Bereda Training, the Halifax company that helps endurance athletes, is launching a new product to blend its data and planning platform with a peer-to-peer support function.

The company recently announced its new business model on its website, with the goal of providing one-on-one support that allows athletes to use data to improve their performance. Pairs of athletes can use the product to help each other, or an athlete and coach can use it to help the athlete. 

Bereda has integrated with Strava, the world’s largest social network for endurance sports, with more than 30 million users. Rather than posting results to a social media board to be applauded by a range of people, the new Bereda system lets pairs of athletes or an athlete and coach analyze data together and plot the best way to improve.

“Bereda combines modern, one-to-one messaging with access to training data and future plans, bringing context to conversations about training between athletes, their peers, and coaches,” said CEO Dennis Cottreau on the company website.

“We believe giving endurance athletes the ability to connect and collaborate can unlock the potential of individual athletes to help each other improve their performance, achieve their goals, and gain the experience they need to confidently self-direct their training.”

Bereda Training began last year with a goal of developing an online training platform that automates the training plans that coaches prepare for endurance athletes (runners, cyclists, triathletes, etc.). It released its minimum viable product last year – a platform that greatly reduces the time it takes for coaches or self-coached athletes to customize their training schedules over the course of a year. It allows them to build highly customized training strategies that can take into account hectic schedules and things like injuries or holidays.

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Bereda Marketing Manager Tyler Sellars said in an email the original product allows coaches and athletes to develop better plans, but the team realized it could do more for a broader community of athletes if it boosted one-on-one support.

The new product capitalizes on a few trends in technology. The spread of wearable technology has grown dramatically giving athletes a range of metrics on their speed, heart rate and the like. And person-to-person messaging is used more often than other forms of social media.

“Once connected with a peer, the user will have full access to training data, analytics, and future plans: the full perspective needed to get involved and lend a hand,” said Sellars. He added that the new product takes Bereda “out of its niche” and becomes available to tens of millions of ordinary athletes who want to improve.

The company grew out of the frustration its founders (both elite athletes) felt with the inflexibility of existing training platforms. Cottreau was a semi-professional cyclist for two years and CTO Blake Pucsek was the captain of the Harvard University rowing team.

In May, Bereda Training raised $250,000 in equity financing, with $100,000 coming from Innovacorp, and the remaining $150,000 from three angel investors it met through the Creative Destruction Lab-Atlantic.