Method
Pace targets come from a recent race, using VDOT. Training load is tracked with CTL, ATL and TSB. This page explains each model and when the plan changes.
VDOT sets the paces. CTL, ATL, and TSB say if the week is too fat. Readiness can cut Thursday. The feasibility check can refuse the race. A bad week is rebuilt before you see it.
VDOT is a running-fitness score from Jack Daniels. One recent race or time trial sets your easy, marathon, threshold, interval, and repetition paces. A soft race gives you soft paces.
Jack Daniels, Daniels' Running Formula. The same VDOT table.
CTL is a 42-day exponentially weighted average of daily training stress: longer-term fitness. ATL is the same over 7 days: recent fatigue. TSB is CTL minus ATL. Positive is fresh, negative is carrying fatigue. Each run counts as running TSS: hours × intensity factor² × 100, where intensity factor is your threshold pace divided by the pace you ran.
Banister impulse-response model (1975). After a hard Tuesday the numbers have already moved before Thursday starts.
Readiness starts at 100. Short sleep, HRV below your own 7-day baseline, and a resting heart rate above your baseline each take points off a number you can see. Low number, and Thursday gets cut or moved.
You can see every point that came off. No one else owns the call.
Before any plan is built, three terms are computed and the largest one wins: the minimum weeks the distance itself requires, the weeks needed to raise your weekly volume at a safe growth rate, and the weeks needed to progress your long run to race-ready. If that total exceeds the time you have, the plan is not built — you are told why, and what would work instead.
The free race reality check runs this exact computation, so it can never clear a race the plan builder would block.
Before the generated schedule reaches you, it's validated for zone distribution, weekly load progression, constraint fit (available days, long run day), and taper shape. A plan that fails validation is rebuilt, not shown.
Hard limits: no single run longer than 110% of your longest run in the previous 30 days (115% in peak and taper weeks), and projected acute:chronic load kept at or below 1.30.
Sources
Updated
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