A coach, not just a plan
Apex explains every session, adapts when life happens, and has a real coach behind it. Built for runners and triathletes, 5K to Ironman. $9.99/month (or $79.99/year) after a 14-day free trial — no credit card required to start. Cancel in one click.
Run · Bike · Swim · Strength — one app, every discipline.
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The session is over. Apex already knows what tomorrow should be.
Inside the app
Today's session, why it's there, and what to hit.
Tap any workout and ask "why am I doing this?"
The full seven days, balanced across disciplines.
Report a bad night's sleep, watch the week rewrite itself.
Why Apex
Apex's training engine is Breno Melo's playbook — 12× BQ qualifier, USAT & RRCA certified, 18+ race wins. Not a generic algorithm. Not a paywalled template. The same periodization he uses with his 1:1 athletes.
Slept badly? Travelling? Knee tweaked? Tell Apex once and the rest of the week rewrites itself — load redistributed, sessions resequenced, intensity dialled. No streak guilt. No catch-up debt.
Tap any workout and ask "why am I doing this?" Get a real answer in plain English. Pacing questions, fuelling, race-day strategy, sore knees — your coach in your pocket, honest and warm, not a chatbot.
Run, bike, swim and strength are planned together, not bolted on. Apex balances weekly load across sports so triathletes stop guessing which session to drop when the week gets tight.
Connect Garmin or Strava and completed sessions flow straight back in. Pace, heart rate and sleep shift the next block automatically — training zones stay current instead of going stale after week three.
Apex builds pacing and fuelling for your A-race, rehearses it in training, and walks you through race week hour by hour — so the plan you execute on the start line is one you have already practised.
A real week from Apex
Week 8 is the first week the plan asks for two quality sessions in seven days. The long run stays flat in distance so the body absorbs the new intensity rather than stacking two stressors at once.
Optional Z1 bike, 30 min, cadence 85–95 rpm.
Yesterday's long run is the week's biggest stressor. Movement without load speeds clearance; if you feel flat, take the full rest — the week is built to survive it.
2 mi easy warm-up · 5 × 6 min w/ 90 s jog · 1.5 mi cool-down. 9 mi total.
Your first real lactate-threshold block of the build. Six-minute reps are long enough to hold true threshold and short enough that form does not fall apart. If rep 4 drifts more than 8 s/mi, stop at four — the adaptation is already banked.
5 mi @ 9:15–9:45/mi · 35 min gym: split squat, RDL, calf raise, dead bug.
Aerobic maintenance the day after quality. Strength goes on a hard-adjacent day on purpose, so easy days stay genuinely easy and the body gets two clean recovery days per week.
4 mi @ 9:15–9:45/mi · 6 × 20 s strides on flat ground.
Strides keep leg speed and running economy alive during a threshold-heavy block. They are neurological, not metabolic — full recovery between each, never a workout.
Full day off. Mobility 10 min if you want it.
Placed before the weekend's two sessions rather than after, so you arrive at Saturday's tempo fresh. This is the day Apex moves first when your week goes sideways.
1.5 mi warm-up · 3 mi @ goal HM pace · 1.5 mi cool-down. 6 mi total.
Goal pace has to start feeling like a rhythm, not a reach. Three miles at 1:45 pace eight weeks out should feel controlled — if it feels like racing, the goal gets revisited at the week 10 checkpoint.
10 mi steady, last 2 mi lifted to 8:30/mi. Practise race fuelling at 40 min.
Distance holds flat from last week because intensity went up. The lifted finish rehearses running strong on tired legs, and the fuelling window is deliberate — race-day gut training starts now, not in taper.
Compare
| Compare | Apex | Free generic app | Runna | TrainingPeaks (self-coached) | 1:1 with Breno |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $9.99/mo or $79.99/yr · 14-day trial | Free, ads and upsells | About $20/mo | About $20/mo, plan not included | $250–$750 every 4 weeks |
| Plan adapts to missed sessions | Yes — tell it once and the rest of the week is rewritten | No — the plan is fixed, you fall behind | Partly — reshuffles within limits | No — you move the sessions yourself | Yes — rewritten by a human coach |
| Explains why each session exists | Yes — every session ships with its intent, and you can ask follow-ups | No | Short description only | Only what you or your plan author typed in | Yes — in writing and on calls |
| Multisport (run, bike, swim, strength) | Yes — one integrated week across all four | Usually running only | Running-first, limited multisport | Yes — but you build the balance yourself | Yes — including full Ironman builds |
| Human coach available | Yes — Apex tells you when to step up to 1:1 | No | No | Only if you hire one separately | Yes — direct access, replies Mon–Fri within 24h |
| Race-specific pacing and fuelling plan | Yes — built for your A-race and rehearsed in training | No | Generic race-day tips | No — you write it | Yes — course-specific, delivered race week |
Competitor pricing and features are as published by each provider and checked periodically; check their sites for current terms.
Pricing
$0forever
No credit card required to start.
$9.99/ month
$119.88 per year on the monthly plan · $79.99 per year paid annually, which saves $39.89 (33%)
Billed every month, so 12 payments a year · 14-day free trial · cancel in one click
$9.99 a month is a low bar to clear, which makes it easy to buy the wrong thing. Read the right-hand column first.
A human in the loop
Apex will take you a long way on its own. The athletes who chase podiums, BQs, or their first Kona almost always do it with a human coach in their corner. Breno keeps a small 1:1 roster on purpose — and Apex tells you when it's time to consider it. No pressure, no popup spam.
See 1:1 coachingFrequently asked
Yes. No credit card required to start — you can complete onboarding, generate your first personalized plan, use one adaptive replan and three coach messages without entering payment details at all. The 14-day trial of Coached does ask for a card, and you can cancel inside the app before it ends and pay nothing.
At the end of the 14 days you are billed $9.99/month — or $79.99/year if you chose annual. If you cancel first, your account drops back to the Free tier, which stays free indefinitely: your plan, history and training profile stay intact, you just stop getting unlimited replans and coach chat. Nothing is deleted.
Apex applies Breno's method automatically — it writes your plan, adapts it and explains it, at $9.99/month. 1:1 coaching is Breno himself: a plan written by hand for your body and season, weekly adjustments from your data, direct messaging (Monday to Friday, replies within 24 hours), video analysis and a race-day pacing plan, from $250 every four weeks. Most athletes start with Apex and move up when the goal gets serious.
Garmin and Strava connect directly, so completed sessions flow back into Apex and change the next block automatically. Wahoo and most other head units sync through Strava. Workouts export as .TCX/.ICS files, which import into TrainingPeaks and into any calendar — so you can keep the tools you already use.
Tell Apex what hurts and how bad it is. The plan is rebuilt around it — impact work is pulled, cross-training substituted, and the return is staged rather than dropped back in at full load. Apex will also tell you plainly when something is beyond what an app should manage and you should see a physio.
Yes, at any time. Change the date or the race itself and Apex re-periodizes the whole block around the new timeline — including a shorter build if the race moved closer, or an extra base phase if it moved out. You do not start over.
Running, cycling, swimming and strength — planned as one integrated week rather than three plans stapled together. Distances run from 5K, 10K, half and full marathon through sprint and Olympic triathlon, 70.3 and full Ironman.
One click, inside the app, any time. Your subscription stays active until the end of the period you have already paid for, then reverts to the free tier. No email, no retention call, no cancellation fee.
Yes. Tell Apex once — bad sleep, travel, a sore knee, a missed long run — and it rewrites the rest of the week. Load is redistributed, intensity is dialled, and nothing is piled on top of tomorrow. No streak guilt, no catch-up debt.
Yes. Apex tells you when you are ready for 1:1 coaching with Breno Melo, who keeps a deliberately small roster of athletes chasing podiums, Boston qualifiers and Kona. You can move up whenever you want — nothing in your training history is lost.
Method
The engine holds the large majority of your weekly volume genuinely easy and concentrates intensity into a small number of sessions, rather than spreading moderate effort across every day.
Weekly load is progressed from the training you have actually completed and logged, not from a fixed template, so a missed week changes what next week looks like.
When sessions are missed, cut short or flagged as hard, Apex rewrites the remaining week around the same goal date instead of leaving you to catch up.
Paces, power and heart-rate zones are derived from your recent tests and races, and re-derived as they change over the block.
Each workout states its purpose, its target zone and what it is preparing you for, so you can tell whether the plan is doing what you need.
Apex encodes how Breno builds a week after coaching since 2015. That is a statement about the method, not a promise of any individual athlete's result.
Start free, train a full block, and if it works, send the race result. Early Apex athletes get their outcome published here with their name and a link to the official result — the same standard every other review on this site has to meet. No credit card required to start.
No credit card required to start, and you can reach a full personalized plan before paying anything.
No credit card required to start. Email and password, nothing else.
Your goal race and date, current weekly volume, available days, equipment and any injury history.
A full periodized block to your race date, with every session described and paced to your zones.
Connect Garmin or Strava so completed work syncs automatically, or tick sessions off by hand.
Miss a week, get sick, travel — the block is rewritten around what actually happened rather than what was planned.
Free covers onboarding, your first plan, one adaptive replan and three coach messages. Unlimited is $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year, cancel in one click.
Tell Apex about your goal and your week. Get a coached plan you can start today. No credit card required to start. Then $9.99/month or $79.99/year for Coached, cancel in one click.
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