The RunDot App: Take a Tour

Carrie Tollefson: Hey everybody, welcome to the RunDot podcast. Today is a special day for the show. We have two members of the RunDot Innovation Team and thank goodness, cause I am not part of that team. So we're gonna give you a demo of how the RunDot app works. If you are already training with RunDot, you will learn a lot of why the app is the way it is. And if you listen to our show or you watch it on YouTube, you or even if you're not training with RunDot maybe this will give you that poke that you need to download the app and give it a shot so if you're listening to us great but if we'd really like you to go on over to youtube and check us out there because you're to get to see how to work the app okay our guests today are dr B.J. Leeper and coach Ken Presutti both of these guys have used RunDot and TriDot athletes and coaches themselves. But they also work closely with the software team that designs RunDot. Welcome guys! How you doing?

Ken Presutti: It's great to be here. Thank you so much for having us. Excited for this.

B.J. Leeper: Thank you so much for having us. Excited for it. Yeah. thanks, Carrie. It'll be fun walking through, riffing on it. Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. Well, I am pumped to have you guys and I just want to know if you guys can just take a quick second and tell us a little bit about you. And so the athletes just get to know you a little bit more. What do you do with RunDot? B.J., why don't we start with you?

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, so B.J. Leeper, I've been with RunDot and the Predictive Fitness team for almost five years. I'm the Director of Performance Science and work closely with the software development team as product owner. So my background is actually in physical therapy. So I've got a lot of extensive work with runners and triathletes and working with injuries and injury prevention. I've got a soft spot in my heart for all those runners out there that are working back from injury. And the thing that I've loved about this product since I started was just how adaptive it is to our athletes and how it really helps focus on efficiency with training and really cutting out those junk miles because we see it all the time on the injury side. So that's why it's near and dear to my heart since I've been working on this project.

Carrie Tollefson: I love it. How about you Ken?

Ken Presutti: Awesome. I've been with the RunDot team for just a little bit over the year, actually working with the team that's building the product. But I have been a RunDot and Try Dot coach since 2019 and an endurance sports coach for, my gosh, can't even, I don't know if I can come back that far anymore. I've also been, I am a master certified Chi running instructor. And so, in Chi running, we're very focused on form and energy efficiency and preventing injury. And to B.J.'s point, what I really love about the RunDot app and why I chose to move in that direction as a coach was that I really, can focus with the athletes on aspects of their form. The warmup drills that RunDot prescribes are exactly what I was giving my athletes when I was even coming from a Chi running perspective. And then it really helps me stay focused on the volume and the intensities that the athletes are putting in so that their ramp is appropriate. So I've got them covered from a form standpoint, I got them covered from a biomechanics standpoint, and then I've got them covered from an appropriate ramp standpoint.

Carrie Tollefson: That is so cool that you guys. both have this history with the body and you know what the body, mean as coaches, as athletes, yes, but also you've studied it differently. But then you also have like the tech side, which is so foreign to me and I'm really excited to get to know you both a little bit more. But I just have to introduce myself too in case someone is new to the show. I'm Carrie Tollefson. I'm an Olympian broadcaster and your guide to the world of RunDot at least the podcast. We treat each show like any good workout. We'll start with a warm up question. We're gonna settle into our main set questions and then we'll wind things down by having our coaches answer an audience question on the cool down. Lots of good stuff today. So let's get after it. our warmup question. You guys ready for this? Because it's a good one. Whether running short or running long, most runners have tried using energy gels or energy chews to fuel their training. As a warm up question today, what is your all time favorite flavor for an energy chew or gel? Kat, do you want to start this one?

Ken Presutti: Yeah, absolutely. It's got to be the cliff blocks the salted watermelon. It's the go-to every single time.

Carrie Tollefson: A salted watermelon? I have not tried that one yet.

Ken Presutti: Yes, and maybe I don't know what it is. It's just so much better than all of the other flavors. And maybe it's that little extra salty. Like I like salty when I'm working out. And so I think that's what gets me through all those long events.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. Yeah. Mmm. I like it. B.J., how about you?

B.J. Leeper: It's funny because when I first got into running, was my wife talking me into a marathon. We did the Twin Cities Marathon back in, I think it was 2007. And at that time, I don't know if you guys remember, I don't know if they still even do it, but Jelly Belly made Sport Beans, which was like, you know, it was this entry into the performance fuel scene. my wife talked me into\... running this marathon with her and she said you could try these Jelly Belly Sport Beans and that was like my carrot that she was dangling to get me into it and it was like the lemon lime flavor has always been my favorite. So even going all the way back multiple years, almost 20 years now to the Jelly Belly Sport Beans, like that was my foray into like taking a chew or gel or anything like that for running. And still to this day, it would be. the textbook lemon-lime. I'm kind of a plain Jane person, but lemon-lime is my thing.

Carrie Tollefson: with you. I like the fruity tastes like just give me something that wakes me up a little bit. I don't really love the chocolatey flavors during a workout or a race. I'd rather keep that for after but I do love the Jelly Bellies. But you know what I heard? Randy Zuckerberg is gonna be on the See Tally Run podcast, my podcast that I started a long time ago and she was just talking about how she likes to eat peeps. She doesn't even have all the fancy stuff. mean, you know, with that name, she could have anything she wants, right? But she likes good old peeps. She said there's a good balance of sugar and carbs and all the things. So that might be a new thing that someone wants to try. I know. We are, definitely. There's all kinds of peeps.

B.J. Leeper: Wow.

Ken Presutti: I think we're in the peak season as well. So\... It's Easter basket.

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, it's peep season right now.

Carrie Tollefson: Dr. Pepper, there's like all kinds of good things. But hey audience, we want to hear from you as well. We'll ask this question all the RunDot social media accounts. I'm curious to hear what is your favorite flavor for energy gels or chews? Find us on all of our socials and let us know. Okay guys, we're heading into the main set now. This is where we're get down dirty on the app. So the first question, what\... Do you guys think about this app first and foremost? I mean, there's a new version this year. So I am on the app for the first time. I just got my account set up and I'm excited to learn from you all. Before you guys show us the app, talk a little bit about the innovation team behind it, the new app and all of that jazz.

Ken Presutti: Yeah, we've got such a strong, passionate team, which is fantastic. And the majority of the team, they're also endurance athletes. So I think they really get and understand the needs of athletes and come in and do their best every single day to help meet those needs and get others moving and excited and accomplishing their goals. So never before have I worked with with a company in the innovation space where everybody is so passionate about what they do and it's just so refreshing and amazing.

Carrie Tollefson: I think it's so fun that you are all helping people achieve their goals and it might not be to win the race, it might not even be to run a race, it's just to get out the door. know, B.J., I want to learn a little bit about what's different with the new app versus the older app and why did you decide to have a new design to it? Just kind of all the behind the scenes with this newer version of RunDot.

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, I mean, like Ken said, we have a lot of our software developers and people on our innovation team that are endurance athletes themselves. And it's pretty cool to have that type of team. And I think largely we've, you know, since RunDot first came out, I think in the spring of 2023, we've kind of been having this internal conversation for several years about, you know, how our technology is so vast and so great, but our technology is truly the guide. And the athlete is really kind of the hero of the story. So when we've recently sought out to redesign RunDot and put out the new RunDot app. It really was centered around this focus of how can we continue that message of that lens of looking at our product where the athlete is the hero of the story. And our technology is just trying to come alongside and guide that athlete through whatever journey they're on, whatever their goals are and making that. is clear and evident in our product as we can.

Carrie Tollefson: What is the big difference between the two? Or what are the big differences?

B.J. Leeper: I mean, from my perspective, there's a lot, right? I think one of the biggest things is leveraging the modern technology. our technology in the world is just moving at an astronomical rate. And so we wanted to make sure we leveraged our new technology that's at our fingertips with this modern app look and feel. And that was the big impetus for also moving in this direction of redesigning and\... making this new RunDot mobile app. Outside of that, there's so many new features as far as just improved flexibility, navigation. We've got new social feature elements because as we know, especially with running, it's such a community sport and there's just such a camaraderie and we wanted to bring that into the product as much as we could. So there's some new social features that you'll find with the new RunDot mobile app that's\... that's really unique and cool that our older app did not have.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, cool. Okay. Well, okay, and you wanna we're gonna have you show us but yeah chime in on that

Ken Presutti: Thanks. Absolutely. I was just going to add to, think that again, one of the benefits of our team is we are all endurance athletes. We are passionate about helping people succeed in endurance sports. However, I think sometimes we think with the mindset of someone who's been in the sport a long time. And I think our original version of RunDot, while it was designed really well and it really helped people succeed, if you were a little bit newer to the sport, there were some things that maybe you didn't quite understand. And so we went back with a new user experience mindset for the new version of the app. And we said, what can we take from what we learned with our first version of the app that's serving our athlete population really well right now? And then how do we make it more accessible for somebody who's new, for somebody who's never been taught how to run or somebody who just thinks, what do I need a program for? I just go outside and run? And so making sure that the usability was there and that people really understood how we were leading them was key. And so I think that's probably one of the biggest differentiators in the new app is that whether you are a seasoned athlete or you are putting your shoes on for the very first time, you're gonna understand what to do, why to do it, and have the tools that you need to succeed.

Carrie Tollefson: also how much is it like when you guys are having those meetings? I mean there are people like me that have been running a very long time and use the old paper logs and all of you know get a piece of paper that is the calendar for the month from my coach. Like how do you guys talk about that to not intimidate somebody that is a little nervous about AI and all the technology? Is that a big conversation that has to be had with you all?

Ken Presutti: Yeah, think certainly, right? And we've got a really great team of user experience experts that go out there and they talk with athletes all the time and really understand what it is the athlete might be apprehensible about. And then they can bring that to us so that we're able to actually build the technology to very much support the athlete on their journey.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. Well, Ken, I think you're going to be the one that shows us, right? You're going to pull up your screen. Thank goodness it's not me.

Ken Presutti: Yeah. Absolutely. Let's take a quick look at what this looks like here.

Carrie Tollefson: Okay, I think we, let's start with like the dashboard and just, you know, see if you can pull that up for us.

Ken Presutti: So when you launch the app for the very first time, this is what you're going to see. And this is a run from this past Friday. It will actually launch you into the current day. So I'm gonna just scroll to that today when we're recording. This is Monday. I can see that I've got an easy run scheduled for me today. It's only 25 minutes long. I know what the weather is gonna be when this run is planned at 7 a.m. Now I'm gonna update that because obviously we are past 7 a.m. and I have not done my run yet. Been super busy.

B.J. Leeper: weather is going to be when this run is planned at 7am. Now I'm going to update that because obviously we are past 7am and I have not done my run yet. I've been super busy.

Carrie Tollefson: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Ken Presutti: But what's really great about this is that when I open up the workout itself, and if right now I'm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so I'm not gonna see a lot of changes when I update this time, but let's say it's the middle of summer and

B.J. Leeper: But what's really great about this is that when I open up the workout itself and right now I'm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So I'm not going to see a lot of changes when I update this time, but let's say it's the middle of summer and

Ken Presutti: it's the difference between 7 a.m. and 12 p.m. is maybe gonna be 20 degrees. The system is gonna recognize that. and it's actually gonna adjust my targeted pacing and my targeted heart rate goals so that I can continue to keep this as an easy run and I don't overdo it. Now, I'm assuming because we're on a running podcast that a lot of folks might know the difference between easy runs and hard runs and the different energy zones. But even though we make those assumptions, a lot of times people still don't, right? And so the biggest\... The biggest thing that I notice when I am working with my athletes is that they don't go easy enough on their easy days. They don't go hard enough on their hard days. And being able to have RunDot provide updates for what the target pacing should be helps them make sure that they're going to have the physiological responses that they want to get out of their training and therefore make the right progress faster. So it's really cool that we're able to figure out where are you. What are the temperatures like for your specific physiology? What zones do you need to run in? What paces should you be at? Where do we want your heart rate? And then that's gonna give me exactly the targets that I should have. And then to make sure that whether you're working with a coach or you're a self-coach athlete, how do you know if you hit the target and how do you get better next time around? So I'm gonna go to one of my workouts from Friday. This was a long run that I did. And you see there's a TrainX score that's associated with this. I hit this pretty well. I'm a little bit proud of myself. I got a 95 on that. And I'm going to open that up and you can see in here, it's going to show me where I ran. It's going to show me the heart rate zones, the pacing zones. I can zoom into these and really take a look at what my cadence was during that if I wanted to. But at the end of the day, it's pouring all that information for me. and it's telling me I scored a 95 out of 100. So I know that I did pretty well on that. Now, let's say that I didn't do so well. Maybe I actually went too hard or maybe I went too slow. That score might be something more like a 70 or a 65. And so that's a really good reflection point that, hey, I didn't do something that I was supposed to do on my plan. Let me dive into that, be a little introspective, figure out what that was so that I can learn better. and move forward on my next workout. And so that feedback loop is so important for athletes, whether you're coached or uncoached. And so we really try to put that front and center for our

Carrie Tollefson: Ken, this is all in well, right? Like, it's so cool, all this stuff, but do ever get mad at the app? not\... No one wants to see a lower number!

Ken Presutti: Yeah, I mean, of course, like I open the app and I'm like, what the heck and I'm ready to throw my phone. But then I got I've got to say, wait a minute, it's not the app's fault that I didn't do the workout that I was supposed to do. Right. And so I try to be a little bit more introspective and really understand what could I bring to the table better. It's just like when my coach tells me, right, Ken, you missed three of the four intervals that you were supposed to have. I don't go punch him in the face. I say, thank you for that feedback. Let me think about how I will apply that to my fourth interval. So that's where I

Carrie Tollefson: Right. Yeah, there has been a couple times where, you know, coach probably was a little scared with me. I got a little ticked off at him, but I don't know if I would throw the phone. So yeah.

Ken Presutti: Yeah, you're only hurting yourself, right? but it's great. And that's the real key is that we want to build in these feedback mechanisms. So whether you want to dive super deep into your cadence and your ground contact time and your heart rate variability or your heart rate drift and how that looks on each interval, or you want to say, you know what, I don't know. what any of that means, I just need to know, am I moving in the right direction or am I not moving in the right direction? We've got those tools built into the app for you. whether you're that advanced athlete or you're just getting started, we really try to provide that feedback so that you can learn and grow with the app.

Carrie Tollefson: Mm-hmm B.J. what are your thoughts like when you're looking and obviously we know you know everything about it. So What else do you want to tell us about the app?

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, one thing here is you guys are hitting on the TrainX score, those little gamification elements that we've had within the product for some time now, everybody's a little different with those. The type A athlete will definitely care and definitely get frustrated if they don't hit that on the spot with the 100. But I remember one of the big things as we look at these screens here, Ken sharing, and specifically showing the temperature and humidity. Of the planned session and then getting that feedback. Like one of the things that highlights, and it was really one of the big aha moments I had when I was an athlete, even using the product before I started working on the team was the technology of what we call environment norm or environment normalization, which basically takes into account the temperature and humidity and elevation of where you're training. So not only can we help you dial in what your paces should be for the the projected weather on the day. But the place I had the biggest aha moment with this technology came way back when I think 2014 was when we first developed the technology or when predictive fitness first developed that environment normalization technology. And I was living in Kansas city at the time. And I remember I was really getting into running. was kind of one of my things. Like I mentioned, I'd just done some marathon work. with my wife and I was really getting into it and I'd met Jeff Booher, the CEO and founder who had just started working with this technology to help improve training and optimize training. And I remember being at a track and I was feeling really fit, like I'd been working with the training for some time. And I remember thinking that, okay, I was gonna just knock my 5K threshold test out of the park. Cause I'd been really, Committed and I and I got to where I finished the run I saw the raw score on my watch and I was like 30 seconds slower than what I had anticipated I would I would hit I was trying to hit this goal and when I got home, I plugged the data in to the program and I was super frustrated I was feeling defeated like I was 30 seconds slower than where I had hoped to be And when the program actually took the data and normalized it based on the environment using the temperature humidity of the day, I actually had an improved threshold test compared to where I was based on the technology that we applied to it. And so those are the things that, you know, will give you those aha moments when you're using the app and in having that be in a gamified way, like attributed to TrainX scores. And then not only that, but showing your projected. pacing strategy based on your environment that you're in. It's just so cool how you can leverage that and actually see the improvement, whereas otherwise I would have been defeated and just trying to push myself way too hard.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, kind of takes the guesswork out. So let's kind of dig a little bit into what we see before, during, and after a workout. Can you do that for us,

Ken Presutti: Yeah, absolutely. So let me show you again that workout that we've got scheduled for today since I haven't yet done that. So this is the home screen when we come in and then you can move into what we call the daily workout screen by clicking on the card and that's gonna open it up. You're gonna see the warmup that you're scheduled for and you're gonna see your main set. So here, this is all zone two. And if I look at my zone targets right here, I can see that my zone two is 11.05 to 9.45 pace. If I open it up, I can also see, I'm sorry, I said pace. That's obviously heart rate. It's a 108 to 139 heart rate because most of our\...

Carrie Tollefson: But you did, you were showing us your pace in zone two, as you screened before, right? Yep, so that was right. So that was your pace. This is now your heart rate. Yeah, yeah, you were right.

Ken Presutti: I was Yes, exactly. So, my fault. Thank you for keeping me on pace here, on target. I tried that, that was a horrible try. I did not mean, pun not intended.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah! Yeah. That's, I love it. You're good.

Ken Presutti: And then these would again update based on, as B.J. was saying, my environment and the time of day that I'm doing this. So I can see that. I can make this an indoor run. I can make this an outdoor run. Pacing and heart rate goals might change a little bit based on, again, the heart rate or based on the indoor or the outdoor selection. If my coach left me a message, those would also show up here if I have a coach. Now, not all of our athletes are coached, but this is where they come in. And if I had a question about the workout, I could pop in and I could ask the coach something like, should I fuel during this? And if I send that off, then the coach is going to be notified. Should I fuel? And they will write back and let me know exactly what they want me to do. And then the really cool thing and one of the new features that we've built into this app that we didn't have in our previous app is this play button right here in the middle. And so if I click that play button, it's then going to give me the option to do this easy run that I just looked at and adjusted, or maybe just do my own run that's not necessarily associated with this. So if I click on this, it's going to allow us to execute this workout using the app. So if there's somebody that is new to running and they don't yet have a fancy GPS watch, or they don't have a heart rate monitor, or they don't have any other way to record the run, they can record it straight from the app. If they do have some of those other fancy technologies like a heart rate strap or a foot pod or a smart treadmill, Those will also show up on here so that they can connect to those devices and execute using this. So a lot of times what I'll do, especially when I'm on the treadmill, I'll pull this up, put it out on the treadmill, and it guides me through the whole workout, when I should be picking up the pace, when I need to be recovering. I could turn on audio coaching. So there's an audio coach in the background that lets me know how I'm doing, if I'm in zone or out of zone. and it just makes the run a little bit more engaging and it helps with that feedback that I talked about earlier. Hey, why didn't you get a high score on this one? Why you didn't do the intent of the workout? Well, now I've got a coach who's working me through each step of that workout, helping me to achieve the desired outcome that I am putting into that session or trying to get from that session. So it's really cool and a lot of fun to use.

Carrie Tollefson: So quick question, I haven't used it very much yet. I'm just getting all, I was just kind of running and working through some things. Now I've got my app. When you have your audio coaching on, can you still listen to music?

Ken Presutti: Yeah, absolutely. And so that's actually what I like the best about it is that when I go out for an outdoor run, I will still use the audio coach and you can adjust how often you want the coach to chime in or how little you want the coach to chime in. So I try to not carry things in my hand. I've got a pouch for my phone. I've got my headphones on, but now I don't even have to look at a watch. just have, I've got my music going. I've got a audio coach who is helping me understand if I'm on target, if I'm off target, if I'm coming into the next interval, when it's time to pick it up again and go. So I love it. And the other question that I get asked a lot of times too is, should I still wear my watch or should I still run my GPS? I think it all depends on your trust levels. And what I mean is I think that as athletes, we think that the GPS watches are so good that we live and die by the numbers that are on there. But honestly, the technology in today's phones, the accelerometers that exist, the GPS receivers, they're actually more detailed than what we get on a lot of our watches and even watches that are just a few years old. So I definitely encourage folks, you know, Take that leap of faith, use the app to record your workouts, right? And see how it compares. Because I was shocked the first time that I used mine, and I was, you know, always consider myself kind of a watch snob. I'm like, wow, the data on this is really good. We're not dropping satellite signals. There are far more data points that are recorded with each and every run.

Carrie Tollefson: Mm. And then quick question for some people that might not know this or really do not get like phone technology and things like that. They can leave their Wi-Fi on, right? They just head out the door and then that'll pick it up, you know, and wherever the internet is picked up. But we don't have, you don't have to do anything in your settings. You just start your app. open it up and hit go.

Ken Presutti: Yeah. That's right. That's right. And I often run on this little trail down by my house where there actually is no cell service or Wi-Fi signals. And it sounds like it's in the middle of nowhere. It's not. There's actually a lot of traffic on that road and whatnot, but there's no cell service there. And so when I run, it still records the entire workout based off of the GPS signals from the satellites. And then when I get back home and I connect to Wi-Fi or as soon as I ping a cell tower with that 5G signal or 4G signal, the run automatically uploads and I'm able to go in and get my post run analysis. And then most importantly, post run analysis, maybe it's share button so I can send it to Instagram so all my friends can see that I did my run.

Carrie Tollefson: That's great. I love that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I was going to say that. So yes, I love, or Strava or whatever, it connects to all of it. Yeah, okay. Well, let's talk a little bit about what we see after the run on all the screens. VJ, do you want to take that?

Ken Presutti: at the platform of your choice.

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, and I was just going to highlight one thing to piggyback off of the in-app execution feature here is that, you know, I thought originally when we were designing this product, I was like, well, you know, most athletes that love their GPS watches, myself included, I don't know if I'd ever used that in-app execution feature as much. But I find myself, like Ken alluded to earlier, I find myself really loving it for indoor runs. I'm up here in Northwest Montana, so I'm on the treadmill a lot during the year, just inside. And it's really actually nice for me to have a visual where I can pull it up on my phone, record from my phone, and actually have the visual of the segment intervals that are coming up. Some athletes that are maybe\... familiar with cycling, maybe they've used Zwift or leveraged that even for their running just to have a visual of what they're looking at when they're training. This provides something similar to that. So it's kind of a nice enhancement that we've added that we're only continuing to develop. So it's very cool. But yeah, then to Ken's point, once you've completed your session, we've got all kinds of metrics. So we can look at all the data that you would you would normally get from your GPS watch. So in this case, if we've done an in-app execution sequence, you record it, you save it, you can see all the data, you can expand the charts to analyze it however you wish. But then as we scroll up to the top, like where Ken was showing earlier, we've got some of the gamification elements where you can see how you scored with your TrainX. We have what's called execution points or XP, which kind of shows the value of that session based on not only how you executed, but how much of a priority was that session that you just hit? Was it a long session? Was it one of the high intensity sessions that had a lot of interval work? And you can see based on the XP value what you gained from that session just again from a gamification element. So yeah, it's, it's, everybody's a little bit different. Some people love to look at all the numbers. We provide all the numbers. Some people just love to show that they, executed the workout and they just want to share with the world, you know, share their workout through their socials. We have that capability now. So whatever, whatever it is that you love to do, if you just love to show that the workout was completed and see it on your calendar, like your, training diary.

Carrie Tollefson: Mm-hmm. Hmm, that's really neat. And then if you're going to run a race too, like how do you put that in? I mean, it obviously it attracts all of our training, but it also tracks our races. So we might have to manually put that in.

Ken Presutti: So all of your races can be added from within the app. We've got a number of races that already have course data associated with them. So the Pittsburgh half marathon here, the Indianapolis half marathon. I should stop doing so many halves. It's time for a full, I think. I just realized that.

Carrie Tollefson: Okay. A half? I don't know, the half is pretty fun.

Ken Presutti: Yeah, for sure. But here's just an easy section, right? 5K, 10K, half marathon, marathon, ultra marathon. You can select your distance. Again, there's the marathon, as I'm saying, I should probably look at. And there's just a number of different races that we've got out there right now. And this will use our RaceX technology. It'll help you come up with a race strategy and a race execution plan. give you some predicted times. I'm not gonna walk through the whole flow here, but you get the idea. I put in the date. Pretty self-explanatory, exact.

Carrie Tollefson: It's pretty self-explanatory. Yeah. I love that it's easy. I think that that's a big thing, you know? Like, I don't want things to be hard. I don't want it to take a long time to enter anything. You know, I just want to kind of click and go.

Ken Presutti: Yes, exactly. And then one other fun piece of this too, I know if this is easy or just fun or engagement, but we do have a new social section. So if you pop in here, you can see all of the friends that you follow and the activities that they're doing. You can come in and you can give a thumbs up or any emoji that you wanna give. Maybe it's the strength emoji. and just making sure that you're keeping your friends accountable and engaged. Runners are also able to create their own groups. So you'll see in here, I've got a group of Coach Ken's athletes and then RunDot coaches. So if I click on RunDot coaches, all these other coaches that I work with at RunDot, any of their activities will show up in here. see. Jeremy, see Brady, who's always on it, hogging up the whole feed. But it gives you an opportunity or the ability to just organize your friends together. So I'll probably set up a group for all of my friends that are running the Pittsburgh Half Marathon and we'll encourage each other, cheer each other on, maybe give each other a little bit of crap when we're not doing our long runs. Also even, no, no, we would never do that. And then we'll also probably use that space to plan different events during race weekend. So after the race, this is where we're going for happy hour. This is where we're going to go to sub great finishing, all of those types of things that you might want to do through a social network.

Carrie Tollefson: Ha ha! Mm. Yeah, and you can race each other. looks like kind of hold each other accountable. There's a leaderboard. There's other things on there.

Ken Presutti: Exactly. And we're working on rolling out these features now too. So the leaderboards aren't there quite yet, but we are going to be building those out in terms of how many miles are we per week or what is your train X score? Because it's not just about miles. It's so much more than miles, right? So how do you look at some of those other feedback mechanisms so that you do the right training right? And then milestones too, right? So who just finished their race? Who just had their best 5K, 10K? who just had their best week.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, I mean, think that's the best part about all of this is that there's this community. I mean, the app is awesome. We get all of our data and all of that stuff given back to us. But also like this is it's more than just an app. There's a family. There's a community behind it. Your friends are there. He coaches. It's pretty cool.

B.J. Leeper: think that's the key and why we wanted to bring more social elements into the app is that many of us that got into the sport just love the community and that's really what gets us hooked. And I think the ability to kind of bring in that vibe into the product, any way you can do that. It's obviously not the same as being in person with people, but when you're operating in a virtual world as many of us are, it does create that feeling. And so as much as we can recreate that feeling, that's what we want.

Carrie Tollefson: So kind of a quick question here, or maybe it isn't, but you know, I love to do workouts with my dad on the treadmill next to me because we can do our own pace, we can kind of do our own thing. Can you do that with run-dot? Can you do the same workout at the same time with someone? And not necessarily do you need to see what they're doing, but is there a way, like, can you figure that out or is that something you just do afterwards?

Ken Presutti: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think you got to think about what the intent behind that might be, right? So I've got a group that we all like to do our long runs together on Sundays. And part of that whole training experience is working with that group. So we make it very simple to set the preferences for what days of the week you like to do what types of runs. So I might come in and go to my\... my settings and let's see my training preferences and just look at my actual schedule. And so here you can see my long session right now is set on Saturdays and then I've got an intense session that's set on Wednesdays. But maybe I start training with a group and we do track Tuesdays and so I want that to be my intense session. I'll move that over and make sure the intense session is there. So it's very easy to manipulate. where you want your different workouts. Now in terms of the workouts themselves, my intense day is probably gonna look a little bit different than B.J.'s intense day because we're training for two different things or maybe in B.J.'s case, not training for anything. I call them out whenever I can. So it might not be appropriate for us both to run six by, you know, six by four minutes at threshold, it might be more appropriate for him to run 10 minutes at threshold and then me to do that. But we're still at the track. We're still, we've still got that track mindset. This is an intense day and we bought our special track shoes. We're ready to go, or this is our long run day. So that's really how we would look at that. And then what I would encourage you to do is put together one of those little social groups, right? Include your dad in that little social group and then give each other thumbs up when you're in there. And then if you don't make it to the gym together one day, you can still make sure you're each being accountable and you're getting the workouts done and keep it social.

Carrie Tollefson: I really like that and I'm glad I asked it. I'm going to give myself a little pat on the back because I do think that's important. You know, there are times where you want to meet your group and there's people doing different workouts, but yet you're like, I got to come back tomorrow by myself. Well, no, you can adjust your workout in the app and you can do a hard day if if your body's supposed to go hard. That's the one thing we have to remember. If we're going to manipulate the app, we have to obviously be real with what we're doing and we can't do back to back days. and things like that, because that can cause injury.

Ken Presutti: Absolutely. And the app's gonna do its best to recognize and see your residual training stress over time. it will know, okay, we're getting into injury zone. Maybe we better back off a little bit and it'll make those updates. But you still do have flexibility to move those things around, right? And it might say, okay, if we're gonna bring that track day up, Actually, it's probably not appropriate to hit it at these many intervals. Let's back those intervals off and it'll regenerate a workout that is more appropriate.

Carrie Tollefson: And then to follow that, B.J., know, Ken hasn't done his workout yet today and he's, you know, throwing you under the bus. So let's throw him under the bus. I'm just teasing. But since he was supposed to go at 7 a.m. and we're recording this closer to 1 p.m., does he just go and update that time so then he can see all the weather elements and like what he's supposed to adjust there? Is that how you do it? You just update the time?

B.J. Leeper: Yeah. Yep. And that's the beautiful part about this is let's say you've got your predetermined times that you usually do your session at. You can set those ahead of time in your schedule preferences, but let's say you missed that time and you're doing it later in the day. You can come in as you see Ken's adjusting his workout here and you can update the time. And then based on your location, we pull in the weather elements of that time and your location. So we automatically adjust your zones for you, which is again, Another big game changer in our industry that is unparalleled, like no other product out there is doing this type of technology. It was another big aha moment I had again when performing a session, if you're choosing a time, let's say you're in a Southern climate where it gets very hot in the summer and you were going to do it originally at 7 a.m. in the coolness of the day, but then you had to push, do it after lunch and it's the heat of the day and it's a 30, 40 degree temperature swing. those are much different paces than you would have been trying to execute on earlier. And if you would have just kept the same pacing strategy, you would likely blow yourself up just trying to hit paces that you had no business hitting. So it's a big deal to make sure you're dialed in and the technology is very easy to adjust and make sure you're dialed in.

Carrie Tollefson: That's great. I mean, I feel like we've hit so much here you guys. What is there anything else that you would like us to know? I mean really like even just when you're playing with this Ken, like you can see there's lots of other buttons to go in and kind of research and things like that. what else is there that you'd like the listeners to know? And also we would like you to remember to go over to the YouTube channel so you can see what Ken is doing on the screen as he's explaining things to us.

B.J. Leeper: One thing I would highlight as you're looking at this homepage or kind of the dashboard screen that Ken's got up is that, you know, we talk a lot about our technology and this AI technology. And one of the big differentiating factors that our product has is that we really, the system was built, the product was built to be AI. we didn't like you see in the market now, cause AI is such a hot topic. You see a lot of these bolt-on AI products where they've got just template training that's automated, but it's really not smart and adaptive. And it's basically like this bolt-on AI component to it. So when we talk about our technology, there's a lot there because we built the system to be AI. And so when you look at this homepage, Ken maybe scrolls down to the bottom, there's different widgets that give you all the insights you could ever want. But when you click into that and you may decide, don't really care about it, but if you want to explore more and really learn what we call our fit logic intelligence engine that basically is what's driving the optimization, you can click into those widgets and explore some knowledge there. So there's some learnings there where it can give you kind of a step-by-step if you want to really dissect what is really the technology doing in more layman's terms, not. not over the top, over technical, but really trying to understand like, what is this NTS score, this normalized training stress score? Like, what does it mean? Why should I care? Those things are all scripted out in this new app much better than we've ever had before. So I just want to highlight that because it's key learning that really starts to dial you into understanding why this training technology is cool and why you should care about it.

Carrie Tollefson: That is neat. That's kind of a hidden little feature there.

Ken Presutti: Yeah. And this last slide there, we manage your NTS so you can just focus on doing your workout. That's the key. You can pick it up from day one and know you're getting the right training.

Carrie Tollefson: love it. That's great. If someone has questions while they're using the app, where would you guys suggest that they go to? Is it in the app? Is there ask us now or would you say email someone? How do you? Obviously we have our coaches too.

Ken Presutti: Yeah, number one, could always hit me up on Instagram, \@coachkenp. I'd be more than happy to chat with anybody out there. But from the app, there's a questions tab. You can click on that and you can get connected directly with our support team and ask away if it's more of a technical question, right? And they're an awesome group, care passionately about our athletes and helping athletes and customers succeed. So pretty simple.

Carrie Tollefson: That's cool. All right, you guys. Well, bravo on the new run. It looks great. It's awesome. I can't wait to really dive in. I've gone on a couple runs with it, so I'm getting better at using it myself. It's been really fun so far. Are you ready for the cool down question? You can't go yet, B.J.. We have the cool down question. And actually you kind of touched on this already, but Jennifer asked us, she said, I just completed an assessment and because of the heat, my pace was way slower than usual. Now my dot score is in building when I used to be an intermediate. How can this be reversed or updated since my new paces are way too slow? B.J., do you want to take it?

B.J. Leeper: I'm ready, bring it. Yeah, it really depends. With the data that we pull in, it depends on if it was a manual entry or not. If we have data files, if your data files are synced from your assessment and your effort, we already know the environment variables from that day, the temperature, humidity, the elevation. So if we take that into account with your paces, even if they were slower, it\... the odds could be that you are actually, normalized data is much better than you might have thought. And so I think the key to that is making sure when you're plugging in, if we did not automatically detect that file and it didn't automatically sync, which it should if you're connected with the device, if you're not connected with your device and you're manually entering your data, make sure you've got the environment variables of that day appropriate. because once we have that information, we'll be able to properly prescribe your zones. And my only caveat to that is if for some reason it still is not looking correct, make sure you're looking at that assessment and verifying that all the data you have input or what we have characterized for you is correct. Yeah, there's an easy way to view and look at all the details as Ken has pulled up here and update those threshold. data points as needed.

Carrie Tollefson: Ken, did you guys say that's in the, is there something in your profile? How did you do that again?

Ken Presutti: Yeah. Yeah, so just from the homepage, it says dot score. You can click on the dot score. It's gonna show you your current dot score, which is your data optimized training score. And as B.J. said, it's going to account for all of those variabilities. And then if you click on historical, I can see my dot score has been decreasing over the past several months, just because I've been focusing maybe a little bit more on. I should say other sports, but honestly, I've focusing more on Netflix probably and\...

Carrie Tollefson: that's okay. It was winter. It was winter. Let's blame it on winter.

Ken Presutti: Exactly. And so I would also say, you know, there is a good chance if you were using a training device and you went out and it was hot, there's a good chance that that lower dot score could actually be correct. Now, nobody wants to hear that they're getting a little bit slower, right? But I think as athletes and as humans, we've also got to recognize there are a ton of factors that go into these things, right? And so how was my sleep the night before? Was I hydrated on all of the runs that I've been doing up to this point? Do I feel strong or do I feel like I'm struggling? And then you might say, you know what? I feel strong. I've had no problem meeting the paces that I'm currently training at. My rate of perceived exertion is on target. I'm just going to simply choose to not accept today's assessment. And that's okay. We might do that from time to time. Now, It's a problem if you do that every time, right? But it is perfectly okay to say, you know what, I was off my game, I might come back and I might try something next week, again, every workout has felt like it's on the money. I think I'm just going to stick with the dot score that I had until it's time to do another assessment.

Carrie Tollefson: love it. Hey thanks you guys this is really awesome. Ken thanks for showing us all of your numbers and your data. That was pretty brave I'm gonna say I'd be a little nervous. Vijay and I maybe next time we'll have to show ours. Me too. Give me like six months though please. Alright guys I appreciate your time. Thanks so much for coming on the RunDot Podcast and make sure to get after it.

Ken Presutti: I love that.

B.J. Leeper: That's right, I need motivation now. Yeah, exactly. Thanks, Carrie.