I have been a runner for a long time, sometimes a fanatic one and sometimes less fanatic. The distances varied and it had been years since I had really challenged myself with longer distances like a half marathon. The thought of a marathon started to grow on me and running with a goal and a plan works better than just doing something.

I came to Trenara on the advice of a friend who was also training for the marathon. I was a bit skeptical at first: there weren’t a lot of reviews out there and a lot seemed to be ‘in development’. But my thought was: sometimes you have to give a smaller player in this app market something, so let’s give it a try!

I think I reset my goal 20 times to see what changed with more workouts, another marathon date, different training days, or if I cheated on the calibration. Nice to see that the plan changed every time!
Finally I chose a marathon, trained for it three times a week and was able to shift my training days, very nice feature! Something I wasn’t looking looked forward to was entering the training sessions in my watch, but guess what, if you have a Garmin and a subscription, the app just does this for you! Saves me a lot of hassle. For that reason alone, you’d take Peak Pro and buy a Garmin.

What I really like are the messages you get before and after a training session. I’m always curious to see what comes up. Things like ‘Tip: don’t use LSD before/after this LSD 💊’ still makes me laugh out loud. I personally find it really handy to shift my training days. And during my holiday in a mountainous areas I was able to adjust the terrain so that I could continue training with a small adjustment in tempos.

I also like the fact that personal contact is possible with the coach/developers. Don’t expect 24/7 service, they run themselves and have a life :), but you always get an answer if you have a question. The week before the marathon, for example, I had a whole conversation about carb loading – I really couldn’t figure it out with Google, but with Christophe I did. That personal contact just gives this app an extra touch.
The marathon is now over for me and there is a recovery plan programmed that I haven’t started yet. On beforehand I thought I’d probably cancel my subscription immediately after the marathon, but I’m still here! Thinking about my next goal, I keep “playing” with the features a bit every now and then and I’ll see what I’ll do.

I like the fact that I am relieved of the typical ‘what am I going to do today?’ question and that is why I keep the app on my smartphone. In addition, I simply grant it to the coach/developers, so much effort and time is put into it and the more subscribers they have, the faster these developments can take place… until the app is 100% optimal.