Coaching · Chat · Strava
A coach
you talk to.
Not a dashboard.
OpenPacemaker reads your full Strava history, gives you the honest read most athletes never get, and edits your plan when you ask it to — in plain English.
Free to try & keep · ~5 min setup
Tuesday · 07:42
Your session: 8.4 km at 4:19/km, HR avg 178 bpm — Zone 4. The positive split tells the story: 4:02/km in km 2, fading to 4:38 by km 7.
ATL jumped 12 points this week after back-to-back Tuesday and Thursday sessions. Your body flagged it before your legs did.
Wednesday was meant to be easy — did you run it hard? This is a pattern: when you compress recovery, the next quality session suffers. You're not losing fitness. You're spending it twice.
Sunday · 21:14
Yes. Tomorrow becomes 30 min easy, long run moves to Saturday. Friday's easy stays. Week still works — total volume down 18 km but the key Tuesday quality slot is still intact.
Want me to flag this pattern? You said in March that Sunday long runs after work-stress weeks usually went sideways. We might want a default "stress check" on Sunday evenings.
Monday · 06:55
12 Sept: 14 km tempo at 4:08/km, HR avg 168 bpm. You said it "felt like the wheels finally clicked". Last block before your half-marathon PB.
Want me to mirror that structure into next week? You're close to the same CTL window now.
Wednesday · 17:08 · voice memo
Heard. Transcribed, factored in. Your TSB supports the bump to 28 km, but cap intensity — your last 28 km had a positive split when you let yourself pick it up after 22.
Reply "yes" and I'll lock it in.
Thursday · 18:30
Logged. You had a similar flare in March that calmed with one easy week — I'll bias this week towards easy + cycling cross-training and flag Tuesday's intervals for review.
Tell me how it feels tomorrow.
Saturday · 09:11
Replaced 3 stale workouts → uploaded 5 fresh ones for week 14: easy run Mon, intervals Tue, easy Thu, tempo Fri, long run Sun. Each one is on the right day on your calendar with the pace target locked in.
Open Garmin Connect and let it sync — your watch will have them all by Monday.
a note on Telegram
We live in Telegram because the Bot API is free. WhatsApp Business charges per message; SMS more. So we built where the economics let us pass the savings on — Telegram is free, which is how OpenPacemaker stays free for you.
It's the same shape of chat you already know: messages, voice notes, files, replies, phone-number login. 30-second install on iOS, Android, or desktop, and the coach is just one more conversation in the list.
Hate Telegram? Fair. Discord and Signal both have free APIs and we're tracking demand — say so.
but can't I just ask an AI about my Strava now?
You can — Strava added a Claude connector, and it's genuinely good: plug in, ask a question, get an answer drawn from your own data. If what you want is the occasional "are my easy days easy enough?", that's a fine tool, and it's free with a Strava subscription.
But that's a search box for your history, not a coach. It waits for you to ask. It forgets you between chats. It holds no plan, has no opinion about your Saturday, and only ever sees Strava.
OpenPacemaker is the other thing. It watches every session and reaches out first — a morning read, a word after a hard one, a weekly review you never had to request. It holds a plan and rewrites it as your week actually goes. It remembers you across months and across plans — the niggle in March, the goal you set in May. And it pushes structured workouts back to your watch, reads your Garmin recovery, and coaches across run, ride, tri and swim.
Ask an AI and it tells you what happened — when you ask. A coach tells you what to do tomorrow, before you do — toward a goal.
How it stacks up
Other tools log your activities, build a periodised plan, or — now — answer a question when you ask. None of them coach you: proactively, with memory, toward a goal.
| OpenPacemaker | Strava | intervals.icu | TrainingPeaks | Runna | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat with it in plain English | yes | — | — | — | partial |
| Adapts the plan on the fly | yes | — | manual | manual | limited |
| Remembers you across conversations | yes | — | — | — | — |
| Multi-sport from one platform | run · ride · tri · swim | yes | yes | yes | run only |
| Daily proactive coaching | morning + post-session + weekly | — | — | — | scheduled |
| Voice notes accepted | yes | — | — | — | — |
| Free to try & keep | free tier + 14-day Premium trial | freemium | free | paid only | paid only |
Public features, May 2026. Strava, intervals.icu, TrainingPeaks and Runna are excellent in their categories — OpenPacemaker is for athletes whose problem is "I want a coach who knows me," not "I want somewhere to log my runs."
You can keep paste-screenshotting your Strava into ChatGPT every Sunday. Or your coach can read your data, message you first, edit your plan, and remember you — every day, from inside a chat you already have open.
Sign upFree to try & keep · 14-day Premium trial · cancel any time