August 28th, 2026
Every race page grew into a full preparation surface this week. A new "What this race demands" panel gives a coach's read of the course, built from its distance, climbing, sport and season, with fueling guidance for long events and estimated finish-time ranges by level, and it now reads in your own language across all 17 we support. Below it, "Your road to race day" maps the actual Base, Build, Peak, Taper and Race-week phases onto real calendar dates using the same periodization the coach uses for real plans, and a "What would it take you?" calculator gives you a finish window for that exact course plus the weekly training hours a solid preparation typically needs. Signed in, you can now set any race as your goal with one click; if you found the race before you had an account, signing up from that page carries it with you, so onboarding starts with your plan already pointed at race day. There is also a one-click "Add race day to your calendar" button, dedicated pages per sport and per country, and a copy-paste "Train for this race" badge organisers can put on their event site.
The biggest theme of the week: closing every gap between what Coach+ said and what it did. It no longer tells you it set an FTP, Critical Speed, threshold pace or LTHR it has no way to set, and instead points you to your Intervals.icu profile where those values live. Asking to shorten a session now shortens it instead of making it 50% easier; asking for sweet spot gives you sweet spot instead of a plain endurance ride; asking for core work gives you core work instead of the phase default. Saving a note to your custom instructions adds to what is there rather than replacing it, "noted" is only said once something is genuinely stored, and a change written out but never applied is caught rather than confirmed. When something it announced was blocked or declined, it now follows up and tells you. Swapping a workout no longer blocks itself mid-swap, chat history no longer loses the coach's words around a workout card, and approval cards always arrive with a sentence explaining them. Asked about pain, breathing or heart rhythm, the coach now says what it can do for your plan and points you to a doctor or physio for the symptom itself.
If you train from your own Intervals.icu library, your hardest sessions were being read as easy ones and actively favoured for easy days; library workouts are now sorted by their real intensity. A workout the coach builds now has to be physically executable and has to be the length it says it is before it reaches your calendar. A hard session can no longer land the day after a Sunday race, your plan no longer freezes on the week your goal race was in, and a session the coach had already scheduled can now be adjusted on the day even when it is missing our internal marker. Cadence drills keep their rpm targets when a session is trimmed, walks are prescribed at Zone 1 rather than an unreachable Zone 1-2 (which was also inflating their planned load), a coach-adjusted walk replaces yours instead of joining it, and swims are now classified from pace rather than a wrist heart-rate trace that goes flat in water.
Your daily outlook can now talk about the shape of your training and not just today: how your intensity has been distributed over recent weeks, whether your easy rides are staying genuinely easy, whether every day is landing at the same load, and which way your aerobic efficiency on long sessions is moving. The same numbers Analytics shows you, raised only when there is enough history and when they matter for the day in front of you. At the same time it got stricter: quality checks now strip concerns your own numbers disprove, so it can't flag poor recovery on a green day or claim HRV is below baseline when it sits above, and it can no longer decide you are ill on a heavy training block when you have reported nothing. A session that merely felt harder is no longer reported as fitness going backwards, racing a race is no longer scored as going off-plan, and form is described using the same cutoffs your dashboard uses.
You now get a receipt by email every time your subscription renews, showing what you paid, for which period, when the next payment is due and where to stop future renewals. Age-aware planning moved out of the cycling-only corner of Settings up to Preferences where every sport can find it, and flipping it now rebuilds your plan straight away instead of waiting for the next one. In Analytics, the Training Score now matches your dashboard, the body weight chart follows your units setting, and the HRV chart follows the range you selected. Switching wearables no longer distorts your skin-temperature baseline, and your emails now sign off in your own language.
The Android app picked up the age-aware planning toggle, a Form ring that reads as a percentage of your fitness so it agrees with the web app, coaching notifications that ask their suggested question straight away instead of leaving it in the message box, and a morning check-in that survives rotating your phone. On iOS and Mac, Form now reads as a percentage everywhere including widgets, the watch and Siri, HealthKit sync problems come with an actionable hint instead of a bare error, Analytics gained a body fat trend chart, you can swap a planned workout's sport or type straight from the workout detail, and the dashboard scrolls faster.
The August update is out: the coach on your wrist, race pages that plan, and coaching instructions that the planner cannot overrule.
Full changelog with all the details: https://www.intervalcoach.app/changelog
As always, let me know if you run into any issues or have feedback!