A tracking platform is only as good as its numbers. Here's how Aster keeps distance and time trustworthy, and why the figure on your screen matches what spectators and the leaderboard see.
Phone GPS, honestly
Aster tracks with the GPS in your phone, not a dedicated timing chip. That means the live numbers you and your watchers see mid-ride are estimates, built from the points that have uploaded so far. When queued points sync, after a dead zone, say, everything is recomputed from the full track, so the numbers correct themselves. Mid-ride figures on two screens can differ briefly; they converge as the data lands.
Every ride has a start and a finish moment
Your ride is bounded by two moments: when it started and when it ended. Only the GPS points recorded between those two moments count. Points from before your start (warming up near the line) or after your finish (rolling to the car park) are ignored.
This is why:
- A finished athlete's marker stops at the line and never drifts.
- Warm-up wandering doesn't inflate your distance or top speed.
Distance is measured along your actual path
Distance is added up from your recorded points in time order, not in the order they happened to upload. So if you lost signal and a batch of points arrives late and out of order, they're sorted correctly first, you never get a phantom "straight line" across a dead zone, and you never double-count.
One source of truth for every screen
Your ride summary, the spectator's trail, and the leaderboard all read from the same set of bounded, time-ordered points. That's why the distance on the leaderboard matches the distance on your finish screen, there isn't a separate calculation that can drift.
How the clock works
- Mass-start races are timed from the gun (the official start), so everyone shares one race clock.
- Time trials are timed from the moment you cross the start gate, not from when you tapped Start, warm-up loops near the gate don't count.
- Just Rides (and events where everyone sets off in their own time) are timed from when you start.
- Times are stamped at the moment your start and finish actually happen, so a wrong clock on your phone can't make your ride look longer or shorter.
Late data fills in, but never extends
If you were offline, points that arrive late fill in the gaps in your trail, but only within your start-finish window. Nothing can extend your ride past the moment you finished. Your result is fixed at the finish.