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From the fitness your efforts show today, never from your goal. A plan built from the goal asks for paces you cannot run yet.

Your paces then climb toward what your goal needs, a step every three weeks along the curve expected for a runner like you, and never past it. They climb only while your running keeps up:

• Three hard sessions run in full and faster than asked lift them at once.
• Hard sessions cut short or a step slower hold them.
• A checkpoint resets them, faster or slower.

Easy-run heart rate and whole-run averages never move them.

Where your fitness needs to be this week for your goal to stay within reach. Ithara judges you against that line, not against race day: ahead, on your line, or behind, and “too early to say” in the first weeks.

The progress expected for a runner like you comes from a coaching rule of thumb (about one step of fitness every four to six weeks of steady training, scaled by experience and age). It is a rule of thumb, not a measurement, and your own checkpoints replace it.

A time trial in a lighter week, roughly every six weeks: 5 km early in the season, 10 km later, and a half marathon where the season is long enough. Each one has a time and a date written into your plan, so you know before you start what it asks.

It is the proof: it says whether you are ahead of your line, on it or behind, and it resets your paces either way. Run it on its own, or with a warm-up recorded in the same workout; Ithara reads the trial's own part.

Every change comes with its reason, in the app: a week you ran less than planned, hard sessions cut short or run faster, a checkpoint. After a short week your distance comes back gradually, at most 10% a week. A day you have already seen keeps the session it showed, even if a run arrives late.

Because one week is not proof. Your goal moves only after two checkpoints in a row say so. Behind your line at both, Ithara offers a slower goal or a later race; well ahead at both, a faster goal. The offer shows what your line asked and what you ran.

You decide. Nothing changes until you hold to take it; if you keep your goal, the same offer is not made again for the same proof.

No. It is an honest estimate: a range, with its reasons. Your efforts say how fast you are; your weekly distance and longest run say how much of a marathon your legs are ready for. The range is wider when your efforts are older or less than all-out, and narrows as your checkpoints come in.

Runs come from Apple Health by themselves, when you open Ithara and in the background. If one is missing:

• Check it is in the Health app as a running workout. A run recorded by another app arrives once that app saves it to Health.
• Check Ithara may read it: in the Health app, tap your picture, then Apps under Privacy, then Ithara, and turn on Workouts, Walking + Running Distance, Heart Rate and Steps.
• Open Ithara and give it a moment.

Still missing? Write to us with the run's date.

Running workouts, their distance, heart rate, and steps (for your cadence). It asks only when you tap to connect it, and it never writes to Health. The details, and where the data goes, are in the privacy notice.

Part by part. A session with reps is split into its warm-up, each rep, each recovery and the cool-down, and each rep is judged against its own target. A rep cut short counts half. A whole-run average, warm-up and jogs included, is never compared with a rep's target.

A rep that was only slow is marked slow, in ochre, not failed.

Open the session and hold “Send to Watch”. It appears in the Workout app on your Watch, under Ithara, with a pace alert for each part. A time trial's pace is a guide, so it has no alert. Send it again and the new copy replaces the old one.

You need an Apple Watch paired with your iPhone. Ithara has no Watch app of its own: the Watch's Workout app runs the session.

Not in this test version. The Coach and Together tabs say what they will do: a coach that comments on every run and writes a weekly review, and running alongside a friend or a group. They arrive in a coming update, with an account you can choose to make.

Before they do, the privacy notice is updated to say what they send and to whom, and the app asks you first.

Only you. In this version everything Ithara reads and everything you tell it stays on your iPhone: the app sends none of it to us or to anyone else.

Delete the app: everything Ithara keeps is on your iPhone, and goes with it. Your runs stay in Apple Health, where they came from.

To change an answer instead, use the You tab: it shows what the change does before it counts.

In the Health app: tap your picture, then Apps under Privacy, then Ithara, and turn off what you no longer want it to read. Runs it has already read stay in Ithara on your iPhone until you delete the app.

If you are 18 or over, have an iPhone, and are training for a marathon between 8 and 52 weeks away. An Apple Watch is optional. It works for a first marathon as well as a faster one: the plan starts from the running you do now.

This test version is free, and nothing can be bought in it. In the App Store, your plan, Apple Health and the Watch stay free; the coach will come with a subscription after a free trial, at a price set closer to launch.