All features / Recording
Trail Segments.
Every hill, ranked.
PeakPulse finds the climbs and descents in your runs and rides automatically, then tracks your best time on each one — for life. Your library of personal records grows with every workout, even ones you didn't think to "race."
Segments for the people who don't race
Strava segments are a culture: someone draws a line, you "compete" against everyone else who happens to run through it. That's great if you live in a segment-dense area. It's frustrating if your home trail has none, or if the segments end six feet too short to count your real climb.
PeakPulse takes a different angle. We look at your tracks and detect the natural geographic features inside them — the sustained climbs, the long descents, the rolling stretches with distinct character. Those become your segments. No drawing, no community submission, no waiting for someone else to flag the hill.
The first time you run a climb, it becomes a segment. The second time you run it, you have something to beat.
How auto-detection works
Trail segments are derived from the shape of your effort, not from a global database. PeakPulse runs the analysis after every workout, on-device.
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01
Find climbs and descents
The detector scans your elevation profile for sustained gradient changes. A real climb has a clear bottom, a clear top, and a minimum vertical gain that scales with the activity type. Tiny rollers don't count. Sufferfests do.
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02
Match against your library
PeakPulse compares the climb's geographic path against segments you've already recorded. If it's a match — same start point, same general shape — it becomes another effort on that existing segment, not a new one.
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03
Update your PR
If this effort is faster than your previous best, it's flagged as a PR. You see the comparison in the workout summary: previous time, new time, and the elevation profile of both runs overlaid.
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04
Browse your library anytime
Every segment lives in your library with its full history: every effort, every time, your trend over weeks and months. Sort by speed, by frequency, by elevation gained.
What gets detected
Privacy by default
Your segments are yours. They live in your iCloud-synced library and they're not shared with any global leaderboard. You're not racing strangers, you're racing yourself. If you want to share a specific segment with a friend, you can — explicitly, one segment at a time. By default, your trail map is invisible to everyone but you.
This isn't an oversight; it's a design choice. Strava-style global segments work great in cities but expose home addresses and favorite secret trails in the backcountry. PeakPulse keeps your data shape private and your competition local — to yourself, and to people you choose to share with.
Common questions
Does this need an internet connection?
No. Segment detection and PR matching happen on-device. You can finish a workout in the backcountry and see your new PR before you have signal again. Your segment library lives locally and syncs through iCloud when you reconnect.
What if I run a slightly different line on the same hill?
PeakPulse uses geographic tolerance, not exact-point matching. If your climb starts and ends in roughly the same place and you cover most of the same path, it's the same segment. Big trail changes — taking a totally different route up the same mountain — create a new segment.
Can I see other people's times on my segments?
Only if you've shared the segment with them explicitly. There is no public leaderboard. If you and a friend both record the same climb and share that segment, you each see both of your time histories — but only the two of you.
How does this work with Smart Pause?
Beautifully. Because PeakPulse never has data gaps in your GPS track, the segment detector always has the full elevation profile to work with. You'll never lose a segment effort to a false auto-pause.
Can I rename or delete a detected segment?
Yes. PeakPulse picks a default name based on geography ("North Ridge climb" or similar). You can rename, merge two segments that should be the same, split a segment that combines two distinct features, or delete it entirely.