Understand Personal Records and Best Efforts

FitKeep looks through every activity for your fastest continuous stretch at a set of standard distances. Those are your best efforts, and the fastest one at each distance is your personal record.

Which distances count

400m
800m
1km
1500m
1 mile
3km
5km
10km
Half marathon
Marathon

A best effort can start anywhere in an activity, so a 10km run can also give you a new 5km or 1 mile record. An activity only counts toward a distance if it’s at least that long.

Best efforts need GPS data. Indoor activities without a GPS track, such as treadmill runs or indoor rides, don’t get best efforts.

How efforts are timed

Times are elapsed time, so short stops inside an effort, like waiting at a traffic light, count toward it
A pause longer than 5 minutes splits the activity, so an effort can never span a long break
Sudden jumps in the recorded distance, such as a GPS glitch, also split the activity rather than giving you an impossible time

Car rides

If your watch kept recording while you sat in a car, bus or train, those kilometers would give you impossible best efforts. FitKeep looks for stretches at car speed (above 36 km/h on foot, above 90 km/h on a bike), together with the slow driving and traffic lights around them:

When it’s clearly a car ride, such as at least half a minute at car speed on foot, or a ride at the very end of an activity because the watch wasn’t stopped, the ride is left out of best efforts. The activity page says so, and Include it brings it back
When it might be a car ride, such as a short burst at car speed, it stays in and the activity page asks you. Select Show on map to see where it was, then Leave it out or Keep it. Until you answer, best efforts from that activity have a small car mark on the Best Efforts page

Your answer is kept on the activity, also when it’s processed again, and its best efforts are recalculated within moments. Activities processed before this check are checked when you reprocess them.

A ride that is left out also comes off the activity’s distance in your longest activities and its distance rank. The distance shown on the activity page stays what your watch recorded.

Set an activity aside

If an activity gives you times you don’t trust, edit it and switch on Exclude from best efforts. It stays in your activity list, but its best efforts no longer count in the Best Efforts page, rankings, records, longest activities and goals. Switch it off to bring them back. See Read Your Activity Details for editing an activity.

Device distance and GPS

FitKeep calculates every best effort in two ways:

Device: from the distance your watch or bike computer recorded, which may include corrections from a footpod, wheel sensor, or the device’s own smoothing
GPS: from the GPS track itself, measuring the distance between each recorded point

The device calculation is shown when it’s available. When both exist, you can switch to the other one. If the two times differ by 5% or more (and at least 5 seconds), a ⚠️ marks the effort. That usually points to a patch of poor GPS signal or a footpod that needs calibrating, not a change in your fitness. Why your best effort times disagree goes through the causes.

Where to view them

The dashboard shows your records for the main distances
The Best Efforts page lists your best times at every distance, plus your longest activities
Each activity’s detail page lists the best efforts found in that activity and how they rank

Filter by sport and period

On the Best Efforts page you can narrow results by:

Sport group: foot, bike, swim, winter, or other sports, so a fast bike split doesn’t fill your running records. Choose All to mix them
Activity: a single activity type within the sport group, such as trail running
Period: all time, this year, the last 12 months, one of your recent calendar years, or a custom date range

Drill down by distance

Select any distance to open its own page. It starts with your personal best for that distance, followed by your next-best times and how far each one is behind it. Below that, a chart shows how your times at that distance have changed over time. The filters above work here too.