Most run trackers can tell you how fast you went. Pheidi already knows how fast you were supposed to go — today's workout has a distance, a pace zone, and, for interval sessions, a rep structure. Tracking a run inside Pheidi puts those two things on the same screen, so you find out you're running your easy run too hard while you can still do something about it, rather than the following morning.

Starting a run

Today's workout card has a Track this run button. Pheidi asks for location permission the first time you press Start — never before that, and never at sign-up. If you decline, everything else keeps working and you can still log the run by hand.

Before the timer starts you'll see a signal indicator. Pheidi waits for a usable fix rather than opening your run with a wildly wrong first split, and a three-second countdown gives you time to put the phone away.

What you see while you run

  • Current pace, smoothed over the last several seconds. Raw GPS pace swings by about a minute per mile even at a steady effort, so an unsmoothed number is unreadable.
  • A target band showing whether you're inside the workout's pace range, and by how many seconds you're off. If your plan uses effort rather than paces, Pheidi shows the target effort instead — it won't invent a number your plan never set.
  • Distance, moving time, and elapsed time, kept separately so a run with a long traffic light in it doesn't quietly flatter your average.
  • Splits as they close, in your plan's own unit — miles or kilometres, whichever your plan uses.

Spoken splits and interval coaching

Each split is announced out loud: the split number, its pace, and how far off target you were. You can mute audio or turn off the buzz, and the preference sticks between runs.

On interval, fartlek, and hill sessions Pheidi drives the workout for you — it counts the reps, announces each work and recovery transition, and shows what's coming next. The structure comes from the same place as the workout file you can send to a watch, so the two always describe the same session.

Stopping, pausing, and losing signal

Pheidi pauses automatically when you stop moving and picks up again when you set off, so moving time reflects running rather than waiting at junctions. You can also pause by hand — and if you do, Pheidi won't overrule you and resume on its own.

Losing reception doesn't lose the run. Everything is measured on your phone, so being out of mobile coverage changes nothing at all: distance, splits, and audio cues carry on exactly as they would with full bars, and the run uploads when you're back in range.

Losing the GPS signal is different, and no app can work around it. In a tunnel or a deep valley your phone may stop producing usable positions altogether. Pheidi tells you it's looking for signal, holds the distance where it was, and picks up again when readings return — so a gap reads as a gap rather than as invented mileage.

If the app closes mid-run, Pheidi offers to pick the run back up next time you open it.

On Android, tracking keeps going when the screen locks, with a notification showing your distance and time. In a mobile browser it can't — browsers stop running when the screen locks — so Pheidi keeps the screen awake and tells you before you start.

Finishing

The summary shows your distance, moving time, average pace, and every split. GPS and your watch will never quite agree, so you can correct the distance or time before saving — your number wins. You can add a perceived-effort rating, or skip it.

Saving marks the workout complete and fills in its results, exactly as logging it by hand would, which means it also feeds your activity log and any plan adjustments that follow.

Runs that aren't on your plan

You can start a run on a rest day, or with no plan at all. It saves on its own and appears in your recorded runs. Off-plan runs still count toward your training load — they're real miles on your legs, and leaving them out would understate exactly the weeks that matter most for injury risk. Pheidi says so on the save screen before you confirm, and you can attach the run to a workout afterwards if it turns out one fits. An off-plan run never reshapes your plan on its own.

Your route is never stored

Pheidi keeps your run's summary and its splits. It does not keep where you went — no route is written to our database, and none appears in our logs.

Location readings live on your phone while you run. So that a crash or a closed tab can't cost you a run, they're also held in your browser's own storage until the run is saved — then deleted. A run that's never finished or saved is cleared automatically after six hours, so an interrupted run can't leave your route sitting on the device indefinitely.

That's a deliberate trade. A GPS trace is a map of where you live, work, and go running alone at six in the morning, and the safest way to protect it is not to hold it. The cost is that Pheidi can't show you a route map, put your route on a share card, or export a run as a GPX file — and we'd rather owe you a map than keep the trace.

You can delete any recorded run, with its splits, at any time.

Run tracking lives inside the Pheidi app — sign in to use it.

See also