How your training plan is built
Runners are rightfully sceptical of AI. Here's exactly what goes into every plan — the inputs, the science, and the checks — so you can decide if it's worth trusting.
What information goes in
Before generating a single workout, the plan needs to know who you are as a runner. Here's every field in the questionnaire and why it actually matters.
Race goal & target distance
Whether you're training for a 5K or a marathon completely changes the plan structure. A 5K plan leans heavily on speed work and shorter intervals. A marathon plan needs months of base building and a long run that eventually reaches 20+ miles. Telling us your goal sets the foundation for everything else.
Target pace (optional)
If you enter a goal pace — say, 5:30/km for a sub-4 hour marathon — the plan uses it to calculate every training pace in the plan. Your easy runs will be genuinely easy relative to that goal, your tempo runs will sit at lactate threshold, and your interval sessions will push beyond race pace. Without a target pace, the plan keeps guidance effort-based and uses your current running baseline to stay realistic.
Current running baseline
This is the single biggest factor shaping your plan. Your current weekly volume, longest recent run, runs per week, running history, and goal-distance readiness determine how quickly load can progress, when harder workouts can appear, and whether run/walk support makes more sense early on.
Training days per week
This sets your weekly schedule. If you can only run 3 days a week because of work or family, that's the plan you should follow — a 5-day plan you can't actually do is useless. You choose the number of training days, and the generated plan has to fit inside that weekly structure.
Preferred long run day
Long runs need time to recover from. Knowing when yours is scheduled lets the plan arrange easier workouts the day before and after, so you go into it fresh and can recover properly afterwards. Most people pick Saturday or Sunday, but if Fridays work better for you, the plan will honour that.
Plan duration (weeks until race)
A 12-week marathon plan looks very different from an 18-week one. With more time, the plan can build the aerobic base more gradually, introduce quality sessions later, and taper properly. With fewer weeks, the plan has to compress the timeline and stay more conservative about what it asks from your current baseline.
Units
Metric or imperial — everything in the plan uses the unit you choose. Paces are in min/km or min/mile, distances in km or miles. No conversion math required on your end.
From your inputs to your plan
Plans follow proven endurance coaching principles — structured training phases, appropriate intensity distribution, progressive load management, and a proper taper in the weeks before your race. The specific approach is calibrated to your goal distance, current running baseline, training status, schedule, and available weeks.
Every workout gets a specific pace range calibrated to your goal. Easy runs, tempo efforts, intervals, and long runs each sit at a different intensity — derived from established training zone models used by coaches worldwide. If you don't enter a goal pace, the plan keeps pace guidance anchored to effort and the running baseline you provided.
One thing worth knowing: most runners run their easy runs too fast, which accumulates fatigue and makes the hard workouts less effective. If your easy pace feels almost embarrassingly slow, you're probably doing it right.
Every plan then passes automated quality validation before it reaches you. Plans that don't meet our standards are rejected and reworked before delivery.
What the AI cannot do
Every training tool has limits. Here are ours, plainly stated.
It cannot diagnose or manage injuries
If your knee hurts, the plan cannot tell you what's wrong or whether you should run through it. Pain during running is a signal to stop and see a physio or sports doctor — not a prompt to ask an AI. We can't see your body, examine your biomechanics, or manage medical details.
It is not a substitute for a coach
A good running coach watches you run, asks how you slept, notices when your form breaks down at mile 18, and adjusts your plan on the fly based on dozens of subtle cues. We can't do any of that. For serious athletes chasing big goals — Boston qualifier attempts, ultramarathon first-timers, runners with complex injury histories — a human coach is worth the investment.
Pace targets are estimates, not guarantees
The pace zones are calculated from your goal pace using established training zone models. But your actual aerobic threshold, lactate curve, and heat/altitude adjustments are individual — and we don't know them. Treat the paces as starting points and calibrate based on how you actually feel during runs. If easy pace feels hard, slow down. If tempo pace feels easy after a few weeks of training, your fitness is improving faster than the goal pace assumed.
It doesn't know about your life
A business trip, a wedding, a week of bad sleep, a cold — the plan doesn't know any of this. It can't proactively shuffle your workouts around life events. You need to use your judgment to skip, swap, or extend rest days when life happens. Missing one or two sessions is never the end of a training block. Just pick up where you left off.
It can't guarantee a time
No training plan — AI-generated or otherwise — can guarantee you'll hit your goal time. Weather, course conditions, your sleep the night before, and a hundred other variables influence race day performance. What a good plan does is put you in the best possible position to achieve your goal. The rest is up to you and the race.
See it in action — generate your plan free
Takes about 2 minutes. No email required to generate. You'll have a personalised training plan built on real coaching principles, checked automatically before it reaches you.
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