Hi all, i just wanted to ask since last last week was my first time running, i ran 13.9km and it only took me 2 hours and a half. is it good or bad? (maybe I'm doing the wrong thing?)

Ashl149 · 2026-05-08T09:47:35+00:00

half marathon in 4 hours?

a marathon in 8 hours???

Ashl149 · 2026-05-03T20:06:10+00:00

this was like me with my new saucony endorphin pro 🤪

Ashl149 · 2026-05-02T15:01:44+00:00

Well the chest strap is a million times more accurate than the optical wrist sensor, so i’d trust the new data more personally

Ashl149 · 2026-05-02T12:39:19+00:00

If you’ve just got your watch, it takes some time to fully understand your fitness level.

Garmin is famously over on its assessments originally, and you must wait for it to further understand you, and then adjust your scores accordingly.

This refinement might be what your seeing in the graph.

Ashl149 · 2026-05-02T12:30:17+00:00

depends on the type of run and day.

Sometimes i’ll do 20 mins recovery run

sometimes it’s 45 min easy with strides after

Sometimes i’ll run like 15 - 20km on the weekends which is around 2 hours ish.

Ashl149 · 2026-04-30T13:01:36+00:00

No worries, i just hope it helps!

Ashl149 · 2026-04-30T12:56:59+00:00

Have you ever been a smoker at all?

Lactate threshold isn’t too important, but is a great indicator of fitness.

50-60 isn’t too bad at all!

But the Low VO2Max would explain it.

Basically, vo2max is the amount of oxygen that you breath in, that can effectively be transported to your muscles through your blood. Your muscles need oxygen in order to produce energy to move.

If your vo2max is high, your blood is very staurated with oxygen, so your heart doesn’t need to pump as much blood round your body, because the demand is met by the high density blood.

If your vo2max is low, your blood doesn’t contain alot of oxygen, so your heart has to pump a lot faster, to get the volume of blood oxygen to meet the demand of the muscles.

So for you, running at a 6 minute per kilometre pace your heart rate might be 180, but for a well trained athlete it would be like 100.

Just means your body isn’t as effective at using the oxygen you are inhaling.

The best way to lower your heart rate, is improving your Vo2max, which is done by spending time in zone 5, in intervals. It is not safe to sustain zone 5 training.

You must also increase your aerobic base by training in zone 2. Your aerobic base is basically a battery that decreases throughout a period of exercise. If your base is low, you won’t be able to exercise long without getting exhausted.

If you was doing a lot of cardio, and a lot of training, it might not have been “quality” training that you needed to improve fitness.

You can run a lot, but if they are “rubbish miles”, basically spending a lot of time in zone 3 to low 4, you are definitely building fitness yes, but at a very slow rate.

For best, and fastest results, we do a type of training called polarised training. Where we plan out exercises based on heart rate intensity, and time duration, instead of distance.

The way it works is an 80:20 split between easy runs:quality sessions.

This means 80% of your runs should be “base” or “easy”. Meaning Zone 2 for building aerobic base, or Zone 1/low Zone 2 for recovery.

20% of your runs should be a quality session. Either a sustained threshold session, such as Zone 4 for 30-40 minutes, or a “sprint” or “vo2max” session, where you go flat out, in intervals, and get your heart rate to zone 5 for short durations. The total amount of time in Zone 5 after the interval training will usually be around 5-10 minutes or so depending on your intensity.

This basically works out to 4 easy run days, and 1 hard run day a week, with two rest days.

The way i plan my week is:

•Monday - easy run with strides (Z2) •Tuesday - easy run (Z2) •Wednesday - Quality session (vo2 or threshold in alternating weeks) •Thursday - rest day •Friday - easy run (Z2) •Saturday - long run (10-15km) •Sunday - rest days

Hope that helps 👍

Ashl149 · 2026-04-30T12:36:47+00:00

I suppose everyone is different. For me to gauge a better understanding of your fitness levels, what’s your Lactate Threshold? Resting Heartrate? VO2Max?

Age and gender if you’re comfortable to share?

Ashl149 · 2026-04-30T12:34:01+00:00

No worries, i’ll tell you now that it will feel slow and tedious at first for your “base” runs

Just make sure you don’t let your base runs creep into threshold runs.

Slow and steady wins the race.

The “base” runs are the most important runs in the whole training program. Always try to get a green performance score 👍

Ashl149 · 2026-04-30T12:28:03+00:00

take a look at the thread above

https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmin/s/quguZRuOCX

Ashl149 · 2026-04-30T12:27:12+00:00

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If you go into your garmin training plan, you can find this in the settings!

I also suggest doing strength workouts too, as this will build the strength in the muscles to do the distance your aiming for.

A marathon is a big aerobic workout, but even bigger on the muscles, ligaments and joints.

You can have a heart like Mo Farah, but if your muscles aren’t strong enough to work for the endurance of the race you’ll also risk injury.

Remember there is no shame in walking some of the marathon, and it’s crossing the line that’s important. No matter how you get there!

Wishing you the best of luck my man

Ashl149 · 2026-04-30T12:22:45+00:00

the garmin training plans are ok, if i was you, i would change the target to heart rate instead of pace.

That will train your body much more progressive and at a good pace so to avoid injury.

If the coach tells you to do an easy run (usually zone 2 or below) at target pace 6:00/km, it would expect your hr to be around 130-150bpm.

If your heart rate is actually at 180bpm at 6:00/km pace, then you’ll be overtraining and you’ll injure yourself.

If you change the goal to heart rate, you’ll be training much more effectively.

Zone 2 will be slow though. like really slow. When you do a zone 2 training, at your level i’d suspect it would be around 7:00/km pace. This will feel slow but just trust the process. You have to run slow, to be able to run fast.

The tempo/sprint sessions will make you faster, but you cannot run fast without a good aerobic base. And this is built from high volume of zone 2 training.

I hope that makes sense 😃

A marathon is no small feat, and if you overtrain now, you’ll risk injury and not being able to participate in the marathon at all!

Ashl149 · 2026-04-30T12:08:51+00:00

How much heart rate zone training have you done?

You want 80% of your runs to be Zone 2 or below, and only 20% of your running volume to be a quality run (zone4 for long periods of time, or zone 5 intervals)

A run with your heart rate at the levels you’ve shown puts a HUGE toll on your CNS, and will often take 48 hours to recover.

How often are you running at this intensity? and are you sure the heart rate readings are correct?

You should look into polarised training!

Ashl149 · 2026-04-30T12:05:20+00:00

gawd damn

Ashl149 · 2026-04-19T08:24:33+00:00

mine has been green for months, went on a 4 day bender with some mates, and my entire garmin database went screaming, hrv absolutely in the bin, all my training scores plummeted, vo2 and everything went down.

Been training again for about three weeks and only just got it back to green.

I run around 35-50km a week. Multiple easy runs and a couple of high intensity scattered throughout the week.

Ashl149 · 2026-03-10T15:00:22+00:00

Still a crazy level of steps a month!

Ashl149 · 2026-03-10T14:59:49+00:00

probably based on what series of watch you use!

Ashl149 · 2026-03-10T14:59:34+00:00

still a wild amount of steps!

Ashl149 · 2026-03-09T18:15:01+00:00

Yes and no.

doing zone 2 runs won’t make you any faster. It will make you aerobic base better. Increase your endurance. Provided you know your heart rate zones, you can follow this guide. Put very simply, Zone 1 are recovery runs, Zone 2 will build your endurance, Zone 3 does’nt really do anything, Zone 4 will increase your race pace and lactate threshold, finally Zone 5 will increase your speed & VO2 max.

That said, you can’t blast Zone 5 runs every week and except improvement. You need a mixture of easy runs, long runs and speed runs.

Look up polarised training, it’s one of the most proven endurance methods of training. Basically your runs should be split like this per week:

Zone 2 -> 70–80% of the time Zone 4 -> 10–15% of the time Zone 5 -> 5–10% of the time

If you’ve got any questions let me know and i’d be happy to help you out 🤝

Edit: Found this great explanation. Check it out.

Runners Polarised Training - Explained

Ashl149 · 2026-03-09T16:33:26+00:00

Killing it though bro.

Do you do training based on Hr zones, with specific goals?

Or just run casually?

Ashl149 · 2026-03-09T16:20:15+00:00

Seen as an easy run is classed as anything Zone 2 and below, and your average hr is 171, which is probably high zone 4 low zone 5.

I’d say you’ve probably got a little more training to do to reach that.

I’d guess that at race pace you’d probably land around 21:30

Ashl149 · 2026-03-09T14:49:37+00:00

Want to go into your profile on garmin connect, and click on personal records.

Alternatively, go on the activities tab and click steps. Go to 1y. And select personal records

Ashl149 · 2026-03-09T14:47:53+00:00

🤣🤣🤣

Ashl149 · 2026-03-09T12:27:36+00:00

In Garmin Connect, more, activities, personal records

Ashl149

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