Three ways to get a route onto an event
When you add a route to an event, you choose one of three starting points:
- A saved route from your library — reuse something you've already built or uploaded. See Your route library below.
- Upload a GPX file (see below).
- Build a route in the app — tap points on a map to draw a line, with no file needed at all. See Building a route in the app.
None of this is required to create the event: you can add or replace the route afterwards from the event's Course tab.
Good to know: point-to-point events don't use a route line for timing at all. You place checkpoints on the map instead, and a route line there is purely optional decoration. See Courses and feed stations.
Upload a route
Upload your route as a GPX file, exported from Strava, Komoot, Garmin or similar. Aster reads it and works out the distance, elevation profile and the shape of the course, then shows it on the event map and lets athletes download it for offline use.
The file needs at least a couple of track points and a route of at least 100 metres end to end. Files with more than 100,000 track points, or malformed files, are rejected with an explanation.
Uploading a new GPX to an event replaces whatever route it had before — built or uploaded. There's one route per event.
Building a route in the app
Instead of a file, you can draw the route directly on the map:
- Tap to add points. Each tap adds a waypoint; by default the app routes between points along real roads and paths (Auto mode). Switch to Manual to draw a straight line between points instead — useful off-road, or when you're offline, since it needs no routing call.
- Trace a line by pressing and dragging across the map in one gesture, instead of tapping point by point.
- Plan a loop: give a target distance and a rough direction and the app generates a round-trip route from your start point, which you can then adjust.
- Edit as you go: drag a point to move it, long-press the line to insert a new point mid-route, tap a point to remove it, tap your start point again to close the loop, and undo any of these one step at a time.
- Distance and elevation update live as you build, calculated the same way as an uploaded GPX.
A route built this way, or a GPX-uploaded one, can both be reopened and edited in the builder later — editing a GPX-based route derives an editable line from it first (a one-time notice tells you how many points were simplified for editing).
Your route library
Every route you build or upload is saved to My routes, your personal library, reachable from your account. From there you can:
- Reuse a saved route on a new event or meet-up, without rebuilding it.
- Duplicate a route to create an edited variant without touching the original.
- View a route's detail page: its map, distance, elevation profile and description.
- Edit or delete a saved route (deleting it doesn't affect events that already used it — they keep their own copy).
- Share a route via a public link that anyone can view and download as GPX, no login needed; you can stop sharing it at any time, which breaks the link for everyone who has it.
- If you run a club, save a personal route to the club's library so other club admins can reuse it too.
Attaching a saved library route to an event copies it onto that event; editing the event's route afterwards (in the builder) doesn't change your library original, and editing the library original doesn't retroactively change events that already copied it.
There's no personal GPX-upload path outside an event or a club library — if you want a personal library copy of a file from Strava or Komoot, upload it to a club's route library, or build/duplicate it in the app instead.
Start and finish lines
A start/finish line is a point on the map with a detection radius: how close an athlete must get for the app to count them as crossing it.
- When you upload a route, Aster suggests a start/finish position from it, a single line for a loop, or a separate finish for a point-to-point course.
- You can also auto-detect the line from the route, or place it by hand on the map. Once you've set it yourself, the automatic suggestion won't overwrite your choice.
- Tune the detection radius (10–500 m, 50 m by default) to suit the venue.
When an athlete passes through the line, the app automatically:
- Single-line events: marks them finished on the first crossing.
- Multi-lap events: counts each crossing after the first as a completed lap. For a race starting behind the line, the first crossing (leaving the start pen) is ignored, so a two-lap race needs three crossings: leave the start, lap one, lap two (finished).
Important: timed formats (race, time trial, sportive / gran fondo) need a start/finish line set before the event will go live automatically. Athletes are timed from line to line, so without it no one can be timed. Meet-ups are exempt. See Create an event.
Laps
For circuit events, turn on laps and set the lap count when you create the event. The app counts a lap each time an athlete passes back through the start/finish zone. If you leave laps off, the first crossing simply finishes the athlete.
Important: laps can only be set when you create the event — there's no way to turn laps on, off, or change the lap count afterwards. Get the count right up front, or plan to recreate the event if it needs to change. The cutoff, by contrast, can be added or changed at any time from the event's Event Day tab.
Reusing a course across several events
If your festival has several events on the same roads, you can build a course once inside that festival (its shape, start/finish and feed stops) and reuse it across the festival's events, then push edits to all of them at once. See Courses and feed stations.