About
OpenPacemaker exists because serious runners deserve better than guesswork — and most of us can't afford a personal coach.
Strava is brilliant at recording your runs. It stores your data, shows your segments, gives you kudos. What it doesn't do is tell you whether you ran too hard yesterday, whether you're ready to race, or whether the workout you did actually matched your training plan. It's a logbook, not a coach.
A good running coach charges £100–300 a month. They'll review your week, adjust your plan, and answer your questions — but probably not at 6am when you're about to head out the door, and not the moment you finish a tough interval session and want to know if it went well.
Free plans from the internet don't know your injury history, your race date, your work schedule, or the fact that you had a terrible sleep last night. They're a starting point, not a conversation.
It connects your Strava data to Claude AI and gives you a coach that lives in Telegram — always available, always up to date with your training, and able to answer questions in plain English.
Ask it how your long run looked. Ask if you're overtraining. Ask it to adapt your plan around a work trip. It knows your zones, your history, your injuries, and your goals. It remembers everything you've told it — so you never have to repeat yourself.
It's not a replacement for a human coach if you're an elite athlete with specific needs. But for the millions of runners who want honest, personalised feedback without the price tag — it's the next best thing.