FasCat Cycling has added a lot to the cycling coaching space, especially in the 2010s. Back when their North Boulder brick-and-mortar shop was buzzing, they’d get visits from guys like Tejay Van Garderen, who paid for motor pacing to prep for the Tour. Their older blogs and videos? Legit—worth reviewing.
For those reasons, I subscribe to their email list. It was good shit. But lately, they’ve weaponized it into a relentless advertisement for their AI Coaching app, which bloats my inbox several times a week.
You know how if you’re angry about something, you feel better if you let it out instead of letting it fester inside you until it gives you ass cancer? Unfortunately, this week, I slipped up and read through one of the emails. It cracked me. I had to write this to feel better. Let’s break this thing down:
Analysis Paralysis?
“Do you ever feel buried under mountains of data from your wearable devices and bike computer?”
Why would cyclists feel buried by data? They’re the ones who bought all the gear in the first place. Do you know why? Because companies like FasCat told them they weren’t real cyclists without a power meter, heart rate monitor, and 17 analytics apps.
And now they’re offering a solution to the problem they created. Cute.
Here are other things you could do that are cheaper and easier:
Don’t buy the gear that records the data that overwhelms you in the first place.
If you find the data valuable but sometimes overwhelming, don’t look at it during and after every ride – you really don’t need to.
“Like it’s sucking the fun out of your cycling? And juggling multiple apps is more hassle than it’s worth?”
First of all, let’s be clear about who they’re talking about when they’re talking about ‘cyclists’ – they’re talking about road cyclists (roadies).
Roadies don’t have fun*. If they did, they’d call themselves mountain bikers.
Cyclists have “fun” in two ways:
By dropping someone on a ride or race.
If they can’t, they cope by analyzing their file later to compare themselves… to themselves.
Data analysis doesn’t suck the fun out of cycling for roadies—it is their fun. You think roadies can just raw-dog a ride and enjoy the scenery? Please.
Second, FasCat is doubling down on its problem-creation playbook:
Step 1: Convince you to buy a bunch of gear.
Step 2: Tell you the gear that made cycling less fun.
Step 3: Sell you a solution to the “problem.”
Instant data analysis
Moving on – let’s go through the bullet points, starting with the screenshot of CoachCat’s post-ride analysis. If that’s hard to read, here’s what the screenshot on the left says:
“Pushing into your anaerobic capacity zone for over 10 minutes is solid, especially as you peak towards 312W on your best 1-minute power.”
Umm, what?
What does “peak towards 312” mean? Did the rider hit 312 watts for a minute, hit it for a split second during that minute, or was it a vibe?
Let’s pretend we understood what the AI meant. Is spending 10 minutes in the anaerobic zone solid because they hit 312, or was it solid to begin with, and hitting 312 simply reinforced its solidness?
And while we’re here, what the hell does “solid” mean? I thought this app was super analytical – is there a definition of solid floating around somewhere that helps me understand whether that’s good or bad because it sounds kinda average?
A few years ago now, someone posted a banger to social media:
That’s sharp AF, Andrew, but I think I can come up with a better name for this phenomenon. I’d like to propose we call it Analytical AI Diarrhea (AAD for short).
Overall, CoachCat’s post-workout comment is a perfect example of AI-generated analytical diarrhea. It instantly:
Gives you a human-like pat on the back for your ride using terms like ‘solid,’ etc.
References an exercise physiology term to sound smart.
Surfaces a randomly calculated peak from the workout.
The comment looks pretty, but it’s empty. A better comment would be:
“Decent (never fully praise an athlete) execution on the 6×1 min efforts today (avoid jargon). In this block of training, we’re trying to improve your ability to follow short, hard moves, and this workout helps with that (why are you doing it?). The fact that your last 1-minute effort averaged (not peaked, wtf) at 312 watts was impressive, but I’d rather see the average of all your 1-minute intervals be higher than see the last one be your best – that usually means you’re holding back too much (actual file analysis). Also, in contrast to past efforts like this in the last 90 days (historical context), your overall average was higher, BUT you dropped your cadence low at the end – were you out of the saddle on those?(experiential inference) Because you should have remained seated. Do better next time (76% of athletes respond well to negative reinforcement).”
That might seem over the top, but I would even argue this would be a better comment than ADD:
“ 👍🏻 🔥.”
Fun Interactive Coaching?
Three problems here:
Yes, chatting with AI is fun. When no one in my family speaks to me, I will just go on long walks and talk to Claude until I walk back from the edge of the cliff. But AI also tells you what you want to hear and misleads you unless you micromanage it.
If you’re constantly rescheduling workouts, the issue isn’t your calendar—it’s your priorities. AI can’t fix that.
The marketing team couldn’t even spell-check their ad copy. It’s hilarious to me that this ad markets CoachCat’s analytical genius, but the company can’t even be bothered to use AI to spell-check its ad copy.
Real Results?
CHAD?! Of all the names, they picked Chad.
Also, no link to Chad’s training data? Weird. It’s almost like they made him up.
For the record, 32 watts in six months isn’t impressive. That’s standard noob-gain** territory.
OMFG OMGFG OMFG WUT HAVE YOU DONE??!!
This paragraph has the best line in the entire email. “If you’re tired of …hiring expensive coaches.” You mean the ones on your payroll?
Their website sells two ways to get faster:
A forty-second Phil Gaimon ( 😆) video pretending that he uses CoachCat to remain the ‘Strava King’’
A gigantic headline telling you that FasCat gives you two ways to get faster – AI-powered coaching and 1:1 Expert coaching.
If none of this seems odd to you, I get it – the website does look slick AF. Phil is handsome and has a captivating personality, and the copy makes my click finger really itchy. Seriously, what Frank built is truly magnificent, no bullshit.
But, ummmm, does no one else not see the gigantic elephant in the room?
“If you’re tired of …hiring expensive coaches.” You mean the seven coaches on your payroll whom you’d have to pay at least $199 a month to…talk to once a month (while CoachCat does everything else?)??!!!!!
FasCat Cycling markets CoachCat by shitting on their own coaches WTFFFFFFF!!!!!
I’m really struggling to understand the strategy here. In the Phil Gaimon video, he said he uses the CoachCat app to get the same insights he’d get from Frank (which you can pay $599/month for, or at least you could before the page broke), just faster.
So, on the one hand, I’m supposed to believe that CoachCat is so good that it not only does everything their formal national team leading coach does, but faster and cheaper. On the other hand, I’m supposed to see the value in paying $7,757*** more for 1:1 coaching every year because the coaching is ‘experiential’ (which they don’t bother defining), and you get two phone calls a month. Yeahhhhhh.
I would pay good money to be a fly on the wall at the coaching-staff-only FasCat happy hour. Imagine being an employee at that company and seeing emails go out week after week, pushing a product meant to replace you with your boss’s algorithmized coaching philosophy. 😆
CoachCat Takeaway
Frank Overton is a genius. He’s going to make F**ktons of 💵. Like his instinct fifteen years ago to label an arbitrary percentage of Coggan’s training zones as ‘Sweet Spot,’ he remains nearly peerless in the endurance coaching industry in being on the ground floor as technology revolutionizes how people pedal.
But many good coaches won’t make a living, and many athletes will get diarrhea and pay for it.
* The only people who make riding a bike less fun than roadies are triathletes.
**Noob-gains are the improvements someone experiences when they’re new to something (new=noob). In the FasCat copy, Chad (if he was even real) was no doubt going from the couch to the bike.
***Yes, you’d pay $7,757/yr for that because FasCat coaches do not charge every month, they charge every four weeks. I’ll let you figure out why that’s important.
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1 thought on “I Opened a FasCat AI Coaching Email So You Don’t Have To”
Brilliant post! I drank their Kool-Aid, paid for an annual subscription, and regretted it after the first 2 hours trying to learn their app.
Several times I asked CoachCat for a more detailed analysis of my rides beyond the general “cheerleading” post ride responses (example 1, to summarize my average torque for each of their low cadence intervals and example 2, to summarize my average power for each interval completed). The CoachCat response I received was along the lines of “I can’t provide a summary of this data as I can’t analyze the uploaded .fit file. If you can provide me more details by looking at your file, that would help me interpret them. Alternatively, you can use software that reads .fit files to view your data”. Essentially, I would have to do the analysis myself and report the details back to CoachCat…
You are correct, it is a slick app with slick marketing. It does have a ton of pre-made programs to choose from that I can at least look through and learn potentially new ideas.