How Conquests work

Conquest or Casual: the two rally kinds

When you create or join a rally you pick a kind, and that choice decides whether finishing the route leaves a mark on your profile.

Conquest

The one that counts. Finish the route and it stamps your passport, with a pace medal for how fast you got there. Conquests have a few rules.

Casual

How you ride with other people. Take on a route with friends and family on one leaderboard, even while a Conquest is running, and run as many as you like at once. On the free plan you start your own on the Starter routes and join friends' rallies on any route. A Casual rally never stamps your passport.

Both kinds run on the same routes, with the same leaderboard, adaptive targets and ghost pacer. The only differences are the passport stamp and how many you can run at once. Conquer a route for the record, or go Casual to ride it with other people, even alongside a Conquest you already have going.

One Conquest at a time in each discipline

A Conquest belongs to one of three disciplines: Walk, Run and Cycle. Your Conquests in one discipline never overlap, so on any day you can have one walking, one running and one cycling Conquest, on any plan. The free plan covers the Starter routes; Standard and Pro open every route.

• Walk covers your walking and hiking.
• Run covers running and trail running.
• Cycle covers riding, gravel and mountain biking.

A Conquest is for one discipline only, so its leaderboard compares like with like. A ride only ever moves your Cycle Conquest, so a single activity can never conquer several routes at once.

A Conquest takes up whole days in your own timezone, from its first day to the day you finish, or to its last day if you do not. Finish early and that discipline is free from the next day, so your next Conquest can start then, and you can queue one to start after your current one ends.

A Conquest you finish counts for life, even if you later leave the rally, and it cannot be downgraded to Casual. Downgrade an unfinished one to Casual and its days are free again. We check all this when you create, join or switch to a Conquest, never afterwards, and if a new one would share a day with one of yours we name the one in the way. You can always take part as Casual instead.

A Conquest cannot be backdated. It starts today or later, give or take a day of timezone leeway, and only the distance you cover after it starts counts towards finishing. Casual rallies can be backdated freely; Conquests cannot.

Finishing earns a pace medal

Conquer a route and you earn a pace medal, graded from how long the finish took you. You do not choose it up front. It is earned by the effort.

• Relaxed: steady pace, take your time.
• Steady: a solid, committed pace.
• Ambitious: the fastest finish, the top medal.

Medals are a climb, not a set to collect

The three medals are a progression: Relaxed, then Steady, then Ambitious at the top. Your route keeps your best medal, and you raise it by conquering the same route again, faster. There is no reason to chase a slower medal once you hold a quicker one, so you never need to "collect all three" on a route.

The thing to collect is discipline, not pace. The real "collect them all" is taking a route on across Walk, Run and Cycle. Pace is how good your finish was; discipline is how many ways you have conquered the same ground.

Your passport

Finishing a Conquest stamps your passport: a country stamp for each country the route carries you into, and a route stamp for finishing it end to end, marked with your pace medal. A Casual rally never adds a stamp, however far you ride. Open any country you have reached to see it up close, with every route that runs through it.

Your passport is visible on your profile to anyone signed in, and never windowed, reset, or taken away on any plan. For the passport in full, see How the passport works.

Route boards

A single rally has its own leaderboard. A route board goes wider: it folds people taking the route on across its rallies into one standing, ranked by who finished fastest. Each route has two boards.

Conquest board

The route's record, one board per discipline. Only Conquest efforts appear here, finishers ranked by time above those still going, so it is the standing that counts. A Casual run can never land on it.

Casual board

A standing for Casual efforts on the route, kept separate from the Conquest board. It covers Casual rallies on a published route in a single discipline; custom routes and mixed-discipline rallies do not feed it.

Both boards rank the same way: finishers first by how fast they completed, then everyone still going by distance covered. The split is simply which kind of effort sits on which board.

Common questions

Can I run a Casual rally and a Conquest at the same time?

Yes. Casual rallies never touch your Conquests, so you can run as many as you like alongside one, on the same route or a different one. It is how you bring friends and family along without risking your Conquest.

What happens if I do not finish a Conquest?

It holds its days until the rally ends, and that discipline is free from the next day. To free its days sooner, downgrade it to Casual: your progress stays, without the stamp.

Do I choose the pace medal, or earn it?

You earn it, and only by finishing. The grade comes from the weekly pace your finish implies: Route Rally takes the route's distance and the days you took over it, works out the rate that adds up to, and awards the most ambitious band that rate reaches. Those bands are set per discipline rather than per route, so the same weekly rate earns the same medal whether the route runs a hundred kilometres or a thousand, and walking, running and cycling are each judged against their own figures. Nothing you pick when you set the rally up can move the grade, and a Conquest still running carries no medal at all until it is finished.