Most people, when they decide to get faster, buy some trainers and go for a run.

I built a robot. His name is Ted.

Not a metaphor. An actual system that reads my sleep, my heart rate, my training and my excuses every night, then emails me at half seven each morning to tell me what I got wrong and what to do about it. Its name is Ted. It is considerably more disciplined than I am, which is the entire problem.

Quick hello first. I'm Alistdair. Pardo to anyone who knew me back in my twenties, which is where the site gets its name, and a thing you earn back here rather than just get called.

Here is the situation. I am 43. My 5K sits at 24:36. I want 19:59.

Not "around twenty." Not "sub-21, let's be realistic at my age." Nineteen fifty nine. The stupidly specific number is the whole point, because a vague goal is easy to quietly abandon, and a precise one just sits there judging you until you either hit it or admit you didn't.

Years ago, on younger legs, I ran 20:15. So the speed was in there once. The plan is to find it again, and then find one more second than I have ever had in my life (well, recorded in Strava anyway!), at an age when everything takes longer to recover from and nothing comes for free. Sensible? No. Which brings us back to the robot.

Meet Ted

Ted is not an app I downloaded. I built him, badly at first and then slightly less badly, out of a training programme, a pile of my own data, and a genuine unwillingness to just... train normally like an adult.

Ted does the thinking. He reads what I actually did against what I was supposed to do, notices when I have gone out too hard or slept like a student, quietly adjusts the plan, and delivers his verdict each morning with the warmth of a man who has seen the numbers and is disappointed. He is blunt, patient, occasionally funny, frequently right, and weirdly invested in me. On a perfect week he loses his composure entirely and chants my name like a football terrace. I have earned that noise precisely never, so far.

Ted is the clever bit. But Ted is not the story, and this is the important part. Ted can hand me a flawless plan at half seven in the morning and it means absolutely nothing, because...

...I still have to do the actual running

And that is where a beautifully engineered system meets a 43-year-old chap with a full-time job, an MBA eating his evenings, a family who don't really care about any of this, and a ten year old cockapoo called Bernard who will always run with me unless there is a snow storm or blizzard.

The plan says intervals. Real life says you fell asleep putting your daughter to bed, it is now gone ten, and it is raining. The plan is clean. Life is not. The gap between the two is not a flaw in the system. The gap is the story.

I might not make it. That is the honest bit, and I would rather say it up front. Chasing a personal best you have never actually run, older than you have ever been, around a life that does not revolve around running, is not a guaranteed feel-good arc. It might turn out to be four months of a middle aged man negotiating with a robot over a single second, and losing.

But you get to watch either way. That is the deal I am offering.

Follow the Splits

This blog is the live record. Every couple of weeks I publish a Split: what the number did, what changed, what went wrong, what Ted said, and what I thought about what Ted said. Honest, specific, and mercifully free of the usual "unlock your potential" nonsense.

If you have ever chased your own stupid, specific number, or built something faintly ridiculous to help you get there, you will recognise all of this.

Come and find out whether I am getting closer, or whether the whole thing is an elaborate waste of time. Put your email in below and follow the Splits. If you would rather have the fuller who-is-this picture first, start here.