Sunday Runday
In this weekly column, Wearables Editor Michael Hicks discusses the world of running watches, fitness apps, and training trends, in his quest to get faster and more fit.
Many running watches offer marathon training plans. Now that I’m signed up for the Garmin Tucson marathon in November, just three months out, I have to decide quickly which plan to try. Should I trust a smartwatch algorithm to give me a personalized marathon training plan, or use a running coach plan from TrainingPeaks?
It’s been a few years since I last ran a marathon. When Garmin offered a media invite to run in its first Garmin Marathon series, I knew I’d have to ramp up my mileage quickly, but intelligently, so I don’t overtrain and crash out.
I’ve reviewed pretty much every running watch under the sun, but whether I use my Garmin Forerunner 970 or another device, my success or failure will depend on the workout plan, more than the hardware.
So I decided to sit down and compare every smartwatch marathon training plan, to see which would best prepare me for the Garmin marathon series.
Every smartwatch-based marathon training plan for beginners
Very few smartwatches recommend long-term training plans. Suunto outsources its plans to TrainingPeaks. Fitbit offers daily Run Coach recs, but nothing cohesive. Apple Fitness+ focuses on indoor workouts. I only know of a few running watches with proper marathon guidance!
GARMIN: Available through Run Coach, Garmin’s marathon training plans last 16 weeks. The beginner plan has zone-2 easy runs, zone-4 threshold pace runs, and fartlek runs, with one long run every weekend.
Between three weekly runs, Garmin recommends two cross-training days per week, for bodyweight exercises, yoga, swimming, or cycling.
The intermediate plan expects five workouts per week, but isn’t that different. It recommends weekly intervals and has more back-to-back run days, plus longer long runs, but still mixes in rest and cross-training days.
Garmin’s training load philosophy emphasizes low aerobic and anaerobic variety to improve VO2 Max, plus strength training to optimize your form. I’m normally all about this philosophy, but frankly, if I’m going to increase my workout days per week and hit my marathon target, I need to spend most of my time focused on mileage. Next marathon, I’ll worry about speed and power.
COROS: COROS has 15 marathon training plans, targeting specific finish times or 12-to-20-week schedules. Many target pro runners that hit 50–100 miles per week, but COROS also caters to mere mortals like myself.
COROS’ 4-hour, 12-week plan expects you to run five times per week for 25–40 miles. Most are short aerobic endurance runs, with the occasional “marathon pace” run and long, fast runs on Sundays.
This 4:00 marathon pace plan, conversely, schedules four runs per week for 15–25 miles. But nearly every run has you mixing easy pacing with 15-second strides or 400m pickups, eventually progressing to intervals and inverted pyramids. You get more rest days, but rarely take an easy run.
Either way, COROS emphasizes mileage over cross-training, letting you decide if you want to focus on speed work or how far you’re willing to go per week. I’m pretty impressed with what they have to offer.
POLAR: The Polar running program has you input how many days per week you’re willing to run and how long, plus how hard you typically find running. It then creates a 100-day marathon training plan.
If you’re a Light runner, Polar has you do a medium run every Monday and Friday, intervals on Wednesdays, and a long run on Sunday. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are reserved for cross-training: Strength, mobility, and core exercises, respectively.
If you’re a Strenuous runner, you swap in a tempo run on Wednesdays and intervals on Saturdays, meaning you’re doing three medium-to-hard runs in a row from Friday to Sunday. You still don’t get rest days, only cross-training exercise days. Either way, these rigid plans are for people who work out every day.
SAMSUNG: The Galaxy Watch 8‘s Running Coach has ten training levels; Level 10 aims for runners to finish a marathon in under 4:48. To qualify for level 10, you need to pass Samsung’s 12-minute running test with unknown criteria.
The Running Coach beta is kind of a mess. You can’t simply choose a marathon training plan; if Samsung ranks you lower, you’ll have to spend weeks, if not months, leveling up. But if Samsung eventually lets runners pick their target distance and pace manually, however, the Running Coach has a great variety of run types like Fartlek, repetitions, intervals, and long runs that would benefit beginner marathoners.
AMAZFIT: Zepp Coach has you choose a target marathon pace and date, then describe your weekly mileage and average pace. With that, it generates a three-month program of easy, hard, interval, fartlek, and long runs, grouped by HR zones or pace depending on your preference.
It’s not the most comprehensive or varied training plan, but it’s available for super-cheap watches like the Amazfit Bip 6 or Active 2, which is great for frugal runners.
Which marathon training plan I’m going with
All of these marathon training plans are “free” after you buy your watch, so we can’t complain too much if they’re a bit limited. You can find thousands of TrainingPeaks marathon plans if you want to pay for something better.
Personally, after all that searching, I’m leaning toward a straightforward Hal Higdon novice training plan, which are popular with first-time marathoners. Rather than focus on complicated speedwork or strengthwork, I’ll just check off four runs a week of about 20–30 miles and hope for the best.
I’m a few weeks behind his 18-week schedule, but I’m hoping I can hit the ground running, so to speak, because I’ve already been training. Then, once I’ve conquered this Garmin marathon, I can go into another marathon with a more advanced plan.
But if you have a favorite marathon training plan that helped you hit a PR, I’d love to hear your recommendations in the comments!
