I use Hermes1 as an AI running coach. Every Sunday it looks at my workout history and drafts next week's schedule. Once I approve the plan, it goes into my calendar. This is the loop I use; you can try it with your own tools.

Hermes is an always-on agent I talk to over Telegram. I've written about my broader agent setup; this is how I use it for running.

What I give the agent

I follow Norwegian Singles2: controlled sub-threshold sessions, with easy running in between, keeping the effort manageable enough to repeat the work week after week. I like its predictable structure and emphasis on consistency.

I maintain norwegiansingles.run, a guide to the approach that I introduced in an earlier post. Despite the name, it offers very little help finding a date in Oslo.

I point the agent to norwegiansingles.run/llms.txt, an index linking to the guide's text in a format it can read. That gives it the same reference I use when planning sessions.

The fiddly part is giving the agent access3 to my past workouts. RunGap stores them as FIT files in iCloud Drive. I mount that folder on my agent server with rclone, and Hermes reads the files there. They include duration, distance and heart rate, so it can work from the sessions I actually completed.

Here's a rough view of the workout history the agent can read. It helps it see quieter weeks, gaps and changes in how much I've been running.

Running history in weekly blocks numbered 01 to 52. Lighter blocks show less running, darker blocks show more; future weeks are outlined. Exact dates and totals are omitted.

Each numbered block is roughly a week. Darker means more running; outlined blocks are still ahead.

The Sunday review

Workout files are only part of the feedback. HRV (heart rate variability), sleep and race results can add context where available. I can also tell Hermes over Telegram how a session felt. If the numbers look fine but my legs disagree, the coach should hear about it.

Hermes runs a recurring Sunday review. My request is roughly:

Every Sunday, review my workout history and draft next week's running schedule using the Norwegian Singles guide. Look back at the week I actually completed and adjust the upcoming week where needed. Keep total training time within 8 hours per week. Increase weekly duration by at most 10%.

Those are my constraints, not numbers to copy into your own plan. Eight hours is the time I can spend. The 10% is an upper limit on increases; holding steady or doing less should be an option too. I review the draft and, once I approve it, the schedule gets added to my calendar.

Try it with your own setup

Don't worry about Hermes. You should be able to do this with ChatGPT or Claude too, as long as it can read your workout history and training reference.

Start with one review of your most recent week. Give the assistant an export of your runs and a training reference it can read, plus the time you have available and anything the files miss, such as a session that felt unusually hard. Ask it to show what you completed before proposing the next week. If the draft is useful, make the review recurring. Connect a calendar if you want the assistant to add the sessions after you approve them.

Footnotes

  1. But you could just as well use ChatGPT or Claude. ↩

  2. James Copeland (sirpoc) is the person to read on the method itself. His book, Norwegian Singles Method: Subthreshold Running Kept Simple, gives his full account of the approach. ↩

  3. If you're in the Garmin ecosystem, this is surprisingly simple. Community packages such as python-garminconnect let an agent log in with your Garmin username and password and retrieve workouts, sleep, HRV and plenty more. I'm not in that ecosystem, though. ↩