The Program is our 14-week Fall & Spring Marathon training experience in partnership with our friends at ASICS.
Last Fall, we had 100 athletes participating in our Live Program here in Brooklyn and thousands from around the world who took part in our Virtual Program. From first-time finishers to personal bests, The Program helped guide athletes to set new goals and methodically work towards them over the course of four months.
With the upcoming Spring Program (sign-up today), we're excited to announce a major update to the training experience...
Introducing, The Bandit Program iOS App.
The Bandit Program App is the new and dynamic home for your training plan.
Now, let's discuss three things... How it works, what it's not, and why we made it.
How it works:
In January, the app will be live in the App Store. You'll download it and go through a very short onboarding flow. We ask what race you're running, your goal finish time, and what your weekly mileage range is. After that, a personalized and course-specific training plan will be generated for you.
Once your training plan begins (14 weeks from race day), you'll have access to four separate menu items: home, week, coach, and profile.
- Home: Announcements + your guidance for today + a preview of tomorrow.
- Week: A look at everything you've got slated for the week. You can re-order your workouts and look ahead to future weeks.
- Coach: An AI-powered assistant that can answer all of your fundamental marathon training and racing questions. We're actively training the model on a deep library of expert knowledge to improve it over time.
- Profile: Your paces live here. A workout might call for Interval 1 Pace, or Tempo Pace, or Half-Marathon Pace. Our proprietary formula calculates what your paces are based on your goal marathon time.
What it's not:
Among other reasons we'll get into next, The Bandit Program app was born out of a desire to streamline your relationship with your training plan. Make it easier to access and follow along. That being said, here's what the app is not:
- It does not integrate with watches.
- It does not have a social component.
- It does not have a guided voice system.
We wanted to keep the app as focused as possible, especially given the other great apps out there that already do those other things.
Why we made it:
The app was created for a long list of reasons, but they can be summarized into a few key points:
- We wanted to enhance the overall experience with The Program by putting a dynamic training plan in the palm of your hands
- We wanted to make world-class tools & guidance accessible and free to the world to inspire more running and goal-setting
- We wanted to explore our mission to Evolve Running in the digital world
- We wanted to experiment with how AI can serve runners, keeping ethics and a love for running front & center
- We wanted a better way to serve the Bandit community of goal-oriented runners for their most important moments
This goes without saying, but it's important to note—nothing can or will ever replace the value of a human coach. AI is amazing, but can only get you so far... Real-world experience, motivations & emotional support, personalization & adaptability, physical assessment & technique help, etc. are unlocks only a human coach can provide.
This is version zero
In app development, there's a term called "MVP" (minimum viable product). It means the best way to launch an app is by making the most basic possible version of it. This approach protects you from building (and then later un-building) tons of features that no one asked for or wants. The Bandit Program app is an MVP and we are looking forward to listening closely to user feedback and developing new features and fixes that are asked for. Bear with us while we iterate over the next several months and years.
Join the Spring Program
The road to Boston & London start now...
Let's get started.
