I was running with a friend when we started spitballing what would be fun for a running coach to do. We landed on a bunch of different, flamboyant personalities.
That conversation turned into the five coaches.
Then I took that dark, brooding companion out for a 19K race-pace run at six in the morning. I enjoyed having him spurring me on. It helped me get my mind in the game.
The last dispatch was about giving Klivet more useful things to say. This one is about who you hear saying them.
Klivet now has five bundled character voice packs: Night Watch, Fourth Wall Mercenary, Nature Narrator, Reluctant Dad and Biceps McFlex. They give the same coaching moments different voices and different wording, on the phone and Apple Watch.
The character has to carry the instruction.
Personality with a job to do
A brooding companion, a narrator observing the running mammal, a reluctant dad who would rather be on the sofa: these are deliberately different ways to spend a run.
The coaching still has a job. A cue about the next interval needs to tell you what is happening. A kilometre call needs to give you the split. The character’s wording is attached to the coaching event, so the personality has a specific moment to work with.
The selector contains a wider cast. Five complete voice packs are bundled in the current build; the number of cards in the gallery should not be mistaken for the number of complete audio packs.
The unglamorous part was the important part
A voice can sound convincing in a preview and still fall apart during a run. Numbers need their own recordings. The watch needs the files. Music needs to return after the cue.
Those became real pieces of this work. The number recordings were listened to and revised. Phone and watch gained playback for spoken splits and target bands. The watch’s readiness check was corrected so a pack already included in the app does not wait for an unnecessary transfer.
What changed
- Five bundled voicesCharacter audio lives in the app builds, including the watch build.
- The numbers belong to the coachRecorded number clips let kilometre splits keep the selected character’s voice.
- Targets at the transitionPace or heart-rate bands are spoken when the next segment begins, where supported by the available clips.
- A choice that follows youCoach selection is saved and shared between phone and watch.
Where this leaves it
That six-in-the-morning run gave me something concrete to come back to. The brooding companion helped me get into the session. An idea we had while running together had become something I enjoyed running with.
There is more to check across the five voices and their cues. But I now have my own answer to why the personality matters: on that 19K, it helped.