Garmin Coach Review

I’ve had a Garmin watch for quite a few years now. Although I’ve upgraded a couple times, I’ve always known there were features I wasn’t fully taking advantage of. I finally decided to look into the Garmin Coach feature that I’d heard about. I assumed you had to pay for it, but surprise surprise, it’s free with compatible devices!

Garmin states that the service is available on these devices:

• vívoactive® 3 series, F
• orerunner® 45 Series,
• Forerunner 245,
• Forerunner 245 Music,
• Forerunner 645,
• Forerunner 645 Music,
• Forerunner 935,
• Forerunner 945,
• fēnix® 5 Series and
• fēnix 5 Plus series 3

There are currently three Garmin Coach training plans to choose from (although they have other standard plants you can select too): Garmin Coach 5K, Garmin Coach 10K, and Garmin Coach Half Marathon.

I chose the 5K plan, and since I could already run 3 miles, albeit not very fast, I decided to set my goal as a time goal rather than simply running a 5K. You can also select between 3 running coaches; Jeff Galloway, Amy Parkerson-Mitchell, and Greg McMilan. There are videos you can watch to learn more about each coach before selecting. I chose Amy, because I know her in real life, and if she found out I chose someone else, I’d probably hear about it :-). You put in your goals, select a coach, and they develop a plan!

I’m honestly not sure how individualized it is, or if it uses stats from your previous runs to change/update your plan. It’s supposed to be adaptive training, but I don’t know the behind the scenes.

Anyway, you get your plan, and you start! I think I started with a 5 minute run, which is probably their way of getting some basic running information about you.

To start a run, all you have to do is select any running activity (treadmill, outdoor run, indoor track, etc.) on your watch and it will ask if you want to start your run. Just hit start and you’re off! Your watch will let you know what you need to do. If you have a warm up it will have a time or distance for that, and then it will buzz you when to start your run, when to cool down, and when your workout is complete.

I’m currently on week 9 of 13, and it’s going well for the most part. It’s been difficult to fit in 4 runs each week, because I really enjoy lifting weights. I also really enjoy mixing up my cardio with rowing, stair master, etc., so it’s been hard to be limited to running only. I did intentionally sign up for this though, so I cant complain too much. I can’t say that I’m loving running, but it’s nice to have a plan set out for me. I can also tell that running is becoming “easier.”

I’ve been fitting it into my schedule, but you can rearrange the runs as needed.

You need to be careful with this though. If you already have a run scheduled for Tuesday and you move another run to that day, you lose the original run. I made this mistake early on, because I thought it would simply move that run as well. It does not. So make sure you adjust accordingly to avoid unintentionally deleting one of your runs.

Your run provides tons of metrics to your coach. How they use this, I’m not entirely sure, but you can read more about it on THIS Garmin Blog Post.

Another cool feature is that there are helpful videos and training tips along with your run stats. We’re talking videos about strength exercises for runners, how to choose the correct running shoes, running form, setting goals, and other helpful tips.

There are a couple things I don’t like, or that I think they could improve upon. One of them is the previously mentioned calendar issue where you can accidentally delete one of your runs instead of it shifting to another day. Another thing that I don’t entire like is, for example, your run starts with a 2 min warmup, which can be a walk or job, continues with a 3 mile run, and then another 2 min cool down. My watch takes an average pace for that entire time, instead of starting when the actual run starts. I find this difficult because I obviously walk at a much slower pace than I’m trying to run. So when I have a goal of running a 9 min mile, but it’s including 2 mins of walking, I may actually be running a 9 min mile, but it’s showing it at 10 mins because it’s an average instead of the pace for that part of the activity. This may not bother anyone else, but it kind of bothers me. I also have issues with running on the treadmill. No matter how many times I calibrate my watch to the treadmill the distance is always off. For example my run this morning was 3 miles, when my treadmill said I was at the 3 mile mark, my watch still said I had almost 0.75 miles to go! When you’re only running 3 miles, being off by 0.5 miles or more makes a crazy difference in your pace and cadence. And obviously, the farther you run, the more discrepancy there is. The program doesn’t seem to be able to accurately deal with this information when you do calibrate your watch after the run. It’s something, in my opinion, that I think Garmin needs to work on.

Overall, I think it’s a really cool feature if you have one of the supported devices. Being free is a pretty nice perk, considering how much one of these devices costs…