How Onboarding Works

Six short steps from sign-in to your first scheduled run.

The six steps

Onboarding is a single-page wizard that runs inside the Pheidi app. After you sign in for the first time, you'll be taken straight into the setup steps — there's no separate sign-up form. You move forward with Next, back with Back, and the indicator at the top shows where you are. Your inputs are held in memory as you navigate the wizard; everything is written to your profile when you generate the plan in step 6, so don't refresh before then if you've made a lot of changes.

#	Step	What you set
1	Race Goal	Distance (5K, 10K, Half, Full) and target race date.
2	Experience	Skill level (Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced) and optional age.
3	Volume	Aggressiveness of the weekly mileage build-up.
4	Pace	VDOT (enter your value, or leave blank to estimate later) or RPE (effort only).
5	Schedule	Available days, long-run day, transition time, time zone, morning email opt-in.
6	Generate	Confirm and create the plan.

Step 1 — Race Goal

Pick the distance you're training for and the date you want to race. The race date defaults to four months out. You can pick any future date — if it falls below the distance-specific minimum (longer for marathon, shorter for 5K), the form shows a warning but still lets you continue.

If you followed a deep link from the marketing site (for example, a "Marathon" call to action), the corresponding distance is pre-selected for you when the wizard opens after sign-in. You can still change it.

Step 2 — Experience and age

Choose Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced. Your level controls a lot downstream — including the maximum number of run days per week, whether run-walk intervals are applied by default, and how quickly the plan introduces intervals.

For beginners, the step also offers an optional 4-week base building phase that prepends the main plan with easy runs starting at one mile and adding half a mile per week. See Plan Generation for what base building changes.

Age is optional. If you enter it, Pheidi picks an age bracket that nudges recovery windows and warm-up durations — it doesn't change the workout intent.

Step 3 — Volume mode

Volume mode picks how aggressively your weekly mileage ramps. Conservative settings favour a slower build with more buffer; aggressive settings push faster increases. See Mileage Progression for the underlying rates.

Step 4 — Pace mode

Two ways to express training intensity:

VDOT — pace targets per mile, derived from Jack Daniels' formula. You can type a VDOT value here if you know it; otherwise leave it blank and Pheidi will estimate one from a race time you enter later. Range 20–85.
RPE — no numbers. Workouts are described by effort (conversational, comfortably hard, etc.).

You can change pace mode any time in Settings. See Pacing Guidance for the math.

Step 5 — Schedule

This step does the most work:

Available days — at least three. Pheidi will only schedule running on the days you tick.
Preferred long-run day — must be one of your available days. Most plans land the long run on Saturday or Sunday.
Transition time — pick a preset for the shower / commute buffer you want budgeted around each workout. Feeds into calendar exports.
Time zone — auto-detected from your browser (IANA, e.g. America/New_York). Stored on your profile.
Morning email — a checkbox confirming the 5 AM reminder. On by default. See Workout Reminder Emails.

You can't advance from this step with fewer than three available days, or with a long-run day that isn't in your available set.

Step 6 — Generate

Confirm everything and tap Generate. Pheidi saves your profile and runs the plan generation engine to produce the saved plan. If you opted in to base building, an additional four weeks of easy running are shown prepended in the celebration preview. If you already had an active plan, it's paused rather than deleted — switch back any time.

When generation finishes you see a short celebration screen with total miles, peak weekly mileage, longest run, and a teaser of your first scheduled workout. From there it's straight into your plan.

If something fails

Generation is a synchronous call. If it errors out you'll see a banner asking you to retry — your inputs from steps 1–5 are preserved, so retrying doesn't mean redoing the wizard.

Onboarding lives inside the Pheidi app — sign in to build your plan.