The clocks are about to go back, the lights are going on the bike, and the coach has been busy. Here's what's new.
Trackers: the daily stuff, as data
Your journal is great for the story ("stag do this weekend, expect carnage"). It's rubbish for counting. "Had a few" can't be added up, and the coach can't spot a pattern in it.
So there's a new thing in the journal: Trackers. Make one once, log it in a tap each day. Two kinds:
- Yes or no. Drank alcohol? Stretched? Ate before the morning session?
- A number. Cups of coffee, units, hours on your feet at work.
Name it whatever you like, in whatever language you like. Something more fun than coffee is encouraged.
The point is what happens next. The coach reads your trackers alongside your training and recovery, so "why was Tuesday's session so grim" can be answered with "three nights in a row on the wine" rather than a shrug.
One deliberate decision: a day you didn't log is not a zero. The coach knows the difference between "no beers" and "forgot to log", and tells you when there isn't enough data to say anything.
Climbs and intervals, second by second
The coach got two new analysis tools, both reading the full second-by-second data from your ride rather than the summary.
Climb detection. Every ride with a GPS track now gets its climbs found automatically, whichever device recorded it. For each one: where it starts, length, gain, average gradient, time, VAM, category, and how your power and heart rate held up from the bottom third to the top. Did you go out too hard and fade? Now it can tell you.
Ask the coach "how were my climbs on that ride?" and you'll get a proper answer. They're on the activity in your history too. The climbs don't have names yet ("the 3.5 km climb at km 16"), that's next.
Interval analysis. The coach now pulls your actual reps apart: each one's power, heart rate, cadence, and how they compared across the set. On a ride with no structured reps it finds your sustained efforts instead. Session reviews and the feedback card read the same reps and climbs, so the "how did that go" moment after a session is far more specific.
A little bit of love for running
Just a little bit. 😉
- Pace targets on your watch. Running sessions pushed to your watch now carry pace targets and distance reps (6 x 800 m, not 6 x 3 minutes), and the heart rate bands are set for running, not borrowed from the bike.
- A better threshold pace. We used to work it out as if your best training run was a race. Nobody races their training, so it came out 20 to 30 seconds per km too slow for everyone we checked. It now reads your heart rate against your pace across your recent runs, which is much closer to the truth.
- Runs are analysed on pace. The coach no longer judges a run against your cycling FTP. Embarrassing, that one.
Net result: running sessions should feel a lot more like they were written for you.
Talk to the coach
There's now a mic button in the coach chat. Tap it, say your piece, and it turns into text you can check before sending. It never sends on its own.
I was sceptical. I'm now a convert. Post-ride, gloves still on, it's much easier to say "legs were dead on the second climb and I didn't eat enough" than to type it, and the coach gets a much richer picture as a result.
Hammerhead Karoo
Beina now works with the Hammerhead Karoo. Your rides sync in automatically, and you can send sessions from your plan straight to the head unit. That's Garmin, Wahoo, Polar and Hammerhead all connected now.
We're on Instagram
We have submitted to the gods of social media. Beina is now on Instagram at @legs_of_beina: real data from real training, the shared stories, and some cold wet riding. Give it a follow.
And a few more
- Signup works on older iPhones (iOS 15). It was quietly failing to load. Fixed.
- When one of the coach's tools hits a snag, you now get a plain-language note instead of something that looked like an error.
- We had an external security review and fixed all the high-priority findings.
- The event pages stopped advertising a few races that aren't running this year.
What's next?
Proper apps for iPhone and Android are on the list. But I'd rather build the thing you actually want. What would you like to see? Reply, or drop me a line at hello@beina.ai. Everything above exists because someone did.
