Garmin Scales

Grumpy_chap

Well, the excesses of Christmas have seen me add some extra pounds (sadly not in the bank) and record my slowest ever Parkrun.

I realised, though, that I have got my Parkrun under the next minute threshold each year that I have been doing Parkrun so that sets an aim to get under another minute threshold this year.  It means 46 seconds to be trimmed which is quite a lot of a minute to improve by.  I hope that age does not defeat me.

For the coming month, if I can consolidate back to a normal time I guess that will be a stabilising launch for the year and my next Half in March.

Grumpy_chap

This has been a challenging month to start the year, especially with the weather making some runs really rather miserable events.

I have stuck with the Garmin Coach Plan for the half that I am doing at the beginning of March and my 5k times have turned the corner and started to get back towards where they were at the peak last year (though still 2 minutes away). Hopefully, if I have faith and stick with the plan I will manage to get that PB for the half in March. If I do not, I have booked onto another half in May.

If I do get the PB in the half, I might focus on faster 5k times.

I am also tempted to try a HYROX, which I'd aim for a target of 90 minutes.

Grumpy_chap

Another challenging month with the weather making runs really rather an effort at times. It has been very difficult to gauge progress as some runs have been more of a Tough Mudder than a run - even some of the ParkRuns have been horrific courses.

Anyway, I have kept with the Garmin Coach Plan. Some of the sessions in that were particularly rigorous endeavours, still I only had three "room to grow" reports and all the others hit "good job" over 3 runs per week for 18 weeks. The confidence score is lower than it has been but still in the green zone, and my VO2 max has started to climb again for the last four weeks.

One thing I noticed about the Garmin Coach Plan is it seems to only look at specific activity within the plan to assess progress whereas the Strava / Runna plans seem to look at all activity. My Garmin forecast time is 2 minutes slower than the target time I would like to achieve - to be fair, either would be a big improvement in PB, but to be 2 minutes (500 m) behind a target time would be almost painful.

Maybe it has all worked. Maybe I'll get a PB on Sunday.

Maybe, if not, I'll realise the sun has come out and turn my efforts to "beach body ready" :)

Grumpy_chap

So, I had some parts of the coach plan that I could not see the benefit of, but I ran the HM and achieved my third consecutive HM PB which was a very pleasing result. Compared to previous successes, this ran actually felt good, evenly paced and included within was my 10-mile PB and my best 5k time of the year so far.

Following the HM, I was flagging so reduced volume a bit but now my Parkrun time has turned the corner. Not sure how this Easter weekend will impact results as we are on a break and diet might slip but next week is a formal 10-mile event.

Grumpy_chap

Rather sluggish through April, but pleased with my Parkrun time this weekend. I thought the 10-mile at the start of March was slow but Strava helpfully tells me that was my third fastest 10-mile ever, so not all bad.

Another half next weekend - I am not expecting such a good time as the beginning of March delivered.

Grumpy_chap

The half at the beginning of May turned out rather better than expected - I did not push hard and still got my third best ever time. I have been a bit variable but trending better so that is a good thing. Hoping to push for a PB Parkrun some time this month - there are a couple of events that will help and the weather starting to look favourable.