Christophe Roosen is the co-founder and coach of Trenara. Runs a marathon in 2:33:34. Follow him on IG @chroosen.
Throwback to a sunny friday evening training session in the spring of 2016. Gert (entrepreneur) & I (who had a secondary occupation) had a long talk about entrepreneurship and we came to a conclusion: in the future we would do something together.
What, how and when: we didn’t know. It was just a feeling.
In the autumn of 2016 our running team invested in a device called BSX Insight, which was supposed to be lactate threshold tester but without the blood pricks. The test was carried out by me on a treadmill in Gert’s cellar.
Although the first results seemed promising, we soon discovered some flaws:
1. While the lactate threshold was fairly accurate, the aerobic threshold wasn’t. Since this is a very important and broad training zone, we weren’t happy with the results.
2. You needed the BSX Insight app to run the test, but the app itself wasn’t very stable. We often lost connection, and there’s no fun in telling a runner who just went all-out that we didn’t collect his data. We surely weren’t the only ones with problems and unfortunately they pulled the plug. The BSX Insight doesn’t exist anymore.
But we were triggered. Gert, as an engineer, dived into the data and made some graphs that BSX wasn’t able to deliver. On other platforms we also discovered some flaws when describing fitness levels or predicting race times (if we were only able to run the times Garmin predicts us…). There has to be a better way, but how?
The Conversation
September 8, 2017. Gert sended me the following Whatsapp: “I figured out an algorithm, I think we need to develop an app to accompany our lactate tests.”. Me: “Nice! And connect the app to the BSX data…”. Gert: “Yes, and we can perhaps add a training schedule, sounds interesting enough to brainstorm about it”. That conversation was the starting point of Trenara.
„I think we need to develop an app“
In the following months we talked to different app builders to see if our idea was feasible. In the spring of 2018 we secured an 100 000 euro investment (thanks to family, friends & fools) and started our business. The app was released to the Dutch speaking market in january 2019 and as of now, september 2020, we’re broadening our horizon.
Hello guys, would you have a plan to add to Trenara an option to change the dark theme to white? Cause your current dark-only theme is bleeding eyes one ((
Hello guys, would you have a plan to add to Trenara an option to change the dark theme to white? Cause your current dark-only theme is bleeding eyes one ((
Regards,
Sans