About Trailia: Who Builds the Personalised Trail Running Coach

Trailia is a personalised trail running coach built by a CONI-recognised Level 1 Trail Running Coach who trains with it. This page covers who is behind it, what the coaching believes, how the guides are written, and how to get in touch.

At a glance

  • What: Personalised trail running coach: adaptive training plans, race predictions, fueling and recovery
  • Who: Built and coached by a CONI-recognised Level 1 Trail Running Coach
  • Where: Lecco, Italy. Web app at trailia.run and an iPhone app
  • Since: Publishing trail running guides since December 2024
  • Data: Syncs with Strava, Garmin Connect and Polar Flow
  • Price: Free tier; Pro at EUR 9.99/month or EUR 79.99/year

What Trailia does

Most training apps were built for road running and treat elevation as an afterthought. Trailia starts from the opposite end: a trail race is defined by its vertical, its terrain and its duration, so a plan for it has to prescribe time and climbing, not just kilometres. Connect Strava, Garmin or Polar and Trailia reads your actual weekly volume, vertical and intensity before it writes a single workout, then adjusts the plan every week from what you completed and how it felt.

Around the plan sit the pieces a trail runner actually needs: race-time predictions built from the course GPX, a race-day fueling plan rehearsed in training, injury-aware adjustments, a coach chat that knows your history, and free calculators (https://trailia.run/tools) for hydration, fueling, trail pace and km-effort. The coaching principles behind all of it, and the research they draw on, are set out on the methodology page: https://trailia.run/methodology

Who builds it

Gianluca Belloni, Founder and trail running coach (Lecco, Italy).

Qualifications:

Photo: https://trailia.run/founder-gianluca-belloni.webp (Gianluca Belloni running a mountain trail above Lecco, Italy)

Gianluca is a CONI-recognised Level 1 Trail Running Coach and an ultra finisher, based in Lecco, between Lake Como and the Alps. He coaches runners online, in English and Italian, and has worked with athletes chasing everything from a first 50K to Hardrock-qualifier finishes.

He grew up where the mountains rise straight out of the lake, so trails were never a hobby he discovered. Running became the excuse to be out in them, and coaching came from wanting other people to find the same thing. His approach is conservative with volume, aggressive with specificity, and uncompromising about recovery.

Trailia exists because good coaching should not be limited to the people who can afford a private coach. Gianluca sets the training rules it follows, reviews the plans it produces, and answers the support inbox himself.

Profiles:

What the coaching believes

Consistency outranks intensity, always

The training that works is the training you actually complete, week after week. Plans are built so that an ordinary week is repeatable rather than heroic, and so that one missed session costs you nothing.

Vertical is a skill, not a punishment

Climbing and descending are trained deliberately and progressively, as their own qualities, not added as extra suffering on top of a road plan. Descending in particular gets its own progression, because it is what costs you the last hours of a race.

Fueling is training. Practice it like one

Race nutrition that has never been rehearsed is a guess. Long runs carry a fueling plan so that race day uses products, timing and a carry system you have already tested, not new ones.

Plans bend to life, not the other way around

You tell Trailia the days and the hours you actually have, and the plan is built inside them. When a week goes sideways, sessions are shortened before they are dropped, and the plan says honestly what your race is realistically worth rather than pretending the gap is not there.

How the guides are written (editorial policy)

  • Guides are written for Trailia by the Trailia team and reviewed against the same coaching principles the app applies to every plan, so a guide never tells you something the training would contradict.
  • Where published research exists, we cite the paper rather than a summary of it. Where it does not, we say what we have seen in coaching and how confident we are.
  • Every guide shows its publication date and its last-updated date. We revise the ones that matter as the evidence, the race rules or the product change.
  • Gear guides may contain affiliate links; when they do, the guide says so at the top. Affiliate relationships never decide what we recommend.
  • Spotted a mistake? Email hello@trailia.run and we will check it and correct the page.

Contact and company details

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is behind Trailia?

Gianluca Belloni, a CONI-recognised Level 1 Trail Running Coach based in Lecco, Italy, who coaches runners online and trains with the app himself. There is no agency and no outsourced support desk: the person answering hello@trailia.run is the person building it.

Is the coaching based on anything, or is it just AI?

It is based on the same principles a coach works from: periodization toward a goal race, load that grows gradually and one channel at a time, regular recovery weeks, terrain and vertical trained as their own skills, and a taper sized to the event. Those principles come from published sports science and from coaching practice, and the methodology page lists the research behind them.

Can an app really replace a coach?

For most recreational and competitive amateur trail runners, it covers what matters: a plan built from your actual training, adapted every week, with race-specific preparation. What it does not replace is the judgment a coach brings to an unusual situation, which is why Gianluca also coaches a small number of athletes directly.

Can I trust the training guides?

The guides are written for Trailia by the Trailia team, reviewed before publication, and each one shows its publication and last-updated dates. They are educational content, not medical advice. If something looks wrong, email us and we will check it.

How do I contact Trailia?

Email hello@trailia.run. Support, feedback, corrections and partnership requests all go to the same inbox, and it is read by the founder.

Is Trailia available as an app?

Yes. Trailia runs in any browser at trailia.run and as an iPhone app on the App Store. The same account works in both.