Mark had been using Runna for seven months.
He’d followed every session. Hit nearly every target. Logged the miles, tracked the data, ticked the boxes. On paper, he was doing everything right.
But his half marathon time hadn’t moved. Not meaningfully. And he was starting to wonder whether he was the problem.
He wasn’t. The app was.
What Apps Actually Do Well
Before I answer the question in the title, I want to be straight about something. Running apps aren’t useless. If you’ve got no structure at all, an app can give you that. It will tell you what to do and when to do it, and for a complete beginner that’s genuinely valuable.
The problem isn’t what apps do. It’s what they can’t do.
The Thing No App Can Fix
When Mark came to me, the first thing I noticed wasn’t his training data. It was his life.
He works shifts. His sleep pattern is all over the place. He commutes into London four days a week, two hours each way, which wipes out any chance of an evening run on those days. He’s been dealing with a recurring calf issue for two years that nobody had properly looked at in the context of his overall load.
Runna didn’t know any of that. It couldn’t. So it just kept serving up the same sessions to a person it had never actually met.
That’s the core limitation of any app. It’s built around a generic runner. A kind of average person who doesn’t really exist. You get a plan, but it’s not your plan. It’s a template with your name on it.
When you need to move a session, or skip one, or swap a hard day because you’re running on four hours of sleep, the app can’t tell you what to do instead. You’re on your own. And most runners don’t have the knowledge or experience to make those calls confidently, which means they either push through when they shouldn’t, or they stop and feel like they’ve failed.
What Actually Changes When You Work With a Coach
I get to know people. Not just their running data, but their lives.
What their typical week looks like. When the busy days are. Whether they’re juggling kids, or a demanding job, or both. What they eat, roughly. How they sleep. Whether they’ve got a history of a particular injury. Whether they tend to do too much when things are going well, or go into their shell when things aren’t.
All of that shapes the advice I give. And it means I can have two runners with the exact same challenge and give them completely different guidance, because I know what’s going on in their world rather than just their watch data.
That’s not something you can get from an app. It’s not something you can Google either.
The other thing that changes is the back and forth. You can ask me something and get a real answer that applies to you specifically. Not a generic FAQ. Not a link to an article. A conversation with someone who knows your situation and can think it through with you.
The Honest Conversation About Cost
Yes, working with an online running coach costs considerably more than an app.
Runna is a few pounds a month. A coach is a different level of investment entirely. That’s real, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
But the question worth asking isn’t “which one is cheaper?” It’s “what is my time and effort actually worth?”
Most runners who come to me have already been putting in the work for months, sometimes years. They’re not lacking commitment. What they’re lacking is a programme that’s actually built for them. And every month that passes with a plan that isn’t quite right is another month of effort that isn’t producing what it should.
That’s the opportunity cost that rarely gets talked about. The results you’re not seeing. The progress that’s sitting just out of reach because the approach isn’t quite dialled in for you specifically.
So Is a Coach Better Than an App?
Honestly? Yes. For almost every runner, a good coach will get you better results than an app.
The one exception is budget. If working with a coach genuinely isn’t financially possible right now, then an app is better than nothing, especially if you have no structure at all. That’s a legitimate reason to use one.
But if cost isn’t the barrier, and you’re a runner who’s been putting in the effort without seeing the returns, an app isn’t the answer. You don’t need more sessions on a screen. You need someone who actually knows you, understands your life, and can put that knowledge to work in every decision they make about your training.
That’s what a coach does. And no app, however well designed, can replicate it.