Route guess

Sketch the route you remember running before you see the GPS, then compare what you intended with what you did.

After you add a run, Analyse can show you the map with the course on it and nothing else, and ask you to draw the route you believe you took. You see the GPS only afterwards. The step is off by default, so adding a track goes straight to the analysis.

What it is for

The gap between the route you remember and the one the GPS recorded is the difference between intent and execution, and it only exists if you commit to an answer before you see the track.

Turn it on

In your profile, on the Events & import tab, switch on Draw your route from memory. While it is off, the upload says that sketching from memory is off and moves on. It is also skipped on its own when the event has no map, or no controls for your class. See Settings.

Draw your route

Step 1. Add your run as usual

Pick your class, attach the track and choose a privacy tier. The button under the form now reads Next: sketch your route instead of Upload run.

Step 2. Choose how you draw

On a phone the two modes are Tap, which places a point at each tap and joins them in order, and Draw, which follows your finger. On a computer they are Click waypoints and Freehand. Changing mode clears the leg you are on, so pick one before you start.

Step 3. Draw leg by leg, or the whole route

Per leg turns the map so the leg points up and shows Prev leg and Next leg with a counter such as Leg 1 / 13. A leg you have drawn is marked. Whole route lets you draw one line from start to finish.

Step 4. Finish

Undo last stroke takes back the last point or stroke, and Clear leg empties the leg you are on. When you are happy, tap Done drawing. Skip goes to the analysis without a guess, and Back returns to the upload.

The Sketch your route page at leg 1 of 13 with the Tap and Draw modes and the map — Sketch your route, leg 1 of 13, before anything is drawn.

A route tapped in on leg 1, with Leg 1 / 13 marked as drawn — A route tapped in. The leg is marked as drawn.

The buttons under the map: Undo last stroke, Clear leg and Done drawing — Undo last stroke, Clear leg and Done drawing.

Draw it as you remember it. The comparison is only meaningful against an honest sketch.

What it unlocks

The deviation chart

With a sketch saved, the analysis gets a section called Guess vs Actual Deviation. It plots the perpendicular distance between your GPS position and the line you drew over the length of the leg. The shape of the curve separates three things:

A slow, steady climb away from zero is compass drift: a bearing a few degrees off.
A sudden step is a decision: leaving the line, whether or not you noticed.
A spike that returns to zero is a relocation.

Spans where the deviation exceeds 30 metres are listed as off-route spans, each with a button that takes the map to it.

The overlay

The sketch is drawn alongside the track in full course and per-leg, in its own colour (Guess color in the settings), weight and dash style. It is dashed by default, so it does not read as a second GPS track. Switch it on or off with Show your guess by default in Settings, or in the map settings of one analysis.

Off-route spans are not counted as mistakes

Deviation from your sketch is reported in the deviation chart and its span list. It is not added to the mistake count. A sketch is a memory rather than a measurement, so a discrepancy between it and the GPS is not evidence of a navigation error. Mistakes are detected from the track itself; see Mistakes, performance and terrain.

Who sees your guess

With Full review others can open your guess along with the rest of your analysis; with GPS only your guess and notes stay private. See Run privacy.

Sprint: draw it, then compare it to the optimum

In a sprint the shortest legal path for each leg can be computed from the map's passability. Sketching the route you intended and then revealing both the optimum and the actual track separates running what you planned from planning the fast route. See Sprint analysis.