Under the Hood: How It Works

How Strava Matching Works on Audax.ie

An in-depth explanation of how the Audax Tracker finds likely matches for your Strava activities and brings uncertain ones to you for review.

Core philosophy: The rider decides

The Audax Tracker is built around a clear commitment: it favours review over guessing. It proposes likely matches and explains uncertain cases, but you decide what Audax.ie should add or link. Searching does not modify rides already in your tracker.

1. Finding Activities to Review

When you search a year in Strava Import, Audax.ie retrieves your Strava activities and applies a few initial filters before the Audax Tracker looks for matches:

Included Activities

Cycling types: Standard Ride and GravelRide recordings.
Distance threshold: Activities of at least 30 km appear in broad reviews.
Title hints: Custom phrases you set to bring specific rides into view.

Excluded & Filtered

Non-cycling types: Runs, walks, swims, and non-cycling sports.
Indoor workouts: Keywords like zwift, trainer, turbo, spin, and commute.
Custom skip phrases: User-configured phrases in Name Settings.

Already-linked activities remain visible: An activity already imported into the Audax Tracker is shown under Other activities, together with a link to its tracker ride. This helps you see what has already been dealt with.

2. Making Titles Easier to Compare

Strava titles often include punctuation, accents, year tags, or extra club banter. The Audax Tracker reduces titles to their useful words before comparing them with Audax.ie route names. These are examples of that comparison, not a renamed version of your activity:

Case & accents

Flèche Dunboynefleche dunboyne

Matches the same words regardless of capital letters or accents.

Common words

The Midland 200 BRMmidland 200

Ignores general words such as "the", "and", "brm", "audax", and "km".

Number words

Three Rivers 3003 river 300

Treats number words from one to ten like their digits.

Singular & plural

Lakes and Passeslake pass

Lets simple singular and plural forms match each other.

Year tags

Midland 200 2025midland 200

Ignores four-digit years in activity titles so they are not mistaken for distances.

Comparison	Example title	Useful words	Why it helps
Case & accents	`Flèche Dunboyne`	`fleche dunboyne`	Matches the same words regardless of capital letters or accents.
Common words	`The Midland 200 BRM`	`midland 200`	Ignores general words such as "the", "and", "brm", "audax", and "km".
Number words	`Three Rivers 300`	`3 river 300`	Treats number words from one to ten like their digits.
Singular & plural	`Lakes and Passes`	`lake pass`	Lets simple singular and plural forms match each other.
Year tags	`Midland 200 2025`	`midland 200`	Ignores four-digit years in activity titles so they are not mistaken for distances.

The Audax Tracker can also compare a route name with or without its trailing distance. It keeps adjacent title words together, allowing Kings Mountain to match a joined catalogue name such as Kingsmountain without joining unrelated words.

Title matching detail

3. Choosing the Best Suggestion

A Strava title does not need to exactly match an Audax.ie route name. The Audax Tracker asks how much of the route name is present, so harmless personal words usually do not count against a match:

Example: a personal Strava title

"Mick's Birthday Midland 200 with the club" still contains the distinctive route name Midland 200. The surrounding words can be ignored when the Audax Tracker compares it with the catalogue.

What Makes a Match Stronger

Exact route words: Identical words provide the strongest evidence.
Minor spelling differences: Conservative fuzzy matching can allow a small typo or transposition in longer words. No more than two words in a candidate can be matched this way.
Distance in the title: A matching nominal distance, such as 200, strengthens an otherwise plausible route-name match.
A distinctive route name: Several specific route words provide better evidence than a short or generic title.

When the Audax Tracker Asks You

A route-specific word is required: General words such as morning, evening, ride, or spin cannot identify a route by themselves.
Two suggestions are too close: If different routes fall within the matcher's small ambiguity margin, the activity is sent to Questions instead of choosing one for you.
The named distance conflicts: If your title says Midland 300 but the suggested route is Midland 200, the Audax Tracker asks you to confirm the match.

Scoring detail

4. Where Suggestions Come From

The Audax Tracker compares activities with three sources and uses the context available for each one:

1. Calendar Events

Audax.ie events from the selected calendar year. An event on the same date is a stronger suggestion; the same course ridden on another date may be treated as a permanent.

2. Permanents

Active routes in the Audax.ie permanent catalogue. These are available year-round and do not depend on the selected event season.

3. Existing Rides

Rides already in your tracker on the same date. An existing ride strengthens a suggestion when it points to the same Audax.ie event or permanent route.

Source priority detail

5. Distance and Other Rider Signals

Route names are only part of the decision. The Audax Tracker also uses distance and clues in the activity title to avoid presenting an unsuitable default:

Completion range: When the title evidence is limited, a recording generally needs to be between 95% and 125% of the nominal route distance to support a completed-ride match. This allows for GPS variation and reasonable detours.
Partial Ride Distance: If an activity has strong title clues for a 200 km route but only covers 85 km, it is not automatically selected as a full brevet. It is routed to Questions with the explanation: "This activity records 85 km of the 200 km ride".
Possible DNF or scratch: Words such as dnf, did not finish, scratched, abandoned, pulled out, or bailed move the activity to Questions. The Audax Tracker asks whether you finished; your answer determines the imported status and lets you record the distance reached.
Approach & Departure Rides: Activities named "Ride to the start", "From the finish", or "Warm-up for Midland 200" are recognised as travel legs and kept separate under Other activities.
A likely Audax outside the catalogue: For an international brevet or another event not listed on Audax.ie, trusted words such as audax, brm, brevet, or randonneur can be combined with a standard Audax distance. Because those words do not identify a specific route, the recording must be between 98% and 105% of the named distance. For a 200 km activity, that means 196 km to 210 km. If it fits that stricter range, the Audax Tracker can prepare a draft from the activity.

Activity signal detail

6. Suggestions for Split Recordings

A long brevet may appear on Strava as several activities because of a sleep stop, battery change, or separate GPS devices. The review screen can suggest combining recordings that appear to belong to one ride.

How a combination is suggested

The Audax Tracker looks for markers such as Part 1 / Part 2, Day 1 / Day 2, or Stage 1 / Stage 2. The recordings must be close together in date, use different part numbers, share the same event, permanent, tracker ride, or route family, and add up to a plausible total distance.

A suitable group is shown as a proposed combined ride with its total distance, elevation, and earliest start date. Nothing is combined until you confirm it.

Split grouping detail

7. In-Import GPX Route Verification & Discovery

For single cycling activities of at least 95 km (covering the standard 100 km completion range), the Audax Tracker uses high-speed in-memory GPS track analysis directly during search. This provides a two-way intelligence layer: protecting against false matches and discovering genuine Audax rides with generic titles.

1. Route Verification (Safety Guard)

When an activity matches a calendar event or permanent by title or date, its GPS summary polyline is verified against the official catalogue route. If both directional coverages fall below 40% across a 750-metre corridor, the match is unselected and sent to Questions with "Does this route match?".

2. Route Discovery (Automatic Matching)

When a ride ≥ 95 km has a generic title (such as "Sunday Spin" or "Club run"), the tracker checks distance-compatible same-day calendar events and permanent routes. If the GPS track achieves at least 90% corridor overlap unambiguously, it is automatically confirmed and pre-selected.

Safe & fast: GPX comparison runs entirely in memory in just a few milliseconds. Activities under 95 km and multi-part split rides are evaluated purely through title and date metadata. If GPS data is missing, private, or unavailable, ordinary title and date decisions remain authoritative.

Route geometry detail

8. Where Results Appear

The review screen organises the results into three lists so you can focus on the decisions that need your attention:

1. Questions: Suggestions that need confirmation, for example, two close matches, a possible route conflict, a short recording, or a DNF hint. Your answer determines what happens next.
2. Ready rides: Clear calendar or permanent matches, confirmed split groups, and eligible activities that look like Audax rides outside the Audax.ie catalogue. Suitable rides are selected for you to review before import.
3. Other activities: Activities already in the Audax Tracker, travel legs, and recordings not currently selected for import. You can still open an item to link it, choose a different match, or include it manually.