Training and Strava

Niles reads your workouts from your own Strava. You can ask how your training is going, have Claude or ChatGPT make a plan for a race, and the plan marks itself as you run.

Strava is personal. Niles reads your workouts only for you, and nobody else in the house can ask for them.

Connecting StravaCopy Anchor Link

Each person connects their own, from My profile → Strava. Strava only lets a new app work for the person who made it, so everyone makes their own Strava app first. It takes a few minutes. The steps are on the card, under Set up your own Strava app:

1. On strava.com/settings/api, create an app. Any name and website will do.
2. Set its Authorization Callback Domain to the address the card shows under Callback domain. That is your Niles's host name only, with no https://. The copy button next to it copies it.
3. Copy the app's Client ID and Client Secret into the card, and press Save.
4. Press Connect Strava, and leave "View data about your private activities" ticked on Strava's page.

You come back to your profile, which says "Connected as {name}. Fetching your last half year…".

You have to be signed in to the app to connect. Strava also needs Niles's database and its secrets key.

If something goes wrong on the way back, the card says why. The usual ones are:

• "Strava was not allowed to share your activities; connect again and leave them ticked"
• "Strava refused the sign-in with this app's Client ID and Secret; check them against strava.com/settings/api"
• "that sign-in expired or was started elsewhere; try again"

SyncingCopy Anchor Link

When you connect, Niles fetches the last 180 days. After that it checks every 15 minutes for new workouts. Sync now checks at once.

The card shows when it last synced and how many activities and runs it has. Strava limits how often Niles may ask. If the limit is reached, the card says when the rest will follow.

Niles sorts each activity into runs (including trail and virtual runs), walks and hikes, rides of every kind, strength (weight training and CrossFit) and other.

Disconnect stops Niles reading and takes the access back at Strava. The workouts already fetched stay, and so does your Strava app, so you can connect again. Remove app also forgets the Client ID and Secret.

What you can askCopy Anchor Link

• "how far did I run on Sunday"
• "how was my week", "how many workouts did I do this month"
• "what was my pace on my last run", "what was my heart rate on that run"
• "what's my run today", "what run do I have tomorrow"
• "what's on my training plan", "how far is my long run on Sunday"

Niles knows whose training you mean from your voice, or from who is signed in to the chat. Sleep, heart rate variability, resting heart rate and weight are not available.

A training planCopy Anchor Link

Ask Claude or ChatGPT for one: "make me a plan for the Copenhagen Half". If it does not know the race date, it asks. It looks at your last few months of training, then writes the plan in the background and keeps it under Saved.

The plan follows common coaching habits: weekly distance up by about 10% at most, an easier week every third or fourth week, one hard session a week, two at most, and a taper before the race. Where you did not say, it assumes three or four runs a week with the long run at the weekend, and writes down what it assumed in the plan's notes.

A plan can be up to 52 weeks long.

How the plan follows your runsCopy Anchor Link

After every sync, Niles matches your new workouts to the plan:

• A run marks the planned session it was, on the same day first.
• A run up to two days from its session's day still counts, as long as that day had nothing of its kind planned. A run is never matched to the race this way.
• A strength workout can mark a strength session, and a ride or other activity a cross-training session. Walks never match.
• A session nobody did is marked missed once its day and one more day have passed.

Then the assistant may look the plan over and adjust what is still to come, a little, with a note on why. It does this only after a run, and only when an assistant is switched on and free. It can move sessions, but it cannot change the race day, anything before today, or anything already marked. If it changed sessions, you get a notification: "Your {plan} changed after your run."

You can mark sessions yourself too. Tap one in the plan and choose Done, Skipped or Undo. A plan stops following your runs three days after the race, and an archived plan is not followed at all.

Today's runCopy Anchor Link

With a plan whose race is still to come, the Home page shows a card for today: the race and how long until it, today's session large (or Rest day), the next session, this week's distance against the plan, and the coach's latest note while it is less than three days old.

Done and Skipped on the card mark today's session. Tap the card to open the whole plan. If you have more than one plan, a pinned one is shown first.

Garmin and Apple HealthCopy Anchor Link

Niles reads Strava only. Garmin, Apple Watch and most other devices sync to Strava, so connecting Strava covers them.