How day targets and day types work

Gauge's core idea: a rest day and a long-run day should not have the same targets. Your daily calories and carbs move with how you train.

The three target modes

Pick yours in Settings → Daily Targets:

• My own numbers — your goals are used verbatim, every day. Nothing recalculates. The chip on Home reads "Your targets."
• Calculate for me — Gauge computes targets from your goal and how you actually train. No event required.
• Event training — periodized fueling toward a race. Requires an active training block (see the Training articles).

Day types

Each day gets a type that shapes its targets: Rest day, Easy day, Quality day, Long run day, Race day, Big day, or Training day. You'll see it as the chip at the top of Home — on training days it can include intensity and in-run carbs, like "Training day · easy · 45g in-run."

Hard and long days push calories and carbs up; rest days bring them down. Endurance athletes see bigger carb swings with session length; strength and functional athletes get a steadier target that rises modestly on training days.

Why today

Tap the day-type chip to open Why today. It shows the day's target, your maintenance for that day, the gap between them, and the reasons the engine actually recorded while grading you — deficit capped, weekly deficit balanced, results-adjusted −150 kcal, and so on.

If a day's numbers ever look wrong, this is the first place to look. It isn't a summary written after the fact; it's the engine's own working.

Telling Gauge how you trained

If your training doesn't come from a synced source (common for lifting), tap the day-type chip to answer "How did you train today?" — Didn't train, Easy, Moderate, or Hard. Most training days are Easy; that's normal, not modest. You can tag any day from yesterday through the coming week, from the chip or from any day row on the Training screen.

When a workout syncs in later (from Strava or your health app), the day re-grades automatically on what you actually did.

How a day becomes "quality"

For endurance athletes, a hard session is recognised two ways.

If you planned the session — imported it, synced it from a calendar, or added it by hand — and then did roughly what you planned, the plan's own description stands. You already told Gauge it was intervals; it doesn't need to re-derive that afterwards.

If there was no plan, Gauge reads your average heart rate for the session against your estimated maximum, based on your age and sex, and raised if you've ever recorded higher. A single fixed number can't do this job: the same heart rate is a hard effort for one athlete and an easy one for another, and a threshold that suits a 25-year-old man asks near-race effort of a 45-year-old woman.

Cut a planned session well short and it's graded on what you actually did — following the plan is what makes the plan count.

Editing the numbers themselves

Your baseline goals live in Settings → Goals & Targets, and the Goal Calculator can rebuild them from your stats. Changes to any engine input — target mode, training style, weight-goal pace, daily activity — rebuild your targets immediately.