Why I built Ultropic

Hi, I'm Shoaib — a Singapore runner, just like you.

Between a demanding job and a full life at home, I'm still chasing new personal bests on race day — here and across Southeast Asia. I've trained under professional coaches who genuinely helped me get there. But I always had a nagging feeling I could build something better.

Online running coaches are human, with everything that comes with it. Yours might be juggling dozens of athletes, slow to reply, or quietly running you off the same template as everyone else — you can't really know. And you can't be sure they're current on the science rather than coaching from habit.

Worse, most coaches that Singapore runners hire have never set foot here. They recycle the plans they wrote for Europe, Australia, or the US — places where running is nothing like it is here. Our heat, our humidity, our flat and dense urban terrain change everything, and a coach who hasn't lived it doesn't account for it.

My favourite example: a coach once prescribed 5 × 10-minute uphill repeats. My reply was one word — "Where?" There's no hill in Singapore long enough for that. Not Bukit Timah. None. Runners here have to improvise for elevation entirely, and I lost weeks figuring that out alone — exactly what a coach should have known on day one.

So most evenings I was doing two jobs my coach should have done: translating a cold-climate, foreign plan into something that works in Singapore, then translating their wordy write-ups into something my watch could actually follow. Time I'd far rather have spent with the people I love. I just wanted the right workout to land on my wrist so I could lace up and go.

That's why I built Ultropic — the coach I wish I'd had. It's grounded in current sports science and established coaching methodology, real Singapore routes and terrain, and years of hard-won local running experience. Your plan adapts to your life, paces every run for the heat, and lands on your watch ready to run.

Give it a try. I think you'll wonder how you trained any other way.

— Shoaib