Loadbudget JOURNEY
What training cycle does this product serve?
Binds: code::loadbudget
This page follows one athlete through the phases, from a race date to the weeks after the race. It says what the budget does in each one.
Much of this journey is in the future tense. The app reads workouts from Health. It proposes a run with its reason. Race tapering reduces that run. Coaching answers and feedback remain optional. Private journey history retains presented daily states. History failures remain visible.
Ada
Ada is not a real person. She stands for the athlete that this product is for, and every phase below follows her.
Strength training is the main sport of Ada. Running is her second sport. She trains toward a race with a date, at a distance from 5 km to a half marathon.
She is a lifter who runs, and not a runner who lifts. That order is the whole reason this product exists. A running plan that treats the gym as a distraction costs her the lifts that she came for.
That order also decides what the app plans. Her lifting is fixed, and her running bends around it.
Her Apple Watch records runs and lifts. The app reads that history. Optional coaching answers and feedback describe her day.
The tension that brings her here: a running app and a lifting app share no load model, so neither one sees what the other spent.
The load curve
Strength and running draw on one budget. The curve is the total across both sports, and not one line per sport.
LOAD
100% | * Peak
| / \
70% | * / \ * Race day
| / / \ / \
40% | * * / \ * / \
| / / / \ / / \
15% | */ \ *
|
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01 02 03 04 05 06 07
TRIGGER SETUP BUILD PEAK TAPER RACE RECOVERY
Phase 01, Trigger
Day 0.
“I signed up for a race. My lifting app and my running app do not talk to each other. Something must change before I wreck my deadlift numbers.”
Ada will enter the race date and the distance. She will grant access to Health. The app will then read the runs and the lifts that her watch already holds. She will enter no history by hand.
She will then see the race countdown, and the shape of the build that leads to it.
The budget is not yet a number. Her training load exists, and no model prices it yet.
Excited. Motivated. Anxious.
Phase 02, Setup
Week 1.
“How much can I actually handle without tanking my lifts? I want to see it in numbers.”
The app will price her history in one unit, and that unit covers both sports.
The app will show a weekly budget for the first time. It will be one number across both sports.
The app measures the first budget, and it stretches nothing. The number states what she already absorbs.
Curious. Skeptical.
Phase 03, Base build
Weeks 2 to 8.
“I must grow my running without losing the gym. This week the app suggested tempo before legs. That actually makes sense.”
The budget will refresh each week, and the recovery signals of the week before will size it. Sleep and the menstrual cycle are among those signals.
She sees the run of the day, before she trains. The screen states its kind, its minutes and its effort, and a short reason under it. What the week has left, across both sports, caps the run, down to the minimum run. Where a cap or her readiness leaves a positive run under the minimum run, the app suggests the minimum run easy. Where the week of both sports leaves less, the reason says that the run pushes what the week allows. Under the reason, each step of the run states its minutes. A step also states the heart rate or the pace that it aims at. Her own runs set that aim, or her heart-rate zones in Apple Health do. A step with neither states no aim. Each aim names its source: how many of her runs, or her zones in Apple Health.
She sends the run of the day to her watch. She queues the run to the Workout app with a button on the card, under her answers for the day. She can expand the card first to preview each step and its aim. Or she opens the run from the Loadbudget screen on her watch, after the iPhone app sent it that day.
She sees whether a run went as planned. She opens a finished run. A dark card at the top states her distance, her average pace and her average heart rate. With a plan, it also states her share of minutes in the aim. Under the numbers, one line states her minutes in the aim. The next line names the step that spent the most minutes outside its aim, and the minute that it left. With no plan, one line states her lowest and her highest heart rate. Under the card, the screen states the heart rate and the pace of each step of the plan, and of each kilometre. With a plan, the kilometres wait behind a tap. The screen states the minutes of each step inside its aim, above it and below it. It also states her minutes in each heart-rate zone of Apple Health. The app does not know the moment the watch moved to the next step. So each step counts its planned minutes from the start. A pause moves every step after it.
She sees her estimated finish time under the race. Her fastest efforts in training set it, with a band either side. Where those efforts are missing, her VO2 max in Apple Health sets it. The screen names the source and its day. Where the race has a cutoff, the screen says whether even the slow end of the band makes it.
The app suggests a run, and it suggests no lift. Ada plans her own lifting, and the app reads what she did. Both sports spend the budget, and only one of them takes an instruction.
So running volume will rise week on week, and it will rise into the budget that her lifting leaves. A hard run after a heavy lower-body day costs more than the reverse. So the app places the run around the lifts that she planned.
When she overspends, the run of the day is shorter. It falls no lower than the minimum run. The card states that the run pushes what the week allows. She meets no warning and no alarm. The app says nothing about what rest looks like. A walk and a day on the couch are both rest, and Ada picks between them.
The budget rises, and the model learns her capacity.
Motivated. Occasionally frustrated. Learning.
Phase 04, Peak
Weeks 9 to 12.
“I am tired and my rep maxes are down. The app says this is normal. I am choosing to trust it.”
The budget will reach its peak.
The app will lean toward rest here, because one more hard session costs the most at the peak. It will say that about a run, and Ada will decide what her lifting does.
The app will say that this fatigue is expected. It will say nothing about injury, and it never will.
The budget is full.
Fatigued. Determined. Trusting, and nervous.
Phase 05, Taper
Weeks 13 and 14, the two weeks that lead into race day.
“Why do I feel flat when I am doing less? Is taper madness real?”
The app cuts the room for a day, and Ada does not ask it to. That is what a taper is. The cut reaches the day before the race. Race day itself reads as an ordinary day, because nothing reads the last value of the curve.
Running will get shorter and sharper, and the speed work will stay across both weeks. What her lifting does in these two weeks is her call.
The second week cuts the room further. The final suggestion, the day before the race, will be the shortest of the cycle.
A taper is the reason the last two weeks look wrong. She will do less, and she will get better while she does it.
She will feel flat while the numbers improve. A phase that works reads like a phase that fails, and that is the hardest thing this app must explain.
The room falls on purpose, for two full weeks.
Restless. Anxious. Questioning. Then focused, nervous, ready.
Phase 06, Race day
The end of week 14.
“Everything I built has led to this. The strength is in my legs.”
The app will step back. It will suggest nothing and coach nothing.
Her watch records the race, and the app asks her for nothing afterwards.
The race spends the budget in one session. That spike is planned, and the model expects it.
Nervous, then euphoric, then proud.
Phase 07, Recovery
Weeks 15 to 17.
“I want to lift heavy again but my legs are still dead. When can I go back to normal?”
The budget will rebuild from near zero. The room for a day rises with it.
Running will return as the budget allows it. Ada decides when she lifts heavy again, and the app will read that choice like any other.
The budget rebuilds.
Accomplished. Restless. Reflective.
What this journey shows
Workouts come from her Watch. The app turns their shared training load into running suggestions. Optional answers and notes explain her choices. She can pause or delete the private journey history.
One budget, two sports. At every phase Ada spends from a single weekly budget. There is no lifting budget beside a running budget, and that is the core of the product.
Two sports spend, and one takes an instruction. Ada plans her own lifting, on her own schedule. The app reads those sessions, prices them, and then decides the running that the rest of the budget allows. A plan that moves her lifts takes the sport she came for.
Phase 04 is where the app earns trust. She is tired, her lifts are down, and the app tells her that it expects both. A phase that reads wrong and is right is the highest-stakes moment in the cycle.
The taper is the hardest thing to explain. Telling her to trust the plan is not enough. Fitness and fatigue fade at different rates, and that is the explanation she needs.
Recovery is part of the product. Most apps stop at the finish line. The weeks after a race are the weeks in which she asks how much room she has, and a budget answers that. She still decides what she does with the room.