Athletica Forum forum

Challenge Almere – European Championship Long Distance triathlon Last Saturday, standing again at the starting line of a full distance triathlon, my 6th. A day you work towards for months, sometimes even years. The day when all the training sessions, missed birthdays, early mornings, tired legs and choices you’ve made over the past year finally come together. My personal best was still standing there: 09:59:34. So yes… somewhere in the back of my mind, that time was definitely there. But this year was different. I deliberately chose not to work with a traditional personal coach but instead spent a full year experimenting with an AI-driven endurance training and coaching platform. My main question was simple: Can AI actually help me train smarter on a day-to-day basis? Not just provide a training plan for the next few weeks and months, but look at the situation every single day. Training load, fitness, resting heart rate, heart rate variability and recent training sessions — and then help determine: what is the right thing to do today? After trying several platforms, I chose Athletica.ai last year. And the first few weeks were honestly an adjustment. Not only to the way of training, but also to all the possibilities and settings within the platform. What works best for me? For my job? For my family? And how much room should I leave to simply listen to my own body? With some adjustments and great support from the Athletica team, I found my rhythm. And on Saturday, everything ca

Amazing story, congrats! I 100% agree, couldn’t have made as much progress myself w/o Athletica. Thank you team!

Hi there! For the moment it is not possible and as a coach I think it is also one more constraint on training. I mean, if the session is a Z2 where it is more important to keep a metabolic engagement (heart rate) rather than external (power) it is just right to consider only heart rate Begli intervals where the cardio has a latency to get into gear is more important to keep exclusively power I hope I was clear​

For the past three years, I’ve allowed Athletica’s AI Coach to automatically determine whether each training session should be managed by pace, power or heart rate. I recently had a lightbulb moment: My Garmin Forerunner allows me to set multiple alerts for the same sport. For example, during a run, I can set both heart rate range and a pace range, so I would be alerted if I exceeded either limit. This seems like it could me fine-tune my training. For example, Athletica might congratulate me for maintaining the prescribed heart-rate range during a long run, while also noting afterward that my pace was too fast. I realize I could probably add the additional alerts manually on my Garmin, but I’m concerned that manually modifying the workout might alter or interfere with the workout that Athletica sends to Garmin. Has anyone found a way to have Athletica prescribe/manage multiple parameters simultaneously, or is the AI Coach intentionally limiting one primary management metric per session? Thanks, Joe

My season was both rough and amazing. The AMAZING : coming back from a heart condition last year, and after taking significant time off to get diagnosed (that makes it sound really easy and fast; spoiler: it was NOT) and getting on a medication to where I can still train consistently (also…NOT easy or fast), I just finished a 70.3 aquabike! The aquabike was a huge success too, nearly the same fitness as before the heart issues kicked up 18 months before! Swim was on pace, bike was actually stronger… But the rough : achilles strain / inflammation that began in December 2025 and refused to fully abate, despite 9 months with a mix of rest, PT, imaging, sports med, false-alarms where we thought I could get back to running, and more. Thus the 70.3 ended up an aquabike since there was no running to be had. And with that, my 2026 season comes to a close, with my 70.3 “training race” becoming my last race, and IMCA being a non-starter despite swim/bike nearly ready to go. I could maybe walk the marathon, but a) don’t want to aggravate the ankle (skiing this winter is important!!!) and b) walking for 7 hours does not sounds like a good reward for all the training! Here’s to 2027, eh?

Building on that. You could cover building strength in bike base period, then strength maintenance in bike build period. Why it is important, what each looks like, and what the key strength sessions are concerned with.

I’m not sure if this is the appropriate forum, but I wanted to share my experience with Athletica and say a thank you for the impact it has had on my running journey this year. My athletic background is fairly limited. Outside of playing a few sports in high school and doing some recreational mountain and road biking as a teenager, I wasn’t particularly focused on sport. After university, life, work, and family naturally took priority over health and fitness. By the time I turned 40, I realized I was overweight, unhealthy, and needed to make a change. I decided to try running, despite having absolutely no idea what I was doing. A friend somehow convinced me to sign up for a 26 km trail race with 900 metres of elevation gain, which I naively agreed to. Having never run before, I figured the best training approach was to run 5 km as fast as I could two or three times per week. Somehow, I believed this would prepare me for a 26 km trail race. Unsurprisingly, it proved to be both physically and mentally difficult. Convinced there had to be a better way, I came across Dr. Phil Maffetone and the MAF Method through a podcast. I trained using the MAF approach, running 3 to 4 hours per week around my relatively flat neighbourhood . I completed the trail race that September, but I could barely make it across the finish line. I knew very little about fueling, had done no hill-specific training, and had never run longer than 90 minutes in my life. At the time, I concluded that I simply w

I like to do the same - I’ll double up HIIT and strength, or HIIT run and HIIT ride. There’s a setting in the plan builder that lets you choose to allow double hard days, but it doesn’t always follow it, perhaps we could ask for a setting to force it?

Hi Guiseppe, we are coordinating with a guest on Athlete’s Compass who will talk about exactly that! Generally, though, for my athletes, I put the strength on the same day as intervals to make hard days hard. Or I put them on days with long endurance sessions. Usually after the intervals and endurance!

Hi guys! Over the years, I’ve always replaced the strength sessions offered by ATHLETICA because, in my opinion, they had several methodological flaws: They’re done on “easy” days, but this creates two problems. 1. An easy day is no longer easy if you do strength. 2. On the following quality days (VO2 Run, VO2 Swim, Low Cadence Bike, or Long Race Pace Brick on Saturday), we have 24 hours post-Sunday. For this reason, I moved them to Thursday and Saturday or Sunday, on the “difficult” days when I was able to do plyo and maximum strength better and was able to recover the next day. So I ask you… strength… how and when? Thanks!

How was your season? What race did you do? How did it go? Comment below