Training
Keep a training plan when the numbers move.
A training plan is four or five numbers that keep moving — your easy pace, your weekly mileage, the length of the long run — and every few weeks one of them changes. You worked them out with ChatGPT or Claude over a winter of short conversations, adjusted them in a different chat in June, and the current version now exists in your head and nowhere else.
Every number in a training plan has a date on it
Nothing here is a fact you look up once. The easy pace comes from a test you ran in March and will run again in September. The long run goes up every third week. Weekly mileage holds for six weeks and then gets reset. Even the resting heart rate you check on the first Sunday of the month means nothing on its own and something next to January’s.
So you keep asking. You ask ChatGPT for the new paces after a test. Six weeks later you ask Claude what to do about a week you missed, and it answers well, off numbers you typed in from memory — two of which are three months out of date. By August there are twenty of these conversations behind you, and the plan you are actually running exists only in whichever one you had most recently.
One current number, and the one it replaced
A Giraffe training project is one page that says where you are today — easy pace 9:05, long run 16 miles, 42 miles a week — and keeps the numbers those replaced underneath them, dated. When something moves, you tell your assistant to write it down: “Save that to my marathon project — easy pace is 9:05 now, at 141 bpm.” The new value becomes the live one. The old one isn’t overwritten — it’s kept below it with the date it changed, and whether you typed it in or an assistant did.
You open the project in a browser and read it without opening an AI at all. Most weeks that is the whole job: you’re not asking anything, you’re checking what this week is supposed to be. That is how Giraffe works, for a training plan or for anything else you keep.
Eighteen weeks to a marathon, on one page
Say you’re eight weeks out and you’ve been at this since January. An evening turning a race date into a plan. A test in March that set every pace. A bad fortnight in June when the calf tightened and the mileage came down. A ten-minute conversation last week about what a 9:05 means for October. Different chats, months apart, none of them long.
Saved as you go, they read like this:
Marathon, October
- Current
- Decisions
- The October race, not the May one. Eighteen weeks fits between June and race day; twelve didn’t.
- One hard session a week, not two. Two is what put me on the couch in February, and I’d rather turn up undertrained than not turn up.
- Strength stays on Tuesdays, and it’s the session that gets dropped in a bad week — never the long run.
- Open questions
- Whether 60 grams of carbs an hour is enough for me, or just the number in every article. I’ve only tested it out to 16 miles, which proves nothing about 26.
- Notes
- The watch and the treadmill disagree by about eight seconds a mile. Every pace here is the watch, outdoors, so the treadmill sessions need translating.
- Last year’s build ended in August, eight weeks out. Nothing had gone wrong. I just stopped.
- Recent changes
Why you want to see where you were in March
Today’s numbers are the smaller half of it. What you actually want, on the week something goes wrong, is the shape of the last six months: that the easy pace came down 35 seconds a mile while the resting heart rate went from 61 to 54, and that the mileage was cut in June and has never been back to 46. Three flat weeks on their own are a shrug. Three flat weeks after a mileage cut, with a test you keep putting off, is something you can think about.
Giraffe has no opinion about any of it. It doesn’t tell you whether 42 miles is the right number, and it isn’t a medical service — that conversation belongs with a coach, or a doctor, or the assistant you were already talking to. Giraffe holds what you decided and what you measured, in your words, dated. What it takes off you is having to remember which chat the number was in.
The same page works for anything you run on measurements rather than answers: a return to lifting after a year off, a physio’s exercises and the week each one stopped hurting, a blood panel you’ll repeat in March and want to read next to September’s. A race has a date and a cost, like any other project you plan. But the date isn’t what you’d open this page for. The line the numbers made on the way there is.
Eighteen weeks is long enough to forget who you were at the start of them. The page still has the 9:40 in it.
A few more questions
- Can I see what my numbers were three months ago?
- Yes. A Giraffe project holds one live value for each thing you keep — an easy pace, a working weight, a weekly total — and when you replace one, the old value stays underneath it with the date it changed. An easy pace of 9:05 today still shows the 9:40 it replaced, and when. It is your data: you can edit or delete any of it whenever you like.
- Does Giraffe connect to my watch or my training app?
- No. Giraffe connects to no watch, phone or training app, and it records nothing on its own. It holds what you write into it, or what you ask ChatGPT or Claude to write into it — the paces and totals you decided were worth keeping, the decisions behind them, and the questions still open. A number changes because you said so.
- Does Giraffe give training or health advice?
- No. Giraffe does not advise and is not a medical service. It records what you decided and what you measured, in your own words, with dates. The advice comes from wherever you already get it — a coach, a doctor, a book, the assistant you were talking to — and Giraffe keeps only the conclusion you landed on.
- Do I have to explain my whole plan again in a new chat?
- No. A new conversation in ChatGPT or Claude can read the project — current paces, weekly mileage, what you have already ruled out — instead of you retyping it from memory. Most weeks you will not need that: the project is a page in your browser, and reading it is the whole job.
Today’s number, and the one it replaced.