About HARIE

Strength training has been part of my life for a long time. For years I trained at home with a barbell, dumbbells, a lat pulldown, and a leg press. Back then, I simply wanted to get better at the big three lifts: squats, bench press, and deadlifts. In 2022, after moving, I switched to kettlebell training. A good setup — minimalist, effective, and for the first time my endurance was actually challenged. To build on that, I started running once a week. But somehow I was missing a goal to work towards, and while kettlebell sport has a small, friendly community, it never truly hooked me.

In early 2024, I stumbled across HYROX and bought a single ticket for Hamburg — without having any clue what I was getting into. The kettlebell training was a solid foundation, and I started increasing my running to twice a week, quickly becoming a regular at SOWHAT in Oldenburg, an official HYROX gym near me. My first HYROX in Hamburg ended with a time of 1:32:53. The goal had been sub 1:30 — so I just barely missed it. But anyone who's crossed that finish line knows the feeling: you're completely wrecked, but once you've caught your breath, all you want to know is when the next race is.

After my first race, I realized that unstructured training wouldn't be enough to improve my time to a level I'd actually be happy with. So I started diving deeper into running training and HYROX preparation in general. In February 2025 — two months before my next race in Cologne — I didn't want to leave anything to chance. So I signed up for coaching with The Daily Athlete. With a well-thought-out training plan, I improved to 1:22:24 in Cologne — over ten minutes faster. By the end of the year, I was at 1:17:20, despite a stubborn running injury and being sick on race day. I managed to bring my 5K time down to 19:08.

That year taught me two things: First, how much of a difference structured training makes. And second, how quickly you get injured when you don't listen to your body and lack proper load management. Both are problems that intelligent training planning can help with. When it comes to injuries and illness, early communication with your coach is crucial.

In my day job, I work intensively with AI — and I've learned both its strengths and its limitations. At the same time, I'm a data nerd when it comes to sports. Heart rate zones, VO2max values, race splits, watt numbers — I want to understand what's behind my performance and draw the right conclusions from it.

At some point the idea struck me: Why not combine both? An app that truly understands HYROX and creates training plans based on sports science rather than generic AI output.

The path there was harder than expected. Simple prompting isn't enough for complex training plans — the results were superficial, repetitive, and had no understanding of periodization or load management. So I built an engine that provides rules and structure, using AI specifically for what it does well: individual adaptation within a solid framework. At the same time, it was important to me that you as an athlete can give feedback: How are you feeling, are there any issues, and how do you perceive the training load? Both feed directly into your individual training plan.

HARIE is still in its early days, but the vision is clear: a platform that helps HYROX athletes at every level train smarter. On the roadmap are wearable integration to automatically incorporate training data, a mobile app, detailed race analytics, and features that help you not just train harder — but above all, train smarter.