Need a person? Email support@whynot.run. It's a solo shop, so you're writing to the person who built the app. Include your iPhone model, iOS version, and roughly when the problem happened — it saves a round trip.
Why Not builds a training plan from where your fitness actually is, then adjusts it as you run. On first launch it asks for your goal race and distance, your recent running, and how many days a week you want to run. That's enough to generate a plan.
The app has four tabs:
If you connect Apple Health or Strava and there's enough recent running history, the app estimates your VO2 Max right away. If there isn't, it runs a short calibration period and gives you a provisional plan while it learns your paces. Either way you can train from day one.
That usually means the starting fitness estimate came in high. Email us with your recent race times or a few typical training runs and we'll tell you how to reset it.
Apple Health is how runs recorded on your Apple Watch, or in other iPhone running apps, reach Why Not. Find it at Profile → Settings → Connected Apps → Apple Health.
Open iPhone Settings → Privacy & Security → Health → Why Not and confirm Read access is on for Workouts, Distance Walking + Running, Active Energy, and Heart Rate. Permissions granted at onboarding can be partially declined without any obvious sign in the app.
If you use a Garmin, COROS, or Polar watch, note that those devices sync to Apple Health on their own schedule, which can lag by hours, and they generally don't pass route maps through. Connecting Strava is the faster and more complete path for those watches — see below.
Connecting Strava does two things: it brings runs from Garmin, COROS, Polar and other devices into your training plan with full maps, splits and heart rate, and it uploads runs you record in Why Not back to your Strava account.
Go to Profile → Settings → Connected Apps → Strava and tap Connect with Strava. You'll be sent to Strava to log in and approve. Why Not never sees your Strava password — Strava handles the login and hands back a token.
After connecting you'll see two switches:
Two permissions, both requested when you connect:
Why Not never posts on your behalf, never reads other athletes' data, never touches your followers or kudos, and never modifies or deletes anything on your Strava account.
Runs whose data came from Strava carry a Powered by Strava label on the activity card and on the run detail screen. Any run that also exists on your Strava account carries a View on Strava link that opens it there. A run you recorded on your own watch shows the link but not the label — because the data is yours, not Strava's.
Imported runs, their routes, and their splits stay on your device — none of that is copied to our servers. The one exception: when a Strava-imported run completes a planned workout, that workout's distance and pace ride along in your plan backup, the same as any other completed workout. Never the run itself, never its route. It's shown only to you, never shared with other users, never sold, never used for advertising or analytics, and never used to train or run any AI system.
Tap Disconnect Strava at the bottom of Profile → Settings → Connected Apps → Strava. This deletes the runs Strava imported into Why Not — their routes and splits — and clears any workouts they checked off your plan. Strava-supplied route and split data is also removed from your own runs; their distance, duration, and heart rate stay. Reconnect any time to import your Strava runs again.
You can also revoke access from Strava's side at strava.com/settings/apps. Doing it there revokes the token immediately; doing it in the app also clears the local copy, so the in-app route is the cleaner one.
Why Not includes a watchOS app for recording runs directly from your wrist, with your workout on screen. Runs recorded on the watch sync to your iPhone and land in Apple Health.
If the watch app won't pair or a run doesn't reach the phone, keep both devices unlocked and near each other, open the iPhone app, and give it a minute. If it still doesn't land, email us before recording over it.
Why Not is $9.99/month or $79.99/year after a 7-day free trial. Billing runs entirely through Apple — we never see your card.
Full detail on the trial, tiers, switching, and what happens when a subscription lapses is on the Trial Policy page.
Your training data lives on your phone. Why Not requires an account. It holds your membership status and a backup copy of your training plan so you can get it back on a new phone. The full picture is on the Privacy Policy page.
Bug reports genuinely get read and fixed — most of what ships comes from testers writing in. The useful ones include:
Send it to support@whynot.run.
Why Not Run LLC
Massachusetts, USA
Email: support@whynot.run
Related pages: Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Trial Policy
Written in plain English on purpose. If an answer here is unclear or wrong, that's worth an email too.