The Claude Running Edition
On one injury, ten months, and agentic coaching.
Benoît Pellevoizin (BP) is a strategist and marketer. He wrote the recent Consciousness edition, and we’re glad to have him back here again.
Benoit here. Like many modern urban men, I’ve tried to turn myself into a real runner multiple times now. By this, I mean someone who heads out three times a week to rack up the miles purely for pleasure, no matter the rain, wind, snow, or heatwave.
Like most who’ve tried, I’ve also injured myself again and again over the years, which put me off the practice for a while each time, a disgust I masked with the all-too-common belief that not everyone is built to run. The more sport I did, the more I ended up at the doctor’s, the bigger the strain on the French social security system. For a while, I even embraced the Churchill maxim endlessly quoted by the world’s intellectuals: ‘No sport.” It worked, of course. No sport, no pain, no reason to see the doctor.
Still, I remained attracted to the rudimentary simplicity and the intrinsic sobriety of the sport. You just throw on your kit, lace up your shoes, step out the door, do a quick warm-up, and run. Since I travel often, that simplicity has a structural advantage: it’s a lot easier to fit your Hokas in your suitcase than your Pinarello.
Ten months ago, after hearing colleagues and friends repeatedly extol the psychological benefits of running, I decided to try again. Taking advice from a somewhat obsessive colleague who in his prime could run up to three times a day (“Force yourself to run breathing only through your nose, and if you can’t, slow down — even if it means walking”) I took it slow for several months. Of course I felt stupid and humiliated when, like elegant rockets, the Adonises and Aphrodites of the Bois de Vincennes blew past me, but I still good on the whole, especially from the endorphin kick at the end of even my most modest outings.
Why is this interesting?
Armed with my Garmin Forerunner 265, I brought in Claude to help me try and avoid injury, prompting it like crazy to build me a personalized program based on my running and health data, which I would upload after every session. The first months were a real success. I was breaking PR after PR — commonly called “newbie gains” — until I one day decided to stop following the instructions of my Claude coach Djabir (a name I gave him in homage to my partner’s cousin, bronze medalist in the 800m at the Sydney Olympics). Soon, once again, I got injured.
Back to the physio. Verdict: “Nothing serious, a calf strain — but it’ll be slow, you’ll need to be patient.” (He admitted he loves beginner runners; they make up 70% of his clientele.) He also taught me what I think is essential information for any self-respecting beginner: cardio adapts faster than muscles and tendons, which is why you tend to feel like you’re flying pretty quickly, but that’s also what causes the endless injuries that put most beginners off for good. It’s as if you were progressively building a Ferrari engine on a Fiat 500 chassis and decided to floor it. It’s not going to end well. (Cont.)
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I’d become addicted to running, and the injury was frustrating, deeply frustrating, but because I was equally addicted to the endorphins, I followed the physio’s two-month program to the letter. After three months of rebuilding, I finally got back to my pre-injury level. But this time, the chassis was stronger. Several conversations with Djabir led to a program designed across 25 years, with a simple goal: For me to still be running at 64, pain-free. Djabir isn’t a program that spits out training plans on demand — it’s an interlocutor who calls me out when I drift. In the middle of a recent weekend run, my heart rate climbed above zone 2. We’d set a clear instruction in advance of this happening: Walk to bring it back down. So I walked. Another time, I wanted to add a fourth weekly session because I was feeling good. Answer: no, not before January 2027 — my structures need time to catch up with my cardio. Argued, sourced, refused.
I’m not quite sure how to put it, but I feel an extreme sense of gratitude toward Anthropic, quite simply because today I can call myself a runner. A runner who has fun, doesn’t get injured, and keeps progressing at his own pace. Could another piece of software have done this for me? I’m not sure. Of course, I’m the one with the discipline and patience, but it’s thanks to Djabir that I cannot picture myself stopping for a second. I’ve rarely felt this good, and every day I’m thinking about my next run.
Last Sunday, 7am. It’s drizzling, the smell of damp earth rises from the ground, my AirPods are playing Endel’s adaptive music — a sound pattern that adjusts to your pace. With noise cancelling off, I hear the birds layered over it. I rack up the strides in full zen mode, focused on every step, every inhale, every exhale, and not for a single moment do I feel like stopping. An hour and a half. Just sensations, just serenity.
The irony in all of this: it’s thanks to an inert machine that every run makes me feel more alive. (BP)
this is great to read! I am a long time athlete but recently was sidelined by EBV, using a claude training program to bring me up to pace! Fun to integrate gamin data directly via a MCP. Sometimes you just need a third party to say no or yes!