Frequently asked questions

Trace turns your city into a map for you to explore. Connect the app you already use to record your runs, and every run is matched to the real street grid. Streets you have covered turn green, streets you have not stay grey, and your coverage percentage climbs from your first block to the last street.

It is the scoreboard for a game many runners already play: going somewhere new on purpose. Trace just keeps count.

Trace is completely free!

Not yet, but the mobile website offers all the same functionality as the desktop website.

Sign in with Google and then connect Strava or intervals.icu. Your past runs are automatically imported and your dashboard will fill in as they are processed.

Strava and intervals.icu. If you record with a watch or smart device (Garmin, COROS, Suunto, Apple Watch, etc.), connect your device to intervals.icu first and then connect intervals.icu to Trace.

Yes. When you connect an app, Trace imports your past runs so you can start with the coverage you have already earned rather than from zero. A long history can take a few extra minutes to import, but the dashboard will show the sync progress.

A Challenge will give you a blank slate to start from to cover your city or neighborhood.

Usually a few minutes, slightly longer if you have years of runs. Strava limits how quickly any app can read activities, so a very large backlog can take a while to finish. You can close the tab if needed as the import carries on in the background.

All runs that have a GPS track. Walking, hiking, and cycling are not yet covered.

We match your GPS track as closely as possible to the city's road network to credit the streets that you've run. GPS tracks can be noisy or drift and while we take this into account, you can request a review if there are any missing or incorrectly credited streets.

Streets are split into short segments, roughly one block each. Your percentage is the total distance of your unlocked segments divided by the total distance of every segment in the city.

We actively work to include all publicly accessible streets and paths that are safely runnable. We try to exclude highways, private streets/driveways, cemeteries, and paths within malls/train stations/places of worship. If you do run through excluded paths, those segments won't be counted towards your city coverage. If you believe a street is incorrectly included/excluded from coverage, let us know through the Feedback button so we can get it fixed!

We are continuously working on making Trace's map reflect reality as closely as possible. This requires us to occasionally update street eligibility criteria, which could impact previously covered streets or the total distance of the streets in your city.

A street counts once, however many times you run it. Repeat runs still add to your total distance and appear in your history, but they don't change your coverage. If you want to rerun a city or neighborhood, start a new Challenge!

Strava/intervals.icu typically upload a newly completed run immediately after it is saved, so it should appear on your dashboard within a few minutes. If your run isn't showing up, let us know through the Feedback button.

If your completed run doesn't show up within a few minutes, first check if it has been saved and uploaded in your activity tracker (Strava/intervals.icu). Runs outside of our current coverage area won't be counted until those maps are added to Trace (coverage is expanding every day!).

Trace learns about a new Strava run when Strava tells it, which normally takes a few minutes. If a run has not appeared, open Settings and choose Check Strava for missing runs: Trace then asks Strava for your activities from the last 14 days and adds anything it is missing. You can do this once an hour, up to 3 times a day.

The street network comes from OpenStreetMap, checked and trimmed for each city before it goes live. Maps are never perfect: a footpath may be missing, a private road may be included, a street may be split oddly. Let us know through the Feedback button if you see a mistake and we will fix the map. Coverage is recalculated for everyone once it is corrected.

Our public city guides are on the cities page — not every covered city has one yet, and signed in you see every city you have run in. Trace measures coverage against a curated street network for each one, so a run outside a supported city is kept in your history but does not earn coverage until that city launches.

Typically, each city uses its official administrative boundary for both the city and its neighbourhoods/wards/districts.

Absolutely! If Trace finds runs of yours in a city it does not cover yet, you'll be able to request coverage through your Dashboard as we can prioritize it. We'll let you know as soon as it's launched!

Yes. The route planner shows your coverage on the map as you plan, so you can draw a route through uncovered streets, see the total and newly covered distance, and download it as a .GPX for your smart device or run tracker. It is the quickest way to turn a blank corner of the map into new coverage.

You can choose to share your individual runs and coverage map with everyone on Trace, your followers, your friends, or keep them to yourself. Your runs are never viewable outside of Trace or by search engines. You can fully control your privacy in Settings. Full details can be viewed in the Privacy Policy.

Your data is your own and will never be sold to third parties or used for training AI. Your running data is only collected to calculate your coverage. Full details can be viewed in the Privacy Policy.

Separate settings, each set to everyone on Trace, your followers only, your friends only (runners who follow you and whom you follow back), or only you. The first is whether your coverage is ranked on the leaderboards. The second is who sees your coverage map and city totals. The third is who sees the map of each run, which also controls who can open a run you link to. Two more use the same choices: who can comment on your runs, and who can open the lists of your followers and the runners you follow. Your profile page keeps showing your name and follower counts to other runners whatever you choose, and you only disappear from search if you set all three to private. Blocking someone overrides all of it. You choose the first three when you first sign in, and can change any of them at any time in Settings. If Strava is your run source, your coverage map, individual runs and comments are fixed to Only me — Strava limits how activity data can be shared on Trace — and stay that way for 7 days after you disconnect, until its data is removed. Your leaderboard setting is yours to choose, and it also decides who can see your per-city covered distance.

You and your fellow urban explorers are all Tracers after you've joined Trace. Search for someone by name, follow them, and their visible runs appear in your Tracers feed as they happen. Anyone set to private cannot be found or followed.

Every city has a leaderboard ranked by total coverage, plus a Friends board showing just the runners who follow you and whom you follow back. You can see who has covered the most ground near you and what it takes to catch them. The leaderboard is opt in and works both ways: you appear on it and you can see it on the same terms, so if you opt out you are neither listed nor able to browse it. Your Friends board keeps working either way.

Please do! We want Trace to be a thriving community of urban explorers. You can find your personalized invite link in Settings. Anyone who signs up through it will automatically follow you and you'll be notified so you can follow them back.

Disconnect it from Settings. Your runs will be removed immediately and the data is permanently deleted after 7 days. If you change your mind within those 7 days, you can instantly restore your runs. After 7 days, you can restore your runs through an account sync like you did when you first joined Trace. Full details can be viewed in the Privacy Policy.

Email [email protected] from the address you sign in with and we will delete your account, your run history, and everything attached to it.