Why I built Peak Days

Finding time to train

I'm 40. I have a family, and a busy job.

So my training happens in the early mornings before the house wakes up, in lunch breaks, and in the weekend hours I've carefully negotiated. If you run like that too, you know how it feels: the time you get is precious, and every minute of it should go into the run itself.

Not long ago I ran my first marathons, and after that my first long trail races. The marathons were great, but the trail races stayed with me: hours of climbing and descending, my head finally quiet, my legs sore for days afterwards. I wanted more of that — more trails, longer races, and a proper way to get ready for them.

Five separate apps

Everything I needed existed, just not in one place.

So I went looking for tools, like every runner does. I found them, spread across five apps: my training plan in one, my routes in another, my sleep and recovery numbers in a third, a fourth for the maps and a fifth to review it all afterwards. None of them really talked to my watch.

Every run started with ten minutes of administration: check the plan, find a route, export a file, guess whether today was a day to push or to back off, and hope the watch ended up with the right thing on it. The little time I had was going into admin instead of running.

I never found an app that did all of this in one place, so I built it myself.

One place

Peak Days puts all of it in one place.

1. 01
   The plan adapts to my real runs If I miss a session or run further than planned, the week adjusts to what actually happened, not to what I intended to do.
2. 02
   Every session gets a trail route from my own door I don't have to search route libraries. It suggests the right distance and the right amount of climbing, starting where I am.
3. 03
   It checks my morning readiness It looks at how I slept and recovered before I lace up. Some days the plan pushes, and some days it honestly tells me to take it easier.
4. 04
   It all lands on my Apple Watch by itself The workout and the route are both on my wrist, without exporting, syncing or cross-checking. I just walk out the door.

One look in the morning is enough, and then the only thing left to do is run.

What happens next

It started as a tool I built for myself.

I built Peak Days because I needed it, and it held up. Then friends saw it on my watch, wanted it on theirs, and kept asking about it. That is really how this started: a tool that worked well enough that people wanted it too.

So now I'm turning it into a real product, step by step, with a small group of early runners who train the way I do.