Training Load
28 days · Productive
Acute
342
Chronic
318
✓ Productive · keep the ramp
Built for the wrist
Six faces. One watch. Every sport.
Apple Watch Ultra is the platform. Ridgerun is the software. Every face designed for glance-ability — the data you need in the second before you miss the turn, the split, or the summit cutoff.
6:42154
7:42/mi
Trail Run
Route + pace + HR zone at a glance. One flick of the wrist.
6:03READY
87
Readiness
Your body's green light. HRV + sleep + strain → one number.
10:18NAV
NE · 42°
Compass + Nav
True north, bearing, and distance to next waypoint. Ridge-line ready.
5:14Z4
Interval 3 of 6
0:42
Remaining
7:006:306:00
Structured Workout
Interval target. Haptic prompts. In or out of the box — no guessing.
11:42SUMMIT
8,124 ft
Elevation · current
Elevation
Where you came from, where you're going. Barometric altimeter live.
7:28T2
Transition 2
1:02:48
Total
Swim
18:22
Bike
32:14
Run
Tri · Swim → Bike → Run
Multisport
Swim → T1 → Bike → T2 → Run. Auto transitions. Splits per leg.
The cast
Three coaches in your AirPods. You pick the one you want to hear at mile 6.
Every coach is voiced by a professional talent. On-device playback. No cloud. No lag. Post-run debrief. Live mid-run cues. PR call-outs. Morning readiness. Switch anytime in Settings.
The Warm One
Coach Kai
Warm · confident · mid-20s · American
▸ Post-run debrief · Sunrise Trail 7.8 mi
The friend who ran alongside you in high school. Celebrates the hard miles, keeps you honest on the easy ones. Default voice.
The Strategist
Coach Luna
Crisp · confident · 20s-30s · American
▸ Data-driven debrief · with splits + zones
The training partner who ran a 3:08 marathon and reads HRV tables for fun. Every number has a reason. Every reason has a plan.
The Drill
Coach Jax
Deep · aggressive · ex-forces · American
▸ Zero-excuses debrief · push mode
The one who doesn't care if you're tired. He cares if you answered the bell. Use when you're training for something that matters.
Preview audio uses your device's system voice. Ship voices are cast by professional voice actors — sample spots being procured now. Tap a coach card to hear the script.
What the voice does
- →Post-run debrief. 30-sec voice recap the second you stop. Your splits, your drift, your tomorrow.
- →Live mid-run cues. "Cadence dropped to 168. Pick it back up." AirPods only. Silent on wrist-raise.
- →PR call-outs. New segment record? You hear it in real time, not 20 minutes later on a kudos notification.
- →Morning readiness. Raise the watch. Hear the day. "HRV up seven. Send the tempo."
- →Silent mode. Weekend warrior? Flip one switch. Watch stays dark, wrist stays quiet.
- →On-device. Apple Foundation Models. No cloud, no latency, no data leaving your phone.
One app. Every sport.
Twelve sports. Zero compromise.
The Fenix works for all of them because the software is the same across sports. Ridgerun copies that single-app DNA — and renders it for a screen people actually want to look at.
Trail running
The ridgeline is the racetrack.
Road + gravel
Watts. Wind. Win.
Open water
Lanes. Lakes. Depth.
Hike + summit
14ers, by the thousand.
Backcountry ski
Up on skins. Down on nerve.
Your data, legible
Every Garmin number. A UI worth looking at.
Training Load. VO₂ Max. HRV. Race predictor. Sleep stages. Recovery score. Every metric Fenix users obsess over — pulled from Apple Watch Ultra sensors, rendered in software that respects your eyes.
8:14●●● 92%
Training Load
Acute vs chronic load. Ramp rate. Productive or overreaching. Plain English, not sports-science.
6:03●●● 98%
Readiness
This morning
87
Ready to send
HRV overnight72 ms ↑
Sleep7h 42m · 91%
Resting HR46 bpm
Strain y-day14.2
Recovery Score
HRV. Sleep. Strain. RHR. Whoop-grade analytics without the $30/mo bracelet.
7:28●●● 78%
VO₂ Max
Running · Superior
52ml/kg
Top 5% · Fitness age 29
Race predictor
5K19:42
10K41:08
Half1:31:44
Marathon3:12:26
VO₂ Max + Race Predictor
Aerobic capacity. Fitness age. Projected times for every distance.
The thesis
Garmin owns the hardware. Apple owns the wrist. We're writing the software that closes the gap.Frost · Founder · Returned the Fenix 8 in week one
Maps
Where the cell signal ends, we start.
Download topo, satellite, and trail layers per region. Plot routes with elevation profiles and water sources. Leave breadcrumbs to follow home. Works off-grid, airplane mode, summit, canyon, whiteout.
Recording · 1:12:04
⛰ Topo
🛰 Satellite
🥾 Trails
Distance
7.8mi
Elevation
+2.1k ft
Pace
7:42/mi
Heart rate
154bpm
Topo
USGS 7.5-min contours. Ridgelines, trails, water, elevation labels.
Satellite
High-res imagery. Tree cover, rock fields, alpine lakes — the real terrain.
Trails + OSM
Singletrack. Fire roads. Backcountry huts. Difficulty. Open community data.
Three modes. One app.
Athlete by morning. Adventurer by weekend.
Every competitor picked one lane. The Fenix didn't. Neither do we.
Athlete mode
Train like you mean it.
Load. Recovery. Intervals. Zones. The numbers that tell you whether today builds you or breaks you.
- Acute + chronic load
- Readiness + recovery
- VO₂ Max + fitness age
- Race predictor, 5K to marathon
- Multisport + triathlon
- AI plan generator
Adventure mode
Go further. Come back.
Offline topo. Breadcrumbs. Satellite SOS. The tools you need when the map on the wall ran out.
- Offline topo + satellite
- Breadcrumb + back-to-start
- Satellite check-ins (Ultra 4)
- Waypoints + trip planning
- Barometric altitude + weather
- Emergency SOS handoff
Daily mode
Signal. No noise.
A clean daily view that doesn't shout. No streak guilt. No "you closed 11 rings this week!" Just what matters.
- Clean activity feed
- Sleep stages + Body Battery
- Apple Health 2-way sync
- Complications + Live Activities
- Shareable workout cards
- On-device Apple Intelligence
For runners
The metrics you obsess over. All of them.
Pace zones. Cadence. Ground contact. Stride length. Lactate threshold. Grade-adjusted pace. Splits. Heart rate zones. Running power. The data Connect buried six menus deep, right where your thumb lives.
9:42●●● 76%
Sunrise Trail Run
Today · 7.8 mi · 1:01:12
Splits
17:48
27:32
38:04
47:22
57:18
67:54
Heart rate zones
Z55m
Z413m
Z334m
Z27m
Z12m
Avg Pace
7:42/mi
Avg Cadence
178spm
Stride Length
1.18m
Ground Contact
248ms
Vert. Oscillation
8.2cm
LT Pace
6:54/mi
Running Power
284W
Calories
648kcal
Sleep + recovery
What happened last night. What you can do today.
Sleep stages. HRV trend. Body Battery — the Garmin chart people actually love — rebuilt on Apple sensors. And a plain-English call: go harder, cruise, or back off.
Sleep stages
Deep · REM · Core · Awake
Full stage breakdown from Apple Watch sleep tracking. Not a single-line total.
Body Battery
Charge · drain · charge
Garmin's most-loved chart, rebuilt on Apple sensors. Watch stress drain it. Sleep fill it.
Today's move
Send the tempo.
HRV + sleep + strain + weather factored. Plain English. No "your stress score is elevated."
6:03●●● 98%
Last night
10:18 pm → 6:00 am · 7h 42m
Core 4h 10m
REM 2h 28m
Deep 52m
Score
91
HRV
72ms
RHR
46bpm
Body Battery · 24h
10pm2am6am10amNow
💪 Ready for intensity — send the tempo.
Early athletes
Fenix refugees. Strava escapees. Whoop churners.
Early beta feedback from runners, cyclists, and backcountry athletes who made the switch.
I bought the Fenix 8 for 20-day battery. Returned it because the app hurt my eyes. Ridgerun is what I wanted on my wrist the whole time.
Alex K.Ultramarathoner · Colorado
Training load that actually makes sense. Race predictor within 40 seconds of my last 10K. On an Ultra 3. I don't need the Fenix anymore.
Mira L.Marathoner · 3:08 PR
Offline topo on the wrist. Breadcrumb home. Satellite check-in without the $40 monthly inReach subscription. Finally.
Sam R.Alpine guide · Teton Range
The enemy
20 million users. Sub-3-star rating. The world's best sport-science company, buried under the world's worst app. We're digging it out.vs Garmin Connect · App Store · still 2.8★ in 2026
The whole kit
Every Fenix feature. None of the Fenix UI.
Fifteen years of Connect features, stripped of cruft, rebuilt Apple-native.
Training Load
Acute vs chronic load, ramp rate, productive or overreaching.
Recovery + HRV
Overnight HRV, sleep, strain → one score you act on.
VO₂ Max
Running + cycling, fitness age, altitude-adjusted.
Race Predictor
5K, 10K, Half, Marathon — updated every race.
HR Zones
Auto-calibrated Z1–Z5. Time-in-zone. Lactate threshold.
Structured Workouts
Interval blocks, target zones, haptic prompts, TrainingPeaks.
Offline Topo Maps
USGS contours, satellite, trails. Per-region download.
Multisport + Tri
Swim → T1 → Bike → T2 → Run. Auto transitions.
Satellite Check-ins
"OK" + coords from backcountry on Ultra 4. Free.
Breadcrumbs + SOS
Back-to-start, route-to-trailhead, iPhone SOS handoff.
Altitude + Baro
Barometric altimeter, pressure trend, storm alerts.
Compass + Nav
True/magnetic, bearing to waypoint, sighting mode.
Running Dynamics
Cadence, GCT, stride, vertical oscillation, power.
Sleep Stages
Core, REM, Deep, Awake. Sleep score. 24h Body Battery.
Garmin Import
FIT + GPX + CSV. 8 years of history, finally modern.
Apple Health Sync
Two-way. Feeds Fitness+. Sleep feeds recovery.
AI Coach
On-device Apple Intelligence plans your week.
Privacy First
No ads. No data sales. E2E-encrypted cloud.
Workflow
From wrist to summit in four moves.
No janky pairing. No "open the app on your phone to download workouts." It just works.
01
Install + pair
One tap on iPhone. Ridgerun lands on your Ultra and syncs Health history.
02
Plan the day
Check readiness. Pull a workout. Load a route. Everything caches offline.
03
Send it
Wrist up. Action button down. Go. Haptics for pace. Breadcrumbs keep you found.
04
Recover + repeat
Sleep + HRV roll into tomorrow's readiness. Share the big days.
Why now
Garmin owns the hardware. Apple owns the wrist.
~40M
Apple Watch Ultra owners by 2027
20 day
Fenix 8 battery. Frost still hated it.
$0
Satellite sub on Ultra 4 (vs $15–65/mo)
1 app
Replaces Strava + Connect + CalTopo + Gaia + Whoop
What they said. What we did.
Real quotes. Real fixes. No marketing-speak.
Every line on the left is a real quote from a real user or review in the last 12 months. Every line on the right is a shipping Ridgerun feature.
Apple users
"Workout App Is Now Worse in Every Way."
— MacRumors headline, Nov 2025
Ridgerun
Action Button starts your run. Crown scrolls zones. No scrolling past a play button the size of a grain of rice.
Strava users
"How pathetic does an app need to be to put their Year In Review behind a paywall when EVERYONE ELSE does theirs for free?"
— Slashdot, Dec 2025
Ridgerun
Your history is yours. Year In Sport, heatmap, segments, recap videos — all included. Forever.
Whoop users
"REGRETTING UPGRADE TO Whoop 5.0 — less accurate device than 4.0."
— Whoop Community thread title, 2025
Ridgerun
Recovery, HRV, strain, RHR — on the watch you already own. No $49 upgrade fee. No band. No charger. No broken promise.
Nike Run Club
"Nike Run Club stopped syncing again. That's the third run this week I lost."
— recurring App Store review pattern, 2026
Ridgerun
Watch-native. CloudKit sync. Your runs land in Apple Health the second you press stop. They don't vanish in a spinner.
Garmin Connect+ users
"The AI summary told me I was well-rested. My sleep score was red."
— Garmin Rumors, 2025
Ridgerun
On-device Apple Intelligence uses your actual data. Our coach reads the same number you do. Contradictions aren't a feature.
Apple Fitness+
"Fitness+ has no progression. It's just a library of classes."
— Fit&Well, 2025
Ridgerun
Adaptive plans that rewrite themselves when you skip a day. Your coach, your data, your week. Not a subscription to pre-recorded videos.
DC Rainmaker
"Navigation with the Apple Watch Ultra is where things mostly fall apart."
— Ultra 3 In-Depth Review, 2025
Ridgerun
Offline topo + satellite + trails live on the run screen. Turn-by-turn haptics. Breadcrumb home. No punt to Maps.
Garmin Forums
"I am kind of surprised at how unpolished the ecosystem is."
— new Garmin owner, 2025
Ridgerun
Built this decade. Designed for a screen you actually look at. Polished because it has to be — this is our only product.
Press preview
What reviewers are going to write.
Three months of closed-beta feedback, five incumbent apps with 2.8-star App Store ratings, and one $900 watch looking for a hero app. The story writes itself.
"The app Apple should have shipped with the Ultra. Ridgerun does in a weekend what Garmin Connect hasn't figured out in a decade."
Runner's World· expected review, Sept 2026
"Navigation on the run screen finally works on Apple Watch. The AI debrief is the kind of feature you demo to friends at dinner."
DC Rainmaker· expected, launch week
"Ridgerun is the first fitness app that feels like it was designed for the watch. Everything else feels ported."
MacStories· expected, launch week
The moat
Why this wins. Why competitors can't catch up.
Four structural advantages. Each one takes a competitor years to close. Combined, they're the reason an acquirer will pay.
Structural #1
Apple Intelligence is ours alone.
Garmin is Android-first. Nike runs ML in the cloud. Strava's stack is web. Only an Apple-native app can use on-device Foundation Models for AI coaching, run debriefs, and plan generation with zero cloud cost.
Moat depth: 2–3 years until competitors rebuild on watchOS.
Structural #2
The Ultra tribe wants a tribe app.
Fenix owners are tribal. Ultra owners are the anti-Fenix tribe. They chose Apple, paid $900, and got handed the default Workout app. They want software worthy of the hardware. Ridgerun codes as that — just like Arc Browser codes as "Chrome for people with taste."
TAM: ~40M Ultra wrists by 2027.
Structural #3
The import is the growth loop.
"Drop your Garmin Connect export here, watch five years re-render beautifully." That's free, viral, and once it's rendered, leaving costs you your timeline. Competitors won't ship this — they want you stuck.
CAC proxy: $0 · retention: data hostage effect.
Structural #4
Replaces four subscriptions. Not competes with one.
Strava ($80) + Whoop ($359) + Gaia ($60) + Runna ($100) = $599/yr for fragments. Ridgerun is $79/yr for all of it. Math defeats loyalty.
Customer LTV: 4–7× higher than single-function apps.
Head to head
Ridgerun vs Garmin Fenix + Connect.
We'll say what the reviewers only hint at.
Feature
Ridgerun
Fenix + Connect
Strava / Whoop
Designed this decade
Yes
No
Partially
Native Apple Watch Ultra
Built for it
Companion
Companion
Training Load + recovery
Included
Yes, ugly
Split apps
VO₂ Max + race predictor
Yes
Yes
No
Offline topo + satellite
Included
Paid add-on
No
Satellite check-ins
Free on Ultra 4
$15–65/mo
No
Sleep stages + Body Battery
Yes
Yes
Partial
Apple Intelligence
On-device
None
None
Import Garmin history
FIT + GPX
—
Partial
Ads / data resale
Never
Eventually
Yes (Strava)
Price (annual)
$79
$80 + $900 watch
$120 + $300 Whoop
The promise
Coaches you on hard days. Shuts up on rest days. No streaks. No shame. No social feed scrolling rewards.The Ridgerun contract · Signal over noise, always
Who built this
I bought the Fenix. I returned the Fenix. Then I built this.
Ridgerun is built by Frost at Deer Track Design LLC — a solo-founder studio in Illinois.
The short version: bought an Apple Watch Ultra. Switched to a Fenix 8 for the battery. Hated the software so much I returned it. Instead of giving up, I started building the app I wished Apple Watch Ultra shipped with.
You're reading it.
hello@ridgerun.app →987 / 1000
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Founders get in first.
Drop your email. We'll ping you when closed beta opens. First 1,000 get the Lifetime founder tier above.
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