The Next Race Review 2026: Free Calendar First Training Plan App for Runners & Triathletes

Looking for an honest The Next Race review?

We spent time with The Next Race (TNR), a free, calendar first training planning and tracking web app designed to help athletes (and coaches) plan training, log workouts, and review progress over time.

What stood out immediately is how much The Next Race (TNR) prioritizes workflow speed: you can click any day to create a session, plan multiple workouts per day, and reschedule your week with a simple drag and drop flow. Instead of feeling like a social fitness app, it feels closer to a lightweight training planner, with a surprisingly useful “database view” when you want to treat your training history like structured data.

In this review, we’ll break down what The Next Race (TNR) does well, where it still has room to grow (especially in analytics depth), and who we think should try it.

What Is The Next Race (TNR)?

The Next Race (TNR) is a free web app for planning training and logging workouts. Calendar based planning, easy rescheduling, and a searchable workout log make it ideal for runners, triathletes, and coaches. It’s a good fit for running, cycling, and swimming based training. At a high level, it helps you:

1. Build a training plan (calendar based)
2. Log workouts (including past sessions)
3. Add races (events) and media
4. Review your history and progress with simple analytics

The Next Race (TNR) is currently free to use, though an account is required.

First Impressions: Onboarding and Navigation

On first login, The Next Race (TNR) asks you to identify as a coach or an athlete. In our testing, we chose athlete.

The app is organized around four core areas:

• Plan: build and adjust your training schedule
• Workouts: your workout log (edit, delete, and copy sessions)
• Athlete: designed for managing or inviting athletes (we didn’t focus on collaboration in this review)
• Media: view associated media

There’s also a prominent “+” create entry point for quickly creating plans, workouts, races, and media.

The Best Part: Planning Workouts Is Extremely Fast

If your main pain point is that planning training feels slow (or gets abandoned because it’s tedious), this is where The Next Race (TNR) shines.

1. Calendar first planning (month view by default)

The Plan module opens to a calendar view where planning is as simple as clicking a date.

• You can add multiple planned sessions to a single day.
• Each session can be labeled by sport type (e.g., swim, run, walk, bike, rest) and difficulty.
• You can keep it lightweight (just name it), or later fill in more detail.

2. Drag and drop rescheduling that actually feels good

Plans rarely survive contact with real life.

The Next Race (TNR) makes the “move this workout to another day” action effortless: just drag a session to a new date. This encourages you to keep your plan updated instead of letting it drift.

3. Multiple plan views for different time horizons

The Next Race (TNR) supports multiple ways to view your plan:

• Year calendar: a high level overview across the full year
• Month calendar: the most practical day to day view
• List view: scanning and reviewing sessions quickly

This combination is especially useful if you plan in blocks (macro view) but execute week to week.

4. Keyboard shortcuts (small detail, big speed boost)

One detail we appreciated is that The Next Race (TNR) supports keyboard shortcuts across navigation and workout actions. If you plan daily and frequently edit sessions, these shortcuts noticeably reduce friction.

Some of the most useful shortcuts in our test:

• Jump to modules: Workouts W, Training Plans T, Performance Graph P
• Workout actions: New N, Edit E, Mark as done F, Delete D, Create or Save Cmd + Enter
• Navigation: Previous month Left or Up, Next month Right or Down
• UI and utility: Sidebar S, Copy link C, Close window Esc

Logging Workouts: From Simple Entries to Richer Data

The Next Race (TNR) isn’t only for planning future workouts. It also supports filling in past training data, which is crucial if you want your history to be complete.

When logging or editing a workout, you can capture basics like:

• Duration
• Distance
• Pace

And optionally add more detailed training metrics such as:

• Average heart rate
• Max heart rate
• Calories
• Avg Power
• Max Power
• Avg Cadence
• Max Cadence
• Glucose

The data entry flow felt smooth in practice, fast enough that you’re more likely to actually log your sessions.

Database Mode: A Workout Log You Can Search and Customize

One of the most underrated features in The Next Race (TNR) is the database style view.

Instead of burying your training history behind endless scrolling, The Next Race (TNR) can present sessions in a table where:

• You can choose which columns or metrics are shown
• You can treat the log like a lightweight training database
• Keyword search is supported, which makes it much easier to find specific sessions or themes (e.g., “tempo”, “long run”, “rest”) across months

For athletes who like structure (or coaches who need quick visibility), this is a meaningful differentiator from typical consumer fitness apps.

Analytics and Progress Review (Good Foundation, Still Room to Grow)

Analytics in The Next Race (TNR) focus on a clear, motivating overview rather than deep training science.

In testing, we saw a few standout elements:

• A daily training heatmap grid where darker days represent more training, making patterns and consistency easy to spot
• Activity history charts for weekly and daily patterns
• A simple summary for a given period (e.g., total distance, total duration, number of activities)

That said, if you’re used to more advanced analysis ecosystems, the analytics in The Next Race (TNR) may feel comparatively lightweight today. The upside is that it stays approachable, and for many athletes, that’s the point.

Data Integrations: Strava and Wahoo

The Next Race (TNR) supports connecting external services like Strava or Wahoo to pull training data.

We did not connect these services during our test (we didn’t have accounts/devices on hand), so we won’t overclaim on import quality or reliability. But for athletes already using Strava or Wahoo as a source of truth, this integration path matters, and it’s good to see it included.

The Next Race vs Garmin Connect and Gudong

If you’re coming from Garmin Connect or Gudong, The Next Race (TNR) will feel different in a few ways:

• More plan centric: Garmin Connect and Gudong are great for capture and review, but The Next Race (TNR)’s core strength is planning quickly and keeping a schedule flexible.
• More “workout database”: the table view, column customization, and search make it easier to treat training history as structured data.
• Less social, more workflow: The Next Race (TNR) feels like a focused tool for planning and tracking, not a community feed.

If your priority is staying consistent with a plan and being able to look back cleanly across months, The Next Race (TNR)’s approach can be a better fit.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Fast planning workflow (click to create plus drag and drop scheduling)
• Multiple plan views (year / month / list) support both macro and daily planning
• Database style workout history with customizable columns and keyword search
• Smooth workout editing (including copy/duplicate for repeating sessions)
• Free to use (with account)

Cons / Limitations

• Analytics are useful and motivating, but not as deep as advanced training analysis platforms
• Some features (like Athlete/collaboration flows) may require further polish depending on your use case

Who Should Use The Next Race?

Great fit for:

• Athletes who want a training plan tool first, and a workout tracker second
• Runners / triathletes who plan weekly blocks and need easy rescheduling
• Coaches or self coached athletes who want a cleaner, more structured training history

Not ideal for:

• People who only want casual activity logging and social features
• Athletes who rely on very advanced analytics and modeling as their primary workflow

Final Verdict: Is The Next Race Worth Trying?

Yes, especially because it’s free.

The Next Race (TNR) is one of the fastest training planning experiences we’ve used in a web app. The calendar workflow is genuinely frictionless, and the database mode adds a “serious tool” feel that many mainstream fitness apps don’t offer.

If you want a simple, modern place to plan training, keep your history structured, and review progress with a clear visual overview, The Next Race (TNR) is an easy recommendation.

👉 Try it here: The Next Race