A guide, not a doctor.

What the app does

You tell the app a race, a date, a goal, and roughly where your running is today. It builds a schedule backwards from race day using widely used rules: the long run grows about a step a week, every fourth week steps back, and the last two weeks taper. Coach, when you turn it on, adjusts paces and the week from the runs you've already done and how hard you said they felt. None of this is individualized medical guidance. It is arithmetic applied to a general template.

What it can't do

• It can't tell whether you are healthy enough to run the plan it built, or any plan.
• It can't detect injury, illness, overtraining, heat stress, or a heart problem. A green "On track" verdict says only that your miles match the schedule.
• It can't account for medication, conditions, pregnancy, altitude, weather, or how you slept.
• Paces and finish projections are estimates from your past runs. Treat them as a starting point, not a prescription.

Before you start

• See a doctor first if you're over 40 and new to running, have been inactive for a year or more, are pregnant or postpartum, or have any heart, blood pressure, breathing, metabolic, or joint condition. Bring the plan with you if it helps.
• Start where you are. If the first week looks like more than you've done lately, choose a lower fitness level or a slower build when you set the plan up. The plan is easy to rebuild.
• Check the day. Heat, cold, air quality, traffic, and light are yours to judge. The app doesn't see them.

While you train

• Stop and get help for chest pain or pressure, trouble breathing beyond normal effort, fainting or near-fainting, an irregular or racing heartbeat that doesn't settle, or sudden severe pain. In an emergency call 911 (or your local emergency number).
• Pain that changes how you run means the run is over for today. A skipped run never hurts the plan; it shifts.
• Effort ratings are honest signals. If easy runs feel hard two times in a row, Coach suggests a lighter week. Take it.
• Run with others when you can, tell someone your route, carry ID, and drink before you're thirsty.

Apple Health and your Apple Watch

On the iPhone, 4th Place Run reads workouts from Apple Health and never writes to it. The Apple Watch app records a run as a workout and saves it to Health the same way Apple's Workout app does. Heart-rate readings shown during a Watch run come from the Watch's sensor and can be wrong; they are not a medical measurement. The app never sends heart-rate data to the club.

The club

The weekly board, badges, and meetups are there for company, not pressure. Nobody on the board knows your health. Run your own plan at your own pace, and skip any meetup that doesn't fit how you feel.

Your responsibility

By using the app you accept that you are responsible for deciding whether, when, and how hard to run, and for getting medical advice from a qualified professional. Blueprint Consulting AI LLC, which makes 4th Place Run, isn't liable for injury or loss that comes from following a plan, a pace, a Coach note, or a meetup. The Terms of Service have the full language.

Questions: club@4thplacerunclub.com.