Your seasons and objectives

Plan is organised by season: the left-hand menu lists your kennel's seasons, the current one highlighted, past ones greyed out ("Archived"). The owner creates a season from "+ New season" by describing only its environment — five dates in a fixed order (season start, dryland start, snow start, end of harness work, season end; the dryland/snow arc only exists for a sport that runs on snow), a region, an average temperature and, optionally, a heat threshold. Objectives are then declared from within the season.

Each season shows a proportional timeline of its phases (dryland, snow, rest), a "Today" marker, and your races and milestones plotted on it. Below it, one card per objective shows the sport, its nature (Race, Maintenance, Expedition or Recreational), the team and its number of dogs, the distance, the target date, the designated musher if there is one, its milestones (tune-up races or raids), and where its plan stands (no plan yet to generate, season not started yet, week N of total, or season over). The card's button adapts to that state — "Open and generate the plan", "Open the plan" or "Open read-only" for anyone who can't generate one. The owner edits or deletes each objective from its card; on a wide screen, hovering a card opens a panel on the right with its key figures and a shortcut to the plan.

Creating an objective and generating its plan

"Add an objective" (owner only) opens a two-step form. "My race or goal" asks for the sport (sled, canicross, bikejoring, scooter, skijoring, kart, quad), the nature (race, maintenance, expedition, recreational), the target date and the distance — which automatically sets the discipline (mid-distance or long, based on a distance threshold shared by the whole model). For a race, a dedicated block offers to attach an event from the catalogue or create a private one, along with the team and dogs entered, and for a multi-day event, the number of days, the daily distance and the mandatory rest between stages. An optional location (search, drag the pin, or type coordinates) is used to prepare the offline map of that region.

"My conditions" covers motorised assistance (dog walker/gangline motor, quad, kart), terrain (a reference route and the expected snow quality), your starting condition (deconditioned, base, trained — the plan's starting point), how many days a week you train, and the days you're never available (checked once for the whole season; a race itself still falls on its date no matter what). While you fill it in, a sentence under the form states what the engine is about to build — the plan's length in weeks, how many weeks have already gone by, how many outings per week and their total, and whether the build fits its four phases (base, intensity, peak, taper) or the season is too short for all four. Editing an objective reopens the same form, pre-filled.

Once the objective is created, its Configuration tab carries the "Generate plan" button (owner or a vet). Regenerating overwrites the current plan without asking if it was built automatically; if it was hand-edited, a confirmation reminds you before overwriting your changes.

The plan, week by week

The Plan tab shows a strip of bars, one per week of the season, whose height follows the planned volume; a flag marks the objective's week and each milestone's. A switch toggles the view between "Team" and "Per dog". The selected week details its total volume, its number of rest days, a day-by-day breakdown — click a day to close it when the kennel is unavailable, which immediately clears any session sitting on it; reopening it doesn't bring a session back on its own, a regeneration is what actually fills it back in — then the list of sessions: date, distance, an "up to" speed that is a ceiling, not a target (ride slower if that's your dogs' comfortable pace), and its effort zone. Two optional drawers detail the volume range that was used and, for anyone who wants to go further, why that particular volume was set.

The "Edit" button opens direct editing: add, change or delete a session on the displayed week. Touching it switches the plan to manual mode — protected, as above, from an accidental regeneration.

Why this plan

A "Why this plan?" panel plays back in plain sentences what you entered and what the engine read to build this specific plan: sport, distance, race date, number of weeks, starting condition, training days and rest days, dryland and snow start, snow quality, average temperature, milestones, and the weekly growth cap that was used. The same card lists the dogs the engine pulled from the plan or scaled back, with the cause (age, injury, heat…) and a link to their record.

Further down, "Under the hood of the plan" gathers, read-only, the model's global settings that explain the calculation — validated by the product's vet, not by you: nothing here is editable from this page. For a subscribed kennel, "Freshness projections" adds a forecast chart running to race day, the team's average and dogs to watch; without a subscription, the panel invites you to subscribe instead.

When reality drifts from the plan

MushMate continuously compares the load your team actually carried against the plan's, over the last seven days — it never regenerates on its own. A notable gap shows a banner naming the dog or the team, the percentage of the gap, the days you went out and the sessions the plan called for, with a link to "Regenerate the plan from actual load"; if a session logged at an impossible speed is skewing the calculation, the banner says so instead and asks you to fix the data before regenerating.

When the engine has enough to propose something better than a plain observation — after a sustained gap, or because you closed a day — a "A proposal is waiting for you" card replaces that banner: it names the cause, charts planned/realised/proposed, and lays out the coming weeks one by one. You choose which ones you take and which you keep as they are — never all-or-nothing — with a warning if a jump exceeds the growth cap; "Take these N weeks" or "Keep mine" closes the proposal.

Two more banners, specific to an objective: if the plan asks a young dog for more than its age bracket allows, a warning names the dog, quantifies the overrun and waits for you to click "I understand and accept this plan" — or, when possible, to regenerate respecting the caps instead; nothing is scaled back on its own. And if a dog on the plan has been injured, put on medication, or moved into a different age bracket since the plan was generated, a "Plan out of date" banner flags it and offers to review the roster and regenerate. One last banner, specific to races, warns when the remaining team no longer meets the event's minimum required headcount.

Milestones, versions and export

Milestones are an objective's tune-up races or raids: "Add a milestone" records a date, a nature, a distance or a label, and for a staged raid, its own race days, daily distance and mandatory rest. Each one opens into its own sheet, can be edited or deleted; a banner flags when the milestones have changed since the plan was last generated.

Every regeneration archives the previous plan instead of deleting it: the collapsible "Versions" panel lists them with when each was set aside and a "Put back in service" button (owner, kennel in good standing), and lets you compare planned/done/proposed against an older version or a proposal in flight. The "Export" menu downloads the plan as CSV (by week, by session, with its parameters or its diagnostics) and opens a printable calendar — save it as a PDF from your browser.

The race dossier and expert validation

For a Race or Expedition objective, a third "Race" tab gathers the event's dossier: the attached race definition (changeable if needed), the designated musher, the planned team, secondary participants — dogs entered on another objective of the season but present at this race —, useful links, and notes with attachments.

A plan can also be submitted to an expert: a badge above the plan shows whether it has been validated, is under review, or has changes requested, with the reviewer's note. With no review requested yet, the owner finds a "Request a validation" button below the plan if the kennel has an active validation service, otherwise a link to find an expert on the marketplace.

Model settings

Below the list of seasons, "Model parameters" opens the settings that apply to the whole kennel: your equipped weight and each rig's (bike, sled, quad, kart, scooter, pulka) that the model charges to every session, the overtraining window, and the young-dog growth profile (Cautious, Standard, Sporting) with the editor for its caps by age bracket.

On mobile

The Objective screen carries the same season and objectives — the owner creates and edits them from the phone just as on the web — with a readiness ring and the team's pace ceiling in its header. Generating, regenerating, deciding on a recalibration proposal, or acknowledging a young-dog cap overrun all work there too. Each session also shows, once the outing has actually happened, a numeric gap against its prescription (distance as a percentage, zone exceeded) — silent when it matched the prescription. Only the "plan is stale" warning for an injury or medication stays read-only on mobile: it sends you to regenerate from the web app instead.

Going further