Name: Freebird — Interval Training Without the Guesswork
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)
Author: DrewRuns

Freebird is an interval training app designed for the track. It calculates your training paces from your most recent 10K performance, and tells you the pace to run for a particular interval distance. That's it. No other data is required and there are no complex calculations. Just run.

A coach would typically prescribe intervals using race paces from 3K to 10K. For example:

10 × (400m @ AS5 + 200m recovery)

The problem is that the coach — or each athlete — then has to consult a pace chart to relate their 10K time to the appropriate training paces, and program those paces and distances into their watch.

Ever turned up at the track with your workout already programmed, only to find that the session has changed?

With Freebird, there is nothing to program. You set the pattern of the session, and Freebird helps you keep to it. If you change the workout, Freebird changes with you.

For example, during a 400m interval, the display shows the effort corresponding to your 400m pace. Run at the level that keeps 400m under the pyramid cursor on the display wheel. Your average pace for the current interval is shown by the white bar overlaid on the wheel.

Freebird also shows your progress through each repetition in the way a track athlete naturally thinks about it: laps, then 100s, then the remaining distance, so as well as displaying an accumulating distance such as 527m, you can also see the interval as 1 lap + 100m + 27m, or whichever corresponds to your position in the repetition.

You don't even have to tell Freebird which phase of the workout you are in. It detects whether you are warming up, running an interval, recovering or doing strides automatically — rather like a swimming app detecting your stroke.

As you run, Freebird remembers the distance covered during your last interval and recovery. On the next repetition, it warns you as you approach the end and then signals the start of the next phase. If you change the interval or recovery distance, it updates accordingly.

Your recent race performance therefore becomes the basis for your interval training. Set your last 10K time once at the start of your training series. After that, just run and let Freebird handle the pacing and repetition cues.