Athletica Forum

Dear Team Athletica, First of all, I’d like to share my great experience last season – your software got me through my first long-distance triathlon in sub-11 on a quite hilly course, and through a middle-distance race in the leading group up front. Thanks to your software, the plan and I grew together; even difficult times could be managed by moving, deleting, or adjusting sessions. As experience grows and I’m still recovering from the long-distance race, I’d like to prepare training for next season. I couldn’t get past the (sub-)threshold training method – VT2 sessions right at the sweet spot of stimulus vs. exhaustion make a lot of sense to me, especially given that long-distance race intensity sits close to threshold rather than in the VO2max zone. Looking at my current base-phase plan (15–20h/week, load 1000–1200), I see a polarized approach with VO2max sessions consistently 2x/week (bike + run), but no VT2/threshold work in these two disciplines over 8 consecutive weeks. Swimming is the only discipline with a weekly VT2 session. I asked the AI Coach about this, and it explained that VO2max in base phase is typically kept to “max 1x/week, often every 10–14 days” with threshold work increasing in build phase. However, this doesn’t match what I’m actually seeing in my calendar – 2x/week VO2max at bike and run consistently. I also looked ahead at my build-phase weeks (late Nov/Dec) and can see race-specific sessions like “Long Distance Over-Unders” (targeting Z3a, the inten

Dear Team Athletica, First of all, I’d like to share my great experience last season – your software got me through my first long-distance triathlon in sub-11 on a quite hilly course, and through a middle-distance race in the leading group up front. Thanks to your software, the plan and I grew together; even difficult times could be managed by moving, deleting, or adjusting sessions. As experience grows and I’m still recovering from the long-distance race, I’d like to prepare training for next season. I couldn’t get past the (sub-)threshold training method – VT2 sessions right at the sweet spot of stimulus vs. exhaustion make a lot of sense to me, especially given that long-distance race intensity sits close to threshold rather than in the VO2max zone. Looking at my current base-phase plan (15–20h/week, load 1000–1200), I see a polarized approach with VO2max sessions consistently 2x/week (bike + run), but no VT2/threshold work in these two disciplines over 8 consecutive weeks. Swimming is the only discipline with a weekly VT2 session. I asked the AI Coach about this, and it explained that VO2max in base phase is typically kept to “max 1x/week, often every 10–14 days” with threshold work increasing in build phase. However, this doesn’t match what I’m actually seeing in my calendar – 2x/week VO2max at bike and run consistently. I also looked ahead at my build-phase weeks (late Nov/Dec) and can see race-specific sessions like “Long Distance Over-Unders” (targeting Z3a, the inten

I’ve been looking into this too. From what I understand, these devices add resistance to the breathing muscles rather than increasing lung size itself. What I’m still curious about is whether people notice the difference mainly in breathing control during harder efforts, or whether there’s a measurable carryover to endurance performance.

That’s actually a convenient way to stay consistent with it. Have you experimented much with the resistance level or the number of breaths you do each session? I’m trying to work out whether a short routine a few times a week is enough to notice a difference, or whether consistency every day matters more.

You can add a race to a weekday directly from your Calendar using +Add - Race tab. Please note this will add a race to your calendar, but does NOT generate a taper week, so the recommendation is to use it to add a fun 5K race, criterium etc in your calendar that is in general considered as “training race”. Marjaana

I had the same question for my “A” race, which is also on a Friday. Doesn’t appear to be any updates since this was first asked in Jan 2025. As Marjaana recommended, I was planning to shift all of my training sessions to one day earlier to accommodate the Friday race.

Hi Kim, Thanks for the reply! This is also my third year with Athletica. The “Anything else…” box appears to be new with the updated user interface. In previous years, there were separate boxes for goals and objectives for each race. I’m not sure how much of that information was actually interpreted by Athletica during the plan builds, though. Maybe I’m remembering it incorrectly, perhaps these sections were more for personal notes. For this upcoming year, which is going to be a pretty ambitious one, I used ChatGPT to help determine which races should be my “B” and “C” races, with Nationals as the “A” race and the goal of qualifying for Worlds. It also provided recommended finish times and splits for each race. I then had ChatGPT help me put together some verbiage to include in the upcoming Plan Builder. My plan is to feed all of this information into Athletica and see what it comes up with for the next 12 months. So far, I’ve been very pleased with what Athletica has provided, and I’m looking forward to another year of learning, training, and hopefully making some big improvements! All the best! Joe

Understood. The workout schedule stays generally similar on Athletica.

More general thoughts about how often to change the weekly pattern. Recognising when things haven’t moved etc. I am heading towards the end of my season and will transition then move back to base mid October. But just wondering about longer seasons and potentially builds and why and how to change patterns when you have a longish peak season.

Hi Joe, I am not quite sure if I can answer your question correctly but will give it a go as an athletica user. Im not quite sure of the “anything else you would like your coach to know” box, this might be new from when I started 3 years ago! I will give you a bit of info that may or may not help. The AI coach does not adapt your session plan. This is a separate system. (I am not techy, so apologies for lack of techy speak)… Firstly the most important part when signing up or starting a new plan, it is important to do the test phase as this gives the session plan data your baseline in all your modalities. If and when you progress after doing your sessions, the system will update your thresholds automatically. You can set the notifications to warn you when the system detects a progression (or regression) then you accept the change or not depending on your state of play (injuries, fatigue etc). Once you get established, it takes a few months for the system to get to know your “normal” and all the recovery data is collected (if you have that capability from your wearable), then you can start having real time conversations with the AI coach. The AI coach can read your session plans and give you advice on how to adapt or change sessions, based on your feedback. Give the AI coach as much information as possible for it to make a good informed decision. AI coach will advise you what to change (manually at this stage as future Athletica is looking to change this) and can help you resub

Good question. Having a goal event often helps. But taking a break from the usual routine by doing something different also can break us out of a slump. Are you in plateau now?