Compare your runs.
Over the same ground.
The best running tracker you own came free with your iPhone and your Apple Watch. Keep recording with it. Beyond Routes is what happens afterwards.
For iPhone, iOS 26.
Regent's Park Outer Circle
Wednesday 5 August, 07:12
30:52
Fastest here 30:25, 27s off
| Kilometre | This run | Fastest here | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 km | 5:12 | 5:02 | +10s |
| 2 km | 5:04 | 5:04 | Even |
| 3 km | 5:21 | 5:09 | +12s |
| 4 km | 4:58 | 5:07 | −9s |
| 5 km | 5:16 | 5:11 | +5s |
| 0.96 km | 5:01 | 4:52 | +9s |
Demonstration data. Every kilometre is set against the same stretch of your fastest complete run on this route, so a total becomes a place where the run changed.
The same stretch of path, on a different morning. See how this run compares with the ones before it.
You did not have to draw a single one of these.
They were found, not drawn: the outdoor workouts already in Apple Health, grouped by the ground they cover. No segment to draw, no course to mark. Run the loop the other way round and it stays a separate route, because it is a different run.
- Regent's Park Outer Circle17 runs since April30:25fastest
- Villa Borghese9 runs since June19:15fastest
- Retiro Park loop6 runs since May28:38fastest
Race the runner you used to be.
Retrace any run on a route and watch it back from the air, at the pace you ran it, with your fastest run on that route moving beside you the whole way. The gap stays on screen, so you watch the place you lost it instead of guessing from a total.
Open a route from a city you have moved away from, and more comes back than the time.
Racing your best here
- Time
- 20:35
- Distance
- 4.00 km
- Pace
- 5:09
- km 4 in 4:58, 9s gained
- 13s behind your best
- your best run here
Keep recording exactly as you do now.
Beyond Routes records nothing. It reads what your watch or your phone has already filed, so there is no new app to start at the door and no button to remember at the end of the road.
Record with Apple Workout
On the Watch, or on the iPhone in your pocket. Whatever you already use, as long as it saves an outdoor workout with its route.
Let it reach Apple Health
Which happens on its own. The app asks permission to read those workouts, and never writes anything back.
Open Beyond Routes
The first read of a long history takes a few minutes. After that a run is waiting the next time you open the app.
Every kilometre of the route keeps a record, and it is yours.
Your fastest on each kilometre of each route is kept, and so is the shape of your times across the season. Nobody else is on the chart.
Regent's Park Outer Circle
17 runs since April
Demonstration data. The bars run from 30:25 to 33:10, so a short bar is a quick run.
Your history stays yours.
There is no account to make and no server to make it on. Beyond Routes reads Apple Health on your iPhone and keeps what it works out on that iPhone.
Read, never written
Workouts and routes come out of Apple Health with your permission. Nothing goes back into it, and deleting the app leaves your recorded workouts where they were.
Kept on the phone
Route names, corrections and every derived figure live in a local database, protected by the system and left out of iCloud backup.
Two points, to name a place
Where a route starts and its furthest point go to Apple, so the place can be given a name. Never the trace, never a workout.
Questions worth asking first.
- Does it record my runs?
- No. It reads workouts your watch or your phone has already finished, along with the route they recorded.
- Do I need an Apple Watch?
- No. Any outdoor workout that reaches Apple Health with its route will do, including one recorded on the iPhone itself. The app needs iOS 26.
- Will my old workouts appear?
- Every compatible outdoor workout that carries a route, once you give permission. One recorded without a route cannot be rebuilt from its totals. The first read of a long history takes a few minutes.
- Does it work with Nike Run Club or Runkeeper?
- Only if the app writes the route into Health as well as the workout. The recordings tested here did not, which is a fact about those files rather than a promise about future versions.
- Who am I racing in Retrace?
- Your fastest complete run on that route, and you can pick a different run of your own instead. There is nobody else in the app, and there never will be.
- Can I walk, hike or ride?
- Yes, and each kind is compared only against its own kind. Running is what the app was built around.
- What if the match is wrong?
- Rename a route, merge two, split one, or move a run between them. The correction is kept, and the app never undoes it on its own.
- What leaves my phone?
- Two points of a route, where it starts and its furthest point, sent to Apple so the place can be named. Nothing else, and never the trace or a workout.
- How do I cancel?
- In the App Store, like any subscription. Deleting the app does not cancel it, and cancelling does not delete anything you have.
A route you ran every week, in a place you no longer live. Open it and revisit the runs you captured there.
Your next run already has a history.
Beyond Routes finds it and puts today beside it. Two whole routes are free forever.
Beyond Routes
iPhone, iOS 26