I was rather nervous of the idea of practicing PFLs on my own for quite some time. But once you start it becomes very much part of the fun. Personally, although it is contrived to pull the throttle yourself, the benefit is learning the procedure and the techniques to judge the glide and increasing your capacity.
I wouldn't recommend adding randomness on your own unless you intend to finish the procedure reasonably high. You really need to ensure you're not going piss anybody off or end up illegal. For me that means having a very good look around first, which is normally only satisfied with a couple of orbits.