiming for as well as the different intervals. 

This week’s negative split run was supposed to be shorter as last week which was 14,5 km. I think this week’s run was meant to be a little below 10 km, but this would be going against the advice of my physical therapist. I decided to do a round of about 7-8 km. 

After this week’s insane heat wave, the weekend has been full of rain, thunderstorms and cooler, very welcome cooler temperatures. When I went out for my run it was about 19°C and raining lightly. I love running in the rain and was really looking forward to a nice and cool run. It was wet, is was muddy and it was awesome. My foot was not entirely happy with this run and neither was Coach Amy. Since my round turned out to be 7,5 km and there were no negative splits to be recognized, Coach Amy told me I had “room to grow”. Well yeah, I knew that. 

Summary
Since I was slowing down this week, it feels like I’m making zero progress. My foot is also not getting magically fixed through this rest period. It’s still 11 weeks until my first half marathon, but this is not how I imagined my training would look like. I know I could be making so much more progress and I could be enjoying the training a lot more. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case right now. I just hope my foot will heal in time. 
  
 

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