Update: The trace Coach, how it works and what it doesn't do
Not a generic chatbot, but a coach with full context on your values. What the trace Coach can do and what it deliberately doesn't.
The trace Coach, the AI coach in trace, has been live since spring and has gone through several iterations since. Time for the current state: what it can do, what it deliberately doesn't do, and why that's by design.
What's different from a regular ChatGPT?
The key difference: the trace Coach starts every answer with your full training context. It knows:
- your current Critical Power and W',
- your training load with CTL, ATL and TSB,
- your VO2max estimate and, for running, threshold pace and personal bests,
- your health data such as HRV, resting heart rate and sleep,
- your active training plan including today's session,
- your recent activities, and when needed it pulls up the details of individual sessions.
On top of that, it remembers things you tell it, say, that your knee is acting up or that hard sessions only fit on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That means: when you ask „What should I do tomorrow?", you don't get a generic answer, but a concrete recommendation that fits your current state.
Questions that work especially well
- „My TSB is at −22 right now. Should I train today or take a rest day?"
- „Plan the next 7 days for me with a focus on VO2max."
- „Why was my Aerobic Efficiency so poor in my last session?"
- „How should my taper look for the race on June 14?"
- „I've got 5 kJ/kg in the first hour, does that fit a 4-hour endurance ride?"
What it deliberately doesn't do
Diagnoses without data. When you ask „Am I overtrained?", the coach doesn't answer from gut feeling. It works through your TSB and EF trends and explicitly states what the data supports, and where the data ends.
Medical statements. For symptoms like unusually high resting heart rate, persistent fatigue, or pain, it consistently points you toward medical attention. AI doesn't replace a sports doctor, and it shouldn't.
Marketing language. No filler like „Push your limits!" or „Crush this workout!". The coach is factual, precise, and answers in your language, German or English.
What's under the hood
Powered by Claude (Anthropic). On every request, a structured snapshot of your training data is assembled and sent along with your actual question. Conversations are saved, so you can pick up an earlier conversation at any time without restating the context.
What we don't do: pass your training data to OpenAI, Google or other third parties. The connection runs directly through Anthropic, and your activity data stays in our Supabase instance.
The outlook became reality
When this article was first published, three items stood here as „coming next". All three are live by now:
- Automatic insights: after a sync, trace analyzes relevant sessions and writes an assessment into your insights feed. What went well, what stood out, how the session fits the week.
- Training plans with a target race: you enter your race, trace builds a periodized plan with load and recovery weeks, and the coach knows your plan in every conversation.
- Readiness: a daily value between 0 and 100 that derives how much you can take on today from HRV, resting heart rate, sleep and training load.
Give it a try
In the dashboard, you'll find the coach in the sidebar under „trace Coach". Not to be confused with „My Coach": that's where you connect your account to a real, human coach. When you use the trace Coach for the first time, my advice: ask it one very concrete question about your last session. You'll quickly notice whether the answers help you, or whether you want more depth. Both are valuable feedback.