Am really struggling with how to get the most out of atheltica… I believe in the science and the methodology but it just doesn’t seem to have any real sense of ‘ramp back’ from injurys and time off. I can put in a long dated race (9-12 months out) but it’ll try and jump me straight into long runs and weekly volume that just don’t make any sense at all given it has access to my historical runs..
I could force limit it to only have ‘x hours to train’ or I could ignore sessions but that seems counter to having a smart coach that knows what my body should be capable of.
Any advice on how I could better configure the platform as I really want to use it but right now I’m just doing self coached and some base building and totally ignoring athletica (which has been the case for months now despite trying to play with settings/race distances etc)..
Thannks for any tips you can provide.
As an example… the long run for saturday is 23km long… on top of a lot of other load that its suggested this week… My historicals have shown I’ve barely managed a weekly total of 23km since January so it just makes no sense at all for me to follow this plan as it would be a recipe for instant injury.
I used athletica for a few months earlier this year and liked the individual workouts it gave me, but the overall volume mix was very bizarre and never matched my parameters. It gave me an inexplicably overwhelming volume of swimming, like 4-5 swims per week in an Ironman plan, and the total number of hours per week was often well over 20 when I told it to max out at 16. I gave it parameters around my weekday schedule for availability and it seemed to completely ignore them. I tried to play with the parameters to get the balance right and every time I got it to fix one issue, it would always throw something else off, so I just stopped using it. I liked the concept of it but it just always made me mad.
Hey @webscience2 — thanks for the honest feedback. You’re right: after time off, the plan should not jump you into long runs or big weekly totals. That’s on us.
Here’s a quick fix you can do today while we tune the brain behind the scenes:
**Switch to a gentle rebuild: Go to settings - About You - change Experience level to Beginner. Set your hours low for the next 4-6 weeks to allow a gentle start.
Cap your long run: Start where you are at. What’s your longest run the past 4 week? Add 5-10% every week.
Cap weekly volume growth: Keep weekly run volume increases to 10-15% until you’re consistently handling the load. Overall volume has a little more room to grow but cap the long run growth to 5-10% to prevent further injuries.
Tell Athletica your ceiling: In Settings → Availability, set realistic hours and set your ramp rate in advanced settings to “slow” .
Log your easy runs as EASY: Make sure your easy sessions are truly Z1–Z2; this helps the system learn the right intensity distribution and not over-correct. Don’t be afraid of walk/runs
If you’re cool with it, message me after 4 weeks and let’s see what your consistency and total weekly volume is and your overall return to running feel and we can adjust together.
I understand this is not what you want. It is a lot of manual work for you and you want to use AI to do the work for you. I totally get that.
We’ll building better “return‑to‑run” guardrails so this doesn’t happen again. Thanks for giving us the nudge — we’ll make it right.
Thanks Marjaana - just made those tweaks so we’ll see how it goes. I guess this is sorta how I’ve been approaching it but really would be nice not to have a smart AI powered coach that I ‘ignore’ and do my own thing as kinda defeats the purpose! Hopefully 4 weeks of these settings gets to a better place. I’ll just have to ignore the coach telling me I’m doing it wrong and cutting sessions short
Haha I fully feel your pain, I’m here for the 3rd time trying this out as I believe in the tool ahaha what I’ve learned is if “smart” AI doesn’t care about your schedule , I usually change some parameters like my ftp by 1W, and update the plan (without test week) it should work fine after few hours. BUT on the other hand you will still get some stupid workouts like 35min SE + 20min Z2 which in reality is Z2 55min or 45min run split into 20min Z2 plus 25min “off the bike” run you have to be very patient with this tool:exploding_head:
what I’ve learned is if “smart” AI doesn’t care about your schedule , I usually change some parameters like my ftp by 1W, and update the plan (without test week) it should work fine after few hours. BUT on the other hand you will still get some stupid workouts like 35min SE + 20min Z2 which in reality is Z2 55min 
or 45min run split into 20min Z2 plus 25min “off the bike” run 
you have to be very patient with this tool:exploding_head: