It’s a personal preference. For me, I only buy shorts without liners and wear my own from Saxx. I tried a bunch of different built in options about 15 years ago and ran into uncomfortable compression or chaffing issues.

Unless you’re at a pretty high level, I’d start with the free plans Garmin offers with their watches. Someone else already mentioned it, but it’s the daily suggested workouts.

If you don’t have a Garmin watch, then you can buy some nice programs through training peaks that displays through their calendar and can sync with pretty much any fitness watch. I think runners world has a handful of their programs on there for like 20 or so dollars.

I’ve seen a lot of people talk about an app called Runna recent that’s suppose to do your programming for you. Haven’t used it, but if it does what it says on the box, that also may be a good option. Runna is an ongoing subscription though.

Welcome back to running!

I’m going to suggest something that I don’t see anyone else talking about here. Synology, the company mostly known for the NAS devices, makes some surprisingly good routers as well. I’ve got 2 of their RT2600ac and 3 of their MR220AC mesh units. Their configuration software is unlike anything I’ve used by any other brand. It a web based interface that looks like a variant of desktop linux. Configuring it feels like configuring an actual computer.

I had originally purchased these for my business, an esports center, but after the business closed a few years ago I kept the hardware and used them in my home. They are so much better than any other consumer networking hardware I’ve tried from DLink, Linksys, and Asus.

They have newer models out that support AX wifi. But I haven’t felt the need to upgrade yet. A few notes though. Their hardware does not necessarily support every cutting edge feature. No wifi 7 as far as I know for instance. They seem to sit about 2-3 years behind the absolute latest, but the trade off seems to be stability and reliability.

In my home, I have every unit physically hardwired back to my server rack in my basement. So while it does support mesh over wifi, I’ve opted to run ethernet to every room in my house. My general rule is anything that can be wired, should be wired. We even have a disconnected shed/workshop which I trenched and buried a cable out to so that I’d have a wired access point out there.

I rarely see anyone mention Synology’s routers, but I think they are worth consideration.