I first started tracking my runs with apple health, basically carrying my phone in my pocket to measure distance. Back then, I had no weekly mileage targets, or pace goals. Just a curiosity about how far I could run. Eventually, I switched to Strava. I felt a bit of friction around starting and stopping runs on the app, but I loved watching my paces gradually improve month by month.
Eventually I signed up for my first marathon, taking my iPhone in my pocket and first gen airpods that ran out of battery halfway through, but I finished in 3:48. I stuck with the iPhone for a while, but one day I zoomed into the strava map and realized the iPhone’s GPS was unreliable—it added zigzags to my routes, inflating my mileage and making me seem faster than I really was (massive ego bruise). So I went to research accurate GPS watches, and I remember seeing people test them by running straight lines to check for accuracy on a map. The forerunner was the most satisfying straight on the map, and so I bought that in May 2020.
So I’ve had a garmin since May 2020 and still love it. The simple start/stop mechanism has become a ritual for me. I also appreciate the heart rate screen, which shows my zone using colored ranges—it’s what I used to pace myself during races. For example, I’d aim to stay under 160 bpm during half marathons and marathons. With the Forerunner, I brought my time down to 3:11 for the marathon and 1:24 for the half marathon. That’s when I hit an inflection point: I couldn’t improve further without serious training plans.
I tried using Garmin Coach but made the mistake of choosing plans slightly below my fitness level. As a result, I didn’t run enough hard workouts and plateaued. After that, I lost motivation and took a break from running and lost fitness-- my old 130BPM pace became my new 160BPM pace. When I returned, I spent a year trying to regain it. I watched countless YouTube videos and read Reddit threads claiming, "every amateur runs too fast and too few miles." So I focused on high mileage without prioritizing aerobic envelope workouts. My fitness stagnated—my half marathon slowed to 1:27, and my 5K and 10K times didn’t improve. I also psyched myself by overshooting mileage targets, leaving me either sick or over-fatigued on race days.
Eventually, I gave myself permission to run hard again, and my fitness returned. I worked my way back to a 3:02 marathon last year. Now my favorite workflow involves using the VDOT app as my personal coach. I set a weekly mileage target, specify which days I can handle hard workouts, and it generates a detailed plan for me. For example: warm up for 2 miles, run 400m at a target pace of 5:40 with 1-minute rests, and cool down for 2 miles. The garmin integrates as what I call my "buzz coach" through each stage of the workout. Too fast? Buzz. Too slow? Buzz. Next lap? Buzz. The alerts really help with making real-time adjustments. Overall I find this setup eliminates the decision fatigue of training. I used to obsess over pacing, distance goals, and analyzing every bit of my data. Now it feels like I'm just getting outside, running a lot, and having fun with it—and ironically, I've just started improving again.