My Running Profile

I told an AI chat bot

I'm aged 59, 1.85m tall and weight 79kg. I've run 40-60km a week on mostly technical terrain for 10 years.

In 2023 I ran in 5 Ultras all between 60km and 103km - all had between 2000 and 4500m of evelation. My average pace was 10:30 mins/km.

and asked it to

Give me a training plan for my next 65km and 3500m of vert race in 6 weeks.

It suggested that

I do a couple of 2000m vert sessions a week and back off to 1000-1500m for recovery.

Hmmm.... I'll get right on it :emojiWTF:

I told it I had a sore knee after the run, I suggested ice & rest and take a break to recover... the bleedin' obvious.

Then a sore toe - it gave me three canned responses from any generic medical website.

It's first response never mentioned cross training, so I asked about it, and of course it responded with half a dozen paragraphs of Cross Training is good for you, do it.

Whenever I need confirmation about anything I now know where to ask. This time I knew the right answers already and what was missing.

The issue arises when I don't actually know the right answers. It will happily produce some plausible sounding responses, but I'll never be quite sure it's the truth, whole truth and nothing but....

In summary, if you're a beginner, it might tell you something useful, but you'll never be certain. And if you're pretty well versed in running, it'll happily tell you bits of what you already know.

In fact, if you've ever published anything about coaching or training in the interwebs, it's probably regurgitating that right back at you.