Hi! I am currently training for a Marathon on 21st Sep, 2025. I had setup my plan for run with 3 swim sessions over the weekened. But, I haven’t been able to use the pool due to adverse (thunder-storms) weather conditions in my location on most weekends. I visited the “Training” section under “Settings” and made two changes; (1) Removed the 3 swims, and (2) Set the ramp-up to “Fast”. Now Athletica has re-worked my plan to introduce a “Marathon High Volume Test Week” next week. How do I view this? This is barely 7 weeks before race-day. Now training mileage in kms looks like this: 49(test week) → 68 → 82 -->46 -->77 → 56(taper 1) → 44 (taper 2). I am not certain if that’s sufficient weekly mileage. Also the longest run is only 21 kms on just one week and about 11 kms for rest of the weeks. Are the weekly swings in mileage also fair?
Also, earlier this week, Athletica modified my HR Threshold from 148bpm to 160bpm and also slowed all my paces. For context, since June I have been training in hot and humid weather (26 to 31 degrees Celsius with 75%-94% humidity), and hence my HR remains elevated at relatively lower paces. Could that have had an impact?
It did not give me that option, like it has done in the past. What should be the steps now? Also, the weekly long runs is too short and also the weekly mileage is fluctuating.
Please check and if not working, please let us know.
Is it enough volume? Marathon performance depends more on consistent stimulus plus a few key long runs than on hitting an arbitrary weekly-mileage ceiling.
If your starting mileage was relatively low, the system capped long-run distance to protect soft-tissue. If you’re comfortable stretching the long run to ~28 km, you can manually bump the longest run by 5–7 km, or adding a second run for the day. If you feel like your long runs are too short, feel free to extend them if you feel like you can handle longer ones.
You can regenerate and skip the test week if not wanting to test at the moment.
Let’s get you to the start line feeling confident, not cooked.
MJ
These changes are after I manually changed the pace as per suggestions by Prof. The system has changed my threshold pace from 148 to 160 and also slowed my zone paces. For context, I’m currently training in 27-30 deg Celsius weather with 80-94% humidity.
Also, I set the ramp to aggressive to obtain the current mileage. The mileage with normal and fast felt lower.
I get your point and in hindsight I ought to have begun this training cycle a tad earlier. Given my previous experience with human coaches/ passive programs, I had calculated a faster ramp up in a shorter period. I agree with the system’s recommendation based on my weekly mileages and I have now understood to plan better.
Thanks @Jatin ,
Yes a longer build up I always better as plans typically don’t quite go as planned, life happens, we miss days, etc so allowing ourselves a little longer build ensures that we keep showing up regularly and can have a bit of buffer to allow for unexpected bumps on the road.
I believe we can do a better job in communicating how the plan changes and evolves with you and how our philosophy really highlights the importance of keeping our athletes healthy and injury free. Too much too soon is asking for injuries/illness. Perhaps sometimes we are too careful, and we hear our athletes’ feedback on that. My advice is to make your own individual changes: do a little less/lower intensity when not feeling good, and a little more when feeling good. A good rule of thumb is to increase running mileage by 5-10% per week IF everything is feeling good and no injuries or niggles present.
Of course someone would argue that AI coach should know this and make appropriate changes. Here, a good practice is to always make those post-session subjective feedback inputs: RPE, feel and comments. It takes some time for the system to get to know you, again, the longer plan, the better the system knows you.
If you are interested, check out this article about sentiment analysis written by our @Andreahttps://sportperfsci.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/SPSR261__Zignoli.pdf
Hope this is helpful @Jatin
