How HARDN Works — Training Plans That Read Your Data

Every other app gives you a schedule and hopes for the best. HARDN watches what you actually do — and adjusts your training and your nutrition every single week. From sign-up to finish line, here's how it works.

01 — Training plans built on science, adjusted on reality

HARDN's plans are built on periodization — structured around your goal race, your current fitness, and the weeks between now and the start line. The plan does not stay frozen once it's generated.

  1. Add your race — set your goal race and training start date. HARDN builds a periodized plan with build, peak, and taper phases timed to land you at race day with form in the right window.
  2. Connect Strava — HARDN pulls your activity history and retroactively matches completed runs to your plan. The miles you already ran count.
  3. Run your week — every Strava upload is read: mileage, vert, pace, heart rate. HARDN tracks what actually happened versus what was planned.
  4. Monday: it adjusts — every Monday the plan recalibrates based on last week's data. Overreached, underperformed, got injured, or two weeks from race day — the plan responds.

02 — Three numbers. Everything else follows.

Under the hood HARDN tracks the same three metrics pro coaches use, and uses them to drive every plan adjustment, every nutrition target, and every coaching message.

CTL — Chronic Training Load

Your fitness. A 42-day rolling average of training stress. It moves slowly — you can't fake it in a week and you can't lose it overnight. The most honest number in the system.

ATL — Acute Training Load

Your fatigue. A 7-day rolling average of recent training stress. A big back-to-back weekend sends it climbing fast. A rest week drops it just as quickly.

TSB — Training Stress Balance

Your form. CTL minus ATL. Negative TSB means you're carrying more fatigue than your fitness base can absorb. Positive TSB means you're fresh. On race morning you want TSB between +5 and +25.

03 — Monday recalibration

Every Monday morning HARDN compares your planned week against what Strava recorded — then adjusts the plan forward. No manual updates. No coach required. Overreached → next week pulls back. Underperformed → volume redistributes forward without guilt. Injury logged → recovery mode triggers automatically. Race approaching → intensity tapers and TSB climbs into race-ready range.

04 — Adaptive nutrition

Your calorie and carb targets are not fixed numbers you set at signup. They recalibrate weekly, driven by training load, Strava calories burned, race proximity, body weight, and injury log.

05 — Crew & pacer dashboard

One shareable link. No logins. No app downloads. Your crew and pacers see live GPS, aid-station ETAs, per-stop crew instructions, cutoff buffer at a glance, pacer segment details, and auto-push updates. The runner runs. The crew executes. Nobody guesses.

06 — 72-hour pre-race checklist

The 72 hours before the gun is where races are quietly won or lost. HARDN turns it into a structured countdown auto-built from your race details, your gear, and the forecast: 72H carb load begins, 48H gear lay-out, 24H logistics lock-in, race AM execution mode.

07 — HARDN vs the others

TrainingPeaks is excellent at training analysis. Strava built the best running community alive. UltraSignup gets you to the start line. HARDN is the only platform built for what happens between the gun and the finish — adaptive plans, nutrition tied to training load, GPX-aware race fuel planning, crew dashboard with live GPS, cutoff buffer math, and injury-triggered plan protection.