Last year I bought a Garmin fitness watch which has lots of fancy features: heart-rate monitoring, stress tracking, GPS, even wi-fi! It's designed for fitness enthusiasts, which I am not, but the watch fulfilled my nerdy data-tracking desires. Whenever I go on hikes or bike rides, I use the watch to track my workout.
Earlier this year, in July, Garmin emailed me about a new program called Garmin Coach, which is a free 5K training program. Garmin partnered with 3 different running coaches. You pick a coach, choose a goal, and then get a custom 8-12 week training program that adapts to your progress. Your workouts auto-download to your watch, which guides you during your run. Afterwards, the watch uploads the data from your run to Garmin, which feeds into determining what your next workout should be. It sounded cool, but there wasn't much detail about how the coach was involved. Was the coach I selected going to personally monitor my progress? Would I get direct feedback from him? I wasn't sure, so I signed up just to find out how it worked.
For my coach, I chose Greg McMillan, a physiologist and Olympic running coach. For a goal, I chose to just run an entire 5K, with no specific time goal. The sign-up form said I would be more motivated if I ran an actual 5K event at the end of the program. There was a handy search feature to find 5K events near me being held in 8-12 weeks. After some thought, I saw the wisdom in that advice, so I signed up for a 5K: it's called "Race for Open Space" and is sponsored by our local conservation district. It's held at the end of September.
Ever since then, I've been following my workout schedule (3 runs per week). I quickly discovered that I don't get direct feedback from the coach (this is a free program after all), but after most runs, I do get an article or video from the coach with general running tips.
I'm now 8 weeks into my 12 week program and I've had 3 significant milestones recently:
The first is that a couple of weeks ago I upgraded my running attire. Instead of a shirt and shorts made of cotton, I'm now using lightweight, moisture-wicking fabric. These are very noticeably lighter, and I'm not so soaked in sweat as I was with cotton. That is very welcome.
The second is that a week and a half ago I went on a "preview run" of the 5K. This was an event held by the conservation district. Two instructors provided some tips and after a brief warm up, we went out and alternated between walking and jogging the 5K trail. There were several good things about this:
- The 5K is on a trail that I didn't even know existed. So now I have an idea of what it will be like on race day and what the topography is like.
- Some of the running tips were helpful. All of the training I've done so far is on the road; the 5K is on a trail and trail running is quite different. As the instructors pointed out, you need to spend most of the time looking down when trail running, watching out for rocks, tree roots, etc. Also, your pace will be slower than road running. Expect your pace to be about a minute slower on the trail, they said. These were good things to know!
- The trail is on one of the conservation district's sites and is very scenic. The preview run was in the evening, and the moon was already up. Before leaving, I took this photo:
Finally, the last milestone I achieved recently is that during a workout this past Wednesday, I ran 5K! The workout had me run for 40 minutes (longer than any runs up to that point). After 38 minutes, I had gone 5K. I think it helped greatly that the weather cooled off that day; it was in the upper 60s during my run with low humidity. Regardless, it seems I'm easily on track to meet my goal on race day!