RunWise AI - Origin Story

Co-founder Bjorn Anderson was competitive runner in high school and college, and he has remained deeply connected to the sport, completing seven marathons including two Boston Marathons (2002 and 2023). As a life-long runner, Bjorn has experienced his fair share of running injuries. He knows how frustrating it is to take time off from running, as well as how difficult it is to predict when injuries might occur.

In 2020, Bjorn immersed himself in the world of machine learning, experimenting with basic theory and building models to perform various tasks. As he delved deeper into this new field, he discovered that machine learning had not yet been applied to predict running injuries. Bjorn therefore saw an opportunity to solve a problem that has plagued runners for years.

Bjorn began to brainstorm ideas. First, he created training datasets based on his own running data and designed a model test strategy. Using this strategy, he trained and then deployed various iterations of a machine learning model to help guide his training ahead of the 2022 Glass City Marathon (Toledo, OH). The training cycle was injury-free and the marathon was successful (i.e. BQ), so Bjorn felt that he was onto something.

As he looked forward to Boston, Bjorn continued to refine training datasets and machine learning models. And once again, he harnessed the power of machine learning to adapt his marathon training plan on the fly and ultimately completed the 2023 Boston Marathon without experiencing injury. Bjorn has continued to employ machine learning models and successfully trained for and finished the 2024 Vermont City Marathon (Burlington, VT) and 2025 Donna National Marathon to Finish Breast Cancer (Jacksonville, FL). In fact, Bjorn has not lost training time as a result of injury since incorporating machine learning predictions as part of his planning, which is a period of more than 3 years. This is despite some estimates indicating that 50% of runners experience an injury every year.

With a successful proof of concept in hand, Bjorn and a fellow co-founder Gabe Azar launched RunWise AI LLC. Together, they created the RunWise™ Injury Predictor in order to share this technology with fellow runners. The current version provides a retrospective analysis of your training data. We would be delighted for you to give it a test run.


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