One of my running goals for 2019 was to get my Winchester parkrun time below 25 minutes.
At the start of 2019 my PB stood at 27:40 and by the end of May it was down to 26:42 which, while an improvement, didn't fill me with confidence that at the current rate of progress I'd get below 25.
One of the features available to me through the Garmin app was to set up a Training Plan with a virtual coach. On 12th June I duly embarked on a plan with a goal of achieving a 25 minute 5k run on 28th September. "Amy" was my virtual coach - whilst she is a real person and I got to watch various videos of advice that she provides, clearly it is a system rather than her that was adapting the training plan as I went along, hence the "".
The first workout was a benchmark to see where I was ...
Over the following weeks "Amy" provided me with a varied training plan, some longer steady runs, some shorter faster ones, speed repeats, tempo runs, even a hill climb session one week.
I stuck with the plan, pretty much completing all of the assigned runs. I could feel some improvement but nothing dramatic happened through June and July, no change to my Winchester parkrun PB.
As part of the details of my training plan in the app there was a rating that showed how confident "Amy" was that I'd reach my goal - I have to say that for a couple of months she was a good deal more confident than I was, with the display showing that I was likely to meet my goal even though I wasn't feeling a dramatic improvement. As an aside it's interesting to reflect on the amount of reassurance that I took from that vote of confidence in me - even be it from a system. Also amused that even knowing it was a system tracking me I kind of didn't want to let "Amy" down... I'm sure there's a good psychological reason why but it feels odd.
August was a bit of a breakthrough month when things seemed to click into place, and I guess the accumulated training over the previous weeks started to take effect.
My fastest ever 1km time dropped to 4:44 and then 4:38
My best ever 10km time dropped to an hour, then 59 mins, then 55:31
... and August 24th saw my Winchester PB drop to 25:55 a definite step in the right direction...
Whilst August was definitely the breakthrough month improvements continued in September when I managed to achieve my sub 25 min goal with a time of 24:22 on 7th September and clocked in at 24:28 (time from parkrun ) on the official last day of the training plan, proving achieving sub 25 time wasn't a fluke ! .....
... I should note here that Amy's plan, unsurprisingly, tapered strongly over the last 2 weeks leading up to its conclusion on 28th Sept. I however snuck in my first ever half marathon (and a hilly one at that) on Sunday 22nd, the weekend before .... please don't tell her !
Looking back over the past few months I'm actually rather surprised at just how much progress I've been able to make and the difference that following a structured training plan has made.
Will take a few weeks off from being told what to do and just do some runs that I fancy ( including next weekend my first marathon relay race and the Great South Run later in the month ).
Come November I'll definitely be having a think about what the next goal should be and looking out for a new plan to follow and see what results I can achieve.
