CivicFKT

Rules and FAQ

United States only for now. The endpoint catalog is being seeded state by state. Other countries will follow once the data is in place.

  1. Pick your endpoints. Choose the city halls or state capitols you're riding between — a segment (A → B) or a chain (A → B → A, A → B → C, etc.). You don't pre-build the route: ride it and upload, and the pairing becomes a route automatically. The first finisher of a route locks in its endpoint zones; subsequent attempts are measured against those same zones.
  2. Free route. Pick whatever path you want between the endpoints. There's no required route — only the start, the waypoints (in order, for chains), and the finish are checked.
  3. Ride it as fast as you can — but obey traffic laws and ride safely. No leaderboard time is worth getting hurt or putting others at risk. Stop signs are still stop signs. The clock keeps running through any stops you make on route, so plan ahead.
  4. Upload your .fit or .gpx file — or link RideWithGPS once and let new rides flow in automatically. The system verifies the GPS track passed through the endpoint zones in order, then records an attempt on every leaderboard the ride satisfies — including any chain routes that include your segments. RideWithGPS auto-import: sign in via RideWithGPS (or link from your profile) and tick "auto-import" on your profile. From then on, every ride you record on RideWithGPS arrives at CivicFKT within seconds. You pick whether it arrives with heart-rate/power data (.fit-equivalent) or track-only (.gpx-equivalent). To pull in your past RideWithGPS rides too, hit the Backfill past rides button on your profile — it walks your full RideWithGPS history in the background.

How timing works

Gun start, finish-line stop. The clock starts at the last GPS sample inside the start endpoint's zone — the moment your track exits — and stops at the first GPS sample inside the finish endpoint's zone. Time spent inside the start or finish zones doesn't count, so a rider just passing on the road outside doesn't trigger anything, and lingering at the endpoints can't game the clock.

Stops between the endpoints — traffic lights, water breaks, photos — keep the clock running. For chain routes (A → B → C, A → B → A), the intermediate endpoints are checkpoints: your track must enter each in order, but only the start and finish zones bound the timing.

Verification

Activities are verified from a .fit or .gpx file — uploaded directly, or pulled in from a linked RideWithGPS account. Indoor rides without GPS are rejected. Re-uploading the same file is a no-op — duplicates dedup by SHA-256.

FAQ

Can I create a custom route between city halls?

Yes — plan your own course. Pick two endpoints of the same type — city hall to city hall, or capitol to capitol — map a route between them in whatever routing app you like (Ride with GPS, Komoot, Strava, …), then ride it and upload. That pairing becomes a CivicFKT route the first time someone completes it; there's no separate route-builder here. You can't mix a city hall with a state capitol in one route. Chains (A → B → C) work too, as long as every endpoint is the same type. Most pairings haven't been ridden yet, so you'll often be the one who creates the route and sets its first record.

What file formats are accepted for uploading rides?

.fit and .gpx. .fit is preferred — it carries power and heart-rate data, so it's the only way to land on the normalized-power board. .gpx is track-only (no power). Strava doesn't support URL import, so export the GPX from the activity and upload it yourself — or, better, upload the raw .fit straight from your bike computer, which keeps the power data Strava's GPX export drops. Indoor rides without GPS are rejected.

Are the endpoint locations final?

No — the site is a work in progress. The bounding boxes around city halls and state capitols are being adjusted and fixed as we curate the catalog. If you spot an obviously wrong zone, expect it to be corrected upstream. Existing attempts measured against an old zone keep their times; if a zone changes meaningfully, we'll re-verify affected activities.

Do I have to start recording at the start endpoint and stop at the finish?

No. Riding through a route on your normal ride works fine. The clock only cares about the moment your track exits the start endpoint's zone and the moment it enters the finish endpoint's zone — anything before or after is ignored. Record a longer ride and let verification find the route window inside it.