How activities connect to workouts and races

When you record a session on your watch (Garmin, Coros, Suunto, Wahoo, Polar, Apple Watch, Rouvy, Strava…) and it syncs to Good Coach App, the app tries to put it in the right place on your calendar:

• attach it to the workout plan it was meant for, or
• connect it to the competition (your race) you had that day, or
• keep it as a standalone activity if it doesn't clearly belong to either.

This page explains, in plain language, how the app makes that decision — so you know what to expect, and when you'll still need to connect something yourself.

Everything here is automatic and reversible

The app only connects things when it is confident. Anything unclear is left for you to connect by hand, and you can always change what the app did.

The short version

When an activity syncs, the app looks — in this order — for the best home for it:

1. An exact match to a planned workout. If your device sent the workout back with its plan name or id (for example a structured session you pushed to your watch), the activity attaches to exactly that plan. This is a certain match, so it always wins.
2. A race on the same day. If you had a competition on your calendar that day and the activity looks like that race, the app connects it to the race.
3. A planned workout of the same sport. If there is a single open workout of the same sport that day with nothing recorded yet, the activity attaches to it.
4. Nothing fits — the activity is saved on its own as a recorded activity.

Putting races ahead of the "same sport" step matters: an easy shake-out run you had planned for race morning won't steal your actual race file.

Connecting an activity to a race

Athletes very often forget to link their race-day file to the competition on their calendar — or their watch was set to the wrong sport. So the app does this for you when it is confident it is really the race, and otherwise leaves it for you.

It compares your same-day competition to the activity. The distance is the main signal; heart rate and GPS location only help confirm a borderline case.

✅ Connected automatically as finished

• The activity covers essentially the whole race distance (for example a 42.8 km file for a marathon, or a 10.2 km file for a 10K).
• If the race has no set distance, a clearly race-sized effort (roughly 20 km or more) still connects — nobody trains that far on race day.

The competition is marked finished and your file (pace, heart rate, splits) is shown on the race.

🟠 Connected as DNF (did not finish)

• The activity is more than half but clearly short of the full race — a sign you started and dropped out.
• Or you covered a substantial distance and GPS shows you were at the race, even if it is under half the distance (an early drop-out).

Because a DNF is something you will see, the app only marks it when there is supporting evidence — your GPS start being at the race, or a race-like heart rate for that distance. Your file is still connected, so your coach can see exactly where and how the race unravelled.

⏸️ Left for you to connect

• The distance is in a grey zone near the finish, where "finished but the watch died" and "dropped out near the end" look the same — only you know which.
• The activity is a warm-up or cool-down (very short).
• The sports don't match (a bike ride can't be your running race).
• GPS shows you were in a completely different place that day.

In these cases nothing is connected automatically — just open the competition and connect the activity yourself.

About location (GPS)

If a coach or admin added a location to the race, the app uses it only to rule out an activity that was clearly somewhere else — a different city or country that day. It is deliberately forgiving: a race pin is often just the city centre, not the exact start line, so being a few kilometres off is fine. GPS never forces a connection on its own; it only prevents an obviously wrong one. Indoor, treadmill, or manually-entered activities have no GPS, and that is fine — they are judged on distance and heart rate instead.

What you can always do yourself

• Connect an activity to a race manually from the competition, whenever the app left it for you.
• Change the result — set finished / DNF / DNS, add your official time, position, and so on — if the app's guess wasn't right.
• Disconnect an activity from a race; it becomes a normal standalone activity again, and nothing is lost.

The automatic-merge setting

All of this — attaching to planned workouts and connecting to races — follows your "automatically merge incoming workouts" setting. If you turn it off, synced activities are always saved on their own and you connect everything by hand. See How importing works for where that setting lives.

Frequently asked questions

My race showed up already marked "finished" — I didn't do that. Is that a bug? No. When your synced file matches the race, the app connects it and marks the result for you. If it guessed wrong, just change the result on the competition.

I had a planned easy run and a race on the same day. Where did my race file go? To the race. The app checks for a matching race before it considers same-sport planned workouts, so an easy run planned for race morning won't grab your race file.

My watch was on the wrong sport during the race — will it still connect? Usually yes. Race-day files are often recorded as a generic "other" activity, so the app treats that as compatible with your race. It only refuses an outright mismatch, like a cycling file for a running race.

I dropped out of my race. Will the app still keep my data? Yes. If it can tell you dropped out, it connects your file and marks the competition DNF, so your partial effort is preserved and your coach can see it.

I skipped a race entirely (DNS). Will the app mark that? No — nothing syncs when you don't start, so there is no file to act on. Mark DNS yourself on the competition.

Nothing connected and I ended up with a loose activity. Why? The app wasn't confident enough to connect it automatically (an ambiguous distance, a warm-up, a sport mismatch, or a location far from the race). Open the competition or the planned workout and connect the activity by hand — that always works.