I do have a half marathon next Sunday. My goal is to get under 2 hours for the 21.1 km
Now being in the taper phase I am wondering how useful the 1:45 run on Saturday will be, just the day before the half-marathon???
thanks
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Have you taken out a load of runs in the taper week already? I’m surprised there are only 2 in there?
I would not be running 1.45 the day before. 5-7k max!
I have not made any manual adjustments so far.
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That looks like absolute nonsense to me.
Without going into any specifics you would be better just copying your week from the 6th-12th, knocking 5 mins off every run and replacing Saturday with a day off or 20-30 mins of light jogging.
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The problem with this is the trustworthiness of the tool and algorithm.
I am kinda new to running and learning about new things every day. Trusting Athletica.ai was a key or the fundament, but this fundament start to fall apart slowly.
It got even crazier today 
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From what I’ve seen, the plan builder AI and session AI (the one that analyzes sessions and adjusts the plan) don’t handle races well at all - in some cases not even recognizing that they are on the calendar. This does seem like a big gap and hopefully is being looked at.
With that in mind, the new AI coach should handle this very well. You should be able to ask it to look at your taper week and suggest changes. You could even mention that the session the day before the race is concerning. From my experience you get good, science backed, advice that will probably move that session.
Good luck with the race!
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It gets more interesting, I tested your suggestion ans asked the AI coach about next weeks plan, and if it is the perfect preparation for the race.
This is what I got
Of course, Herbert! Here’s an English summary of your upcoming “race week” structure, tailored for your half marathon next Sunday, April 19th, and why this schedule makes sense:
Race Week Structure (Taper Week):
Monday: Rest day or active recovery (optional easy walk, mobility exercises). This day is key for recovering fully from your last bigger training week.
Tuesday: Short activation session – an easy run (usually around 50–60 minutes), with 2–3 very short pick-ups close to your planned race pace. The goal isn’t intensity, but to “wake up” your muscles.
Wednesday: Comfortable base run (about 40–50 minutes) at an easy, relaxed pace. Focus on feeling good, no pressure.
Thursday: Last “race pace feeling”: a short, easy run (about 30–40 minutes) that includes 2–3 short sections at half marathon pace to keep the legs sharp – but nothing strenuous.
Friday: Complete rest day. This is essential; don’t try to make up for missed sessions!
Saturday: Very easy, short shake-out run (20–30 minutes, optionally with 2 × 30 seconds relaxed strides at race pace).
Sunday: Race day – start your half marathon with full freshness and be ready to perform at your best!
Why this week is smart:
Training volume drops significantly (about 60–70% less compared to a regular week), with much less intensity.
The plan’s goal is to ensure you’re fully recovered, fresh, and sharp — not tired — at the start line.
A couple of short “race pace” bursts help with muscle tone, running economy, and mental confidence, without adding fatigue.
For you specifically:
Your recovery markers (resting heart rate, HRV) were a bit stressed recently; this taper plan will help these return to normal so you hit race day as fresh as possible.
Avoid all hard workouts or trying to “make up” missed training!
Use this extra time for sleep, planning, nutrition, and mental race prep.
Listen to your body – if you feel any illness, back off straight away.
Bottom line:
This week is perfectly set up for you to reach peak form on half marathon day! Stick closely to the easy structure, avoid doing too much, and focus on arriving at the start feeling recovered and energized — that’s the winning formula now.
I am wondering if this gets updated by tomorrow, as of now the plan still looks the same as in the previous picture.
But also not sure which plan is “better” the one or other 
The AI Coach won’t, yet, make these changes for you. They’re working on that (they’ve indicated as much a few different places), and for now you’ll have to make the changes to the calendar. The advice does look a lot more like what I’d expect for a taper week though.
Well thanks, I know that the AI Coach is unable to directly interact with my calendar, but somehow this just should not be the experience I expect from a tool like Athletica.ai
And I had a way better experience last year, around the same time than I had / have with this training block since November 2025.
Having taper week scheduled correctly is something madatory to work, for the promisses Athletica.ai makes and for what it is build for.
But @jhbuchholz thanks for the feedback and lucky me I catched it early enough to make adjustments. Someone else could have just gone the wrong route and be even more disappointed.
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I think that, unfortunately, many of us had a better experience last year
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This issue was related to individual settings which I’ve tweaked and informed @herbert on.
I’d like to invite you to utilize onboarding calls we’re offering, especially if you have something that doesn’t look right. Book here
MJ
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@Marjaana thanks for your help
This is actually what was the response by the Atletica team to help the others in similar situations
… That is not what we want to give to our athletes and we are reviewing our taper week logic. This helps you little as your next race is coming up this week.
I reviewed your account settings, and made a tweak that I believe will help you.
Your weekly volume combined with weekly schedule was restricting the algorhytm, forcing it to put some big workouts in your schedule - the day before race sessions likely related to this.
I dropped your weekly volume to low volume plan which fits very nicely into your 4 run sessions per week with some strenght training.
In your weekly schedule I marked Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays as rest days. You may still get strength workouts on wednesdays but you can easily rescheduled those.
With these two tweaks, your plan looks much more sensible and those workouts before race day are now gone.
Just for everyone to clarify my volume was set to “mid volume” and I have/had the following restrictions if I remember right:
The restrictions have changed over time, so I am not 100% sure what I had and if this is really a logic problem. As I ran into insury I had to force the logic to give me not 6 runs but some more rest days over time.
- Rest Days : Monday, Wednesday, Friday(I think it was not a rest day before but I am unsure)
- Tuesday Thursday restricted to 2 hours (now it is on Auto)
- Saturday and Sunday no restrictions (stayed the same)
I also had the issue that the algoritm started to force me to have 2 runs on Tuesday and Thursday as it tried to fill up the 2 hours restriction (this was another ticket I filed).
Anyhow this is what the plan looks like right now for the rest of the days
Still unsure if an 1h run the day before a Half Marathon is correct. The AI coach says 20-30 which other human beings recommend too.
I would stick to the 20-30 mins run before the half yes, I imagine the coach is still trying to work through the changes made in a short time scale before your race.
Interesting that the restrictions cause these sorts of issues. Whilst I understand why people put them into the plan, I’ve always just allowed the coach to build my plan unrestricted and then moved sessions/deleted them if something didn’t work for me. This is on the understanding that the coach will amend the plan once I do this to keep me at a decent level of effort per week.
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I strongly believe Athletica is now for expert athletes, who can understand the whole frame and manage minor details, not just blindly execute workouts.
I think there is a really big gap between people who blindly follow a training plan and an expert athlete. For me it’s actually a very good tool to go from one and take a step towards the other.
With Athletica you need to take the time to understand how the coach works and also understand your own body. There are plenty of helpful start up guides on the website to do this with.
Even with a real life coach, you wouldn’t blindly follow what they said 100% of the time, certainly not without giving feedback and asking questions.
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The question right now is more like: “Is this session actually helpful, or is it just yet another bug?”
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But the Atletica Plan says A, the Athletica coach says B and the human being says C.
I understand that there are different opinions, but how should I be able to judge, if I have chosen this tool for this reason. It should support me but is already contradicting itself inside the same app.
And yes, I realized that it makes no sense, at least for me, and would wonder for whom the last taper week as planned would have had made any sense.
But yeah, you need a starting point and someone to trust at least with the basics.
Thanks for sharing this, as the race season is ramping up in the northern hemisphere.
Scheduling nearly a 2 hrs session doesn’t align with taper principles we’d typically follow. As recommended by others, keep any workouts easy the day before and AFTER a race.
Our team is aware of this issue and is actively working on improving both taper and post-race week logic. We appreciate your feedback.
As mentioned above, we’re continuing to refine race week logic. For athletes currently preparing, I’d recommend keeping pre-race sessions short and easy, or taking a rest day.
If anyone is unsure about race week adjustments, feel free to tag me here.
Kindly, MJ
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