The short version

Pheidi sends training emails, not marketing emails. Every one of them is tied to something that actually happened in your plan — a run you logged, a race getting close, a week going quiet. Each belongs to one of six categories, each category has its own switch in Settings, and every single email carries two unsubscribe links: one for its category, and one that stops everything.

The only email you can't switch off is the sign-in code. Muting that would lock you out of your own account.

The six categories

  • Morning workout reminders. A short note at 5 AM your time, only on days you have a run scheduled. Needs a time zone set. More on morning reminders.
  • Phase updates. One email when your plan crosses into Build, Peak or Taper. At most three per plan. More on the phases.
  • Weekly summary. Monday morning: how many of last week's runs you completed, the distance, and one line about what's coming. Only sent in weeks you actually logged something, so a quiet week doesn't get a report card.
  • Achievements. Your first logged run, workout-count milestones (10, 25, 50, 100), consecutive-day streak records, and a new longest run. At most one every three days, so logging a backlog of runs doesn't set off a pile-up. More on the activity log.
  • Race countdown. A race-week note explaining why the taper feels too easy, a short one the night before, and a check-in a few days after. Three per training plan, so a second goal race gets its own countdown. More on the taper.
  • Check-ins and tips. The occasional note from John: a feature you haven't found, a nudge if your training goes quiet, an offer to help if a plan stalled. At most one every seven days.

How often they arrive

A background pass runs once an hour and picks at most one email per person per pass. On top of that, each category has its own quiet period:

  • Check-ins and tips: at most one every seven days.
  • Achievements: at most one every three days.
  • Weekly summary: once a week by definition, and only when you ran.
  • Race countdown: three per training plan (race week, race eve, post-race).

The cap applies to the whole category, not to each email in it. Two different tips can't arrive in the same week by being technically different messages.

On top of all that there's a floor: at least 20 hours between any two emails, whatever categories they belong to. Without it the per-category limits are independent, and a milestone, a tip and a summary could each be individually within their limit while landing in the same afternoon.

Where those rules collide, training and race reminders always win and the other email is the one that gets skipped:

  • A race countdown is never held back (a race-eve email that waits a day is useless), but sending one starts the 20-hour clock for everything else.
  • A phase update is never held back either, and also starts the full clock.
  • A morning reminder is never held back, and blocks other emails for about six hours after it. Deliberately shorter than the rest: it goes out daily, so a full 20-hour block after each one would mean anyone with reminders on never heard anything else.

Skipped means skipped, not queued. A tip that loses to a reminder waits for its next opportunity rather than arriving late in a backlog.

Nothing arrives out of nowhere

Every email is triggered by a window anchored to a real date: when you signed up, when you built the plan, when your race is, when you last logged a run. That has a deliberate consequence — when a new email is added, only people currently inside its window are eligible. Nobody receives a backlog.

The same applies to achievements. A milestone email needs a matching entry recorded in your activity log in the last few days, so adding this feature never triggered a flood of congratulations for things you did months ago.

And each email sends once. Repeatable ones (a milestone, a weekly summary) are tracked per occurrence, so the 25-workout note and the 50-workout note are separate emails but neither ever repeats.

Turning them off

There are three ways, and all of them work immediately:

  • The link in any email. Every message has an unsubscribe link for its own category, and a second link that stops every email from Pheidi. Both open a confirmation page first, so a link scanner or a mail client prefetching URLs can't unsubscribe you by accident.
  • Your mail client's unsubscribe button. Gmail and Apple Mail show a built-in unsubscribe control next to the sender. Pheidi supports the one-click standard behind it, so that button works properly rather than doing nothing.
  • Settings. Every category has its own checkbox, plus Stop all emails from Pheidi at the top of the list.

The master switch is an overlay, not a wipe. It silences everything while it's on, but it remembers what you had chosen underneath, so turning it back off restores exactly your previous mix rather than switching everything on.

Who sends what

Achievements, the weekly summary, phase updates, morning reminders and the race countdown come from Pheidi itself. Check-ins, tips and the post-race note come from John, the person who builds Pheidi, with replies routed to a mailbox that gets read. Those are the ones that ask you a question, and a reply to any of them reaches a human.

Accounts identified only by a phone number or a Strava connection have no email address, so they receive none of this.

Manage every email preference in the app.