I have been using the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music for over a year now.

Since training for a race was off the table last year, I decided at the start of 2021 I would train for a personal half-marathon. So looking into the Garmin Coach for a half made sense.

If you have a Garmin that has this feature (currently: D2 Air, Descent MK1, Descent Mk2 series, Enduro series, fenix 5 series, fenix 5 Plus series, fenix 6 series, fenix Chronos, Forerunner 45 / 45S, Forerunner 55, Forerunner 245 series, Forerunner 645 series, Forerunner 745, Forerunner 935, Forerunner 945 and 945 LTE, Instinct series, Legacy Hero series (Captain Marvel, First Avenger), Legacy Saga series (Darth Vader, Rey), MARQ series, quatix 6, tactix Delta series, Venu series, vívoactive 3 series, vivoactive 4 / 4S) you know that you can train for a 5k, a 10k or a half marathon.

I’ve seen talk here and there about Garmin adding a marathon coaching segment, but nothing definitive and no projection of when that could be at this time.

Mostly, I decided to use the Garmin Coach to review it for those of you who have not used it before. If you HAVE used it, let me know how my review compares to your experience.

Setting Up the Garmin Coach:

From the “home” screen on the Garmin Connect App on your phone (keep in mind I’m using the iPhone), you’ll see choices of where to go on the bottom.

Obviously, if we are going to set up the coaching feature we will choose “Garmin Coach” (great tutorial so far, aye):

You can choose to train for a 5K (3.1 miles), a 10K (6.2 miles) or a Half Marathon (13.1 miles).

Let’s choose a 10K. When you select that, there is an overview of the plan.

You will set up plan, after agreeing you’re not going to sue if anything goes wrong.

The App will then ask you a few questions about your running. How many miles per week you run (I don’t run-25 miles or more), what your average pace is (15:00 minute minimum- 6:00 minute max) and then asks you if you want to run with a time goal or just complete the race.

When I set it up for myself, I wanted to complete a half marathon with a time goal, so that is what I selected.

The App will then ask you what you want your goal time to be.

I do not know if selecting just “completion” changes the training at all, but I imagine you may have less speed work included. When you choose “Completion” you go straight to the Coach choices.

I chose Greg McMillan for this post. You can watch the videos from all 3 coach’s to help you decide which plan would be best for you.

You will then pick how many days you want to work out, in this example the choice is 4 or 5. I chose 4.

You then choose which days you are available to run. You obviously have to have at least the number of days checked that you said you could run.

Next, pick the “long run” day. Default is Saturday, but I prefer my long run on Sunday.

The next screen allows you to find a race event or create a personal 10K.

When you click on “Find a Race Event”, the App (powered by Active) will find your location and then try to find a race in your preferred distance in the near(ish) future. 10K’s are actually not that common, at least around here, so I wasn’t surprised to find that there weren’t any available.

The option then goes back to creating a personal one.

Based on the answers you provided in the set up and who your coach is, a suggested day for your personal race appears.

If you prefer a different day, you can hit “Suggested Date” and a calendar will appear to show you dates that would also fall into the plan.

Let’s keep it where it is and go to the next screen.

Check that everything is to your liking (you can hit the pencil icon to edit the information). If it’s all good, create your plan.

Using the Plan

Keep in mind that the day you set up the coaching is the day they want you to begin. You can edit that, but it can be somewhat of a pain and somewhat temperamental…so my advice would be to plan on running your first workout the day you set it up.

The first run is a “Benchmark Run”, which seems to be the same for every coach and distance…Warm Up for 2 minutes, Run Strong for 5 minutes and finish with a Cool Down of 2 minutes.

Based on my answers in the set-up, I would have 3 more runs this week. You can look ahead by clicking on “Workout Schedule”

I did the benchmark run last night to have data to show you. I chose the “Completion” option, instead of a time goal (in the set up) to see what happens when you just want to finish a race.

So you can see that instead of running a certain mileage at a certain pace (what they give you as a run workout if you choose a time goal), you are running for up to 30 minutes.

This first run after the benchmark workout lets you run for 20 minutes and then decide if you want to run the additional 10. This is a great way for a beginner to start their training. I love that they give you the OPTION of running longer, instead of just telling you to do the whole 30 minutes.

Most of us that run can be very Type A, and if the plan says run 30…we will if it kills us. I coach the way this app is working. I give ranges to new runners, like run 2-3 miles or 20-30 minutes…it allows runners to run smarter and gets them in tune to their own bodies faster (from my experience, anyway). It also gives easier “wins”. If you are told to run 3 miles and you can’t, it can be very discouraging. If you are given a range and you only hit 2, you are still meeting the goal.

The next workout in the lineup is Stride Repeats:

When you look at that, you’ll see a much more involved workout.

Notice under “Steps” it says “Other”. Pay attention when the app tells you “Other” and it is a “Lap Button Press”! This was my first pet-peeve with the coaching program.

Lap Button Press: PAY ATTENTION

For some of the speed work you had to push the Lap button (which on my Forerunner 245 Music is the button on the lower right hand side). There were several workouts that I screwed up because I didn’t push the lap button after the warm up. There was one that I had to run a mile as hard as I could and I was over half way through when I realized I was supposed to push the lap button and I didn’t. There is no way to recover what you did, so to the program I was running like a maniac at the end of my Warm Up.

I had to stop, walk to recover and then press the Lap Button to get it to shift to the actual Run. I WAS FURIOUS!

Here is why…it wasn’t just that I forgot. Some of the workouts tell you to push the Lap Button for certain segments and some of them don’t. I wish there was a consistency, but there isn’t. If I had to push the Lap Button every time we switched to a different part of a workout, it would have been my mistake.

Now, it of course was STILL my mistake. I didn’t pay attention to the workout steps and should have read them over before I started to see that “Other”.

Also, keep in mind that the Lap Press to start the Strides is the only one you have to do. I also made the mistake of thinking I had to push that for every Stride for the first time and when I did it went immediately into the Recovery timer.

So, just make sure you always look at the Steps before you start a workout to familiarize yourself with what EXACTLY you will be doing. Believe me, you don’t want to get half way through speed work to find out nothing is being recorded!!

Also, I’ll go over below viewing the workout on your watch…you can see it and it will give you notes on it, but the Lap Button Push is not a part of that review so be sure to look at the notes on a particular workout on the phone app itself before heading out.

Most of your runs will not have a lap button push. The easy runs just have you flow from Warm Up to Run to Cool Down with no requirements for you to do anything but run.

Using the Watch

So of course, the stuff on the phone isn’t going to do you any good. You need to use it on your watch during a run.

However your particular version has you start a workout, you do the same thing using Garmin Coach. Don’t just start the run, though. It usually takes a few seconds, but the workout will pop up on the screen and you have the options of doing the workout, viewing the workout or skipping it.

Here’s video on doing all that, which is easier to see than pictures I think.

When you choose to “Do Workout”, you will need to push the start button just like on a regular run with the watch, so don’t forget to do that…or once again you will be doing the run without any record of it.

Time Goal Coaching Differences

If you decide you want to run with a time goal, your workouts will be set up by mileage and pace. These are based on how you do on the first benchmark run and what your goal race pace is.

There will also be an extra ring on your coaching “home” page in the app that says “Confidence”.

After your workouts, the indicator on the ring will either move to the right or left depending on how confident your “coach” (algorithm) is that you will be able to reach your goal. I talk more about this “Confidence” down below.

When I used Amy Parkerson-Mitchell as a coach for the Half Marathon plan, she had the mileage above the 13.1 for a couple of the long runs. Different coaches have different philosophies on that, so I don’t know if using Jeff Galloway or Greg McMillan would have done that as well.

Because I have run halves before, I didn’t mind going over mileage. If this is your first half and you want your race to be the first time you run that (when I ran my first marathon, I wanted that race to be the first time I ran that distance…so I didn’t train over 23 miles) then I would suggest either not having a time goal, choosing a different coach (although they may go over mileage, too) or just stopping at 11 or 12 miles on the days you should be running more and stopping the workout there.

Other Things to Note

You can skip or reschedule workouts and move them to a day into the future. I tried moving one a day back, since rain was in the forecast, but I wasn’t able to.

To skip or reschedule, go to the screen that shows your next workout and hit the 3 dots in the upper right hand corner (this is in the workout description, not the coaching home page)

You will have the option of rescheduling or removing the workout.

If you reschedule, a calendar will pop up with a colored line…that represents your workout and you can tap on whatever day you want to move that workout to.

You can also remove it altogether.

I was able to juggle some of the workouts by editing the days I was able to run. I have a pretty set running schedule, so I chose only those days for my set-up.

I had to edit the days I had set up to run in order to do that, though.

To edit, click on the 3 dots in the upper right hand corner (again, I am talking about the Forerunner 245 Music, if you have a different Garmin Watch the process may not be the same):

You will have choices…”Edit”, “Pause” and “Quit”

When you hit “Edit”, the information you told the app in the set-up process will pop up and you can choose any of those to change things up.

If you hit the “Pause” button, your training can be stopped for however long you want. This can be useful if you are heading out on vacation, have an injury or just won’t be able to get out for runs for whatever reason.

As you can see, it does give you a warning.

The “Quit” button is to quit the whole thing and stop training.

My Personal Thoughts on Using Garmin Coach

While I enjoyed using the Garmin Coach feature, there were some things that I wish were different.

Some things are just a personal preference on how I like to train.

My Way vs. Garmin’s Way

I am someone who craves variety. I like different types of runs and different kinds of speed work.

There was 1 speed work session per week, and 1 long run along with 3 other days of “easy” runs.

That is fine, it fits in with how I train. No more than 2 “stressful” runs in a week of 5 total workouts.

Every week or 2 there was a Time Test run, when I had to warm up, run a mile and then cool down. That was fine, I assume it is to tweak the workouts.

The other type of speed workout was speed repeats. The variation was the number of times and the duration of the runs. For example, warm up- 7 speed repeats of running at a 7:23-7:53 pace for 1.5 minutes; recovery for 1.5 minutes- cool down.

Some weeks I had to do 10 repeats of 30 seconds on/30 off. The hardest were 8×3 minutes of 7:23-7:53.

What never changed was the pace I had to do the “working” part of the run. I had assumed that the pace (7:23-7:53) would adapt to what the watch was gleaning from the runs I was doing, but it never did. No matter how fast or slow I did other runs, the pace never changed.

In fact, the pace never changed for ANY of the runs. Maybe this had to do with the fact that I selected a certain time I wanted to finish the 13.1 miles at the end? Not sure.

My Confidence Ring didn’t seem to change with pace, either. Some weeks I was killing the runs and running the easy or long runs way too fast. Some weeks were tough in the middle of winter to just get down the street without falling on the ice, so I was a lot slower than the easy pace. The Confidence Ring only seemed to move if I didn’t get every workout in during the week.

That doesn’t seem very life-like. There are going to be times that running 5 times every single week is not going to happen. I would think the “confidence” of whether I can finish the half in the time I want would be based more on the paces I am running, instead of did I run 30 miles this week or 26.

I’m also used to running my long runs a tad slower (more of a range) than my easy runs. The long run was the same pace as the easy (both were the same range), so my need for variety there was also nonexistent. During training for either a half or a full, I also am used to running some of those long runs with a section in the middle going at “race pace”. That was never included. So the pace I actually needed to run for the race was NEVER part of any of the training. I suck at pacing, so having some mileage at race pace would have allowed me to try and “feel” what the pace was going to be.

My (Also Personal) Annoyances with the Plan

I know a watch that is for the masses can only do so much, and can only adapt to algorithms that aren’t too complicated. I also realize that the coaching is free with the watch. Let me say that at the outset.

Still. I wish there was a way to give a bit more information after a run when answering the question “How was the run?” (which they ask after every workout to gauge how easy or hard you felt that particulate run was). There were days that I had to answer “hard” because I was running through 5 inches of snow and ice on sidewalks that hadn’t been shoveled. So my pace on some of those runs were really slow.

I shouldn’t be too upset at that, though, because like I said above…pace didn’t seem to matter. I never got “dinged” for having a “hard” run so its more my ego of thinking “yeah, I was slow today, but…”

That also annoyed me, though, because why ask the question if it makes no difference in the training. The program says it “adapts”, but I honestly never had anything adapt. Everything stayed the same the whole 18 weeks. So even if every run had been marked “very easy”, I still would have had the same mileage/same pace/same workouts.

Another thing that was more weird than annoying…

For some reason the “regular” part of the watch would mark me as having run a mile before I even got out of my driveway.

The workout for the training marked everything right, so it didn’t affect that. But when I would hit a mile and could see that on the training face, it would then switch to the “regular” run face and show that I had run 2.

This is probably very confusing to those of you who have never used the coach feature before! When you are using the coach, there is a different watch face that tracks your workouts than what is usually showing for runs that you are just going out the door for with no training plan.

The watch will show you the “regular” non-training face for a few seconds after you hit each mile (switching from the training watch face).

This could be confusing if someone looked down during those few seconds and saw “Oh, I just finished mile 8”. The reality would have been they only ran 7.

The map for the run also showed an extra mile. I never figured out what the heck was happening, and I searched for the problem online and no one but me seems to have ever had this issue…but that is pretty normal for my life, lol.

I also felt like the training based everything on the fact that whatever distance you were going to run, it was your first time. I was really surprised the first few weeks at the low mileage after I had answered the question of how many miles do you run with “25 miles or more”. I expected to be starting around where I was, instead of the little amount I was told to run.

The other thing that is kind of ridiculous is there is a great tool on the watch that you can input your race strategy and have a “pacer” tell you what each mile should be based on your finishing goal and whether you want to negative or positive split.

You can’t use this tool (PacePro) if you are using the watch for a race at the end of the coaching program. It’s really…well, sorry, the only word I can think of is DUMB.

I mean, you COULD use it if you didn’t care if the race was recorded in the coaching section I suppose. But, I can’t imagine doing all that training and then not showing it as completed…because you can not manually input any runs into the coaching. If you don’t run the run in the “Do Workout” section as part of the coaching, it won’t show that you did the run.

Now for the REALLY, REALLY Annoying part

When I started training, we were still under Covid restrictions and races were starting but not guaranteeing they were going to be in person. I never got into the virtual racing, it just didn’t fit in with my personality.

Without a real race to participate in, I chose to have a personal half marathon race and chose an arbitrary day in May.

As I was approaching that day, I had to be out of town and tried to change my race day.

It looked like it worked. I had scheduled it for 2 days later, knowing that scheduling it before the original day probably wouldn’t work and might screw stuff up.

WELL. It was on the schedule and then suddenly it was just…GONE.

Nowhere on the schedule.

I went to the Garmin Connect website on my computer and looked for it. It was there, it had been re-scheduled to the day I wanted. But it was nowhere on the phone app, and no matter how many times I tried to sync or refresh, it was just gone.

I was hoping the day would come and I would see it come up on my watch when I went to run, but nope…it was gone for good.

SO SO disappointing. If it wasn’t showing up on the website, I would have thought I accidentally deleted it. I would have still been annoyed that I couldn’t seem to have gotten it back, but I would have chalked it up to user error.

It was just totally demoralizing to have that happen after 18 weeks of training. Demoralizing enough, that I didn’t run the half (remember, though, this was a “fake” one, I didn’t just not show up to an actual race).

I know, I know…I could have sucked it up and run the 13.1 on my own (and I would have been free to use the PacePro) and whatever. But I was so stinkin’ mad, I just couldn’t do it. That is definitely on me. I’m 53 years old, and didn’t have to act like an 8 year old!

But…it was still very annoying and hopefully that little glitch doesn’t happen too often to many runners. I get that most races have a specific date, so most (?) runners aren’t going to want to change the actual race. If re-scheduling it is such a problem, though, don’t give us the option of doing a personal race when we may need to re-schedule something that is 3 or 4 months in the future.

Ok, So What Did I Like?

I do like the fact that I can go out the door and have a plan. The fact that it is integrated in something I already use on every run is definitely a plus.

Despite the fact that I wish the pacing would change based on what my running fitness is from week to week, I do enjoy having the notifications that I was running too fast or too slow. As I’ve said before in this post (and all over the place, really) I honestly do suck at pacing. Having my watch nudge me was great.

When re-scheduling actually worked, it was wonderful. Enough said.

Having a plan is something that I need. I find it hard to just get up in the morning and head out the door if I don’t have something to check off. The fact that my watch and phone are telling me what to do and when feeds that need.

I think for a new runner, starting with Jeff Galloway’s Run/Walk/Run™ approach and going for a 5K would be really cool. The downside is how many brand new runners are going to go out and buy a running watch for a couple hundred dollars to learn to run. I’m sure there are those who do, but I don’t see that as something a large percentage would be on board with.

I absolutely LOVED the speed drill of 10×30 seconds run/30 seconds recovery. It was a lot of fun. That workout had me really stretching my idea of what I could do because the intervals were so short. I will definitely incorporate that into whatever training I do.

Will I Use this Feature Again??

I think so.

Despite the annoying aspects of the plan, bottom line is I think it could really help runners reach their goals. There are videos from the coaches sprinkled in the training that are quick, but educational.

My goal as a runner is to always have enough running fitness in me (and mileage) that I could sign up for a half marathon race that is scheduled for the following week and be able to run it.

In order to do that, I have to keep up with putting in the miles and adding in the speed work and longer runs.

Since I have 2 more coaches to “experience”, I will probably do Greg McMillan’s half plan next and see how it differs from Amy Parkerson-Mitchell.

And then report back!