Watch: We got coached by AI and this is what happened

Can AI-powered coaching tool Humango help Alex and Chloe prepare for Big Sugar, a 100-mile gravel race in America?

Clock14:00, Monday 18th September 2023

In a very real sense, AI is taking over the world. It can read, it can write, it can speak. But can it coach? To find out, GCN's Alex Paton and his wife Chloe have been using the AI-powered coaching program Humango to prepare for an upcoming gravel challenge: the Big Sugar Classic 100-mile gravel race in Arkansas, USA.

More training experiments: Will cycling for two weeks at altitude improve my fitness?

For seven weeks, Chloe and Alex have been training at the behest of the AI model. For Chloe, who has never followed a structured training plan before, and who only recently dipped her toes into the wild world of gravel, this was a complete departure from the kind of cycling she's used to.

Read more: How to do an FTP test

Alex, on the other hand, is an ex-professional who's followed plenty of training plans in his time. We were intrigued to see whether Humango's AI coaching could help Alex unlock performance improvements that his regular training couldn't access.

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