Field notes 4 MIN READ
Sharing a route without sharing where you live
Sending a GPX to a friend, a print shop or a club is normal. Here is what is in it, and the twenty seconds that make it safe.
Sending someone a route is an ordinary thing to do. Worth knowing what you are sending.
What is in the file
Open a GPX in a text editor and it is readable. Every track point looks roughly like this:
``` <trkpt lat="55.67611" lon="12.56830"> <ele>12.4</ele> <time>2026-06-14T05:41:02Z</time> </trkpt> ```
Five decimal places of latitude is about a metre. The timestamp is to the second.
The first point is where you set off. The last is where you stopped. In a normal week those are the same place, and it is where you live.
The timestamps add a second layer: not just where, but when. A dozen files show what time you leave on a Tuesday and how long you are gone.
What actually helps
Trim by distance, not by point count. Deleting "the first twenty points" removes a different amount from every file — twenty points is 20 seconds of running or two minutes of standing at a light. Removing everything within a radius of the start behaves the same on every recording.
Trim both ends. People remember the start and forget the finish, which is the same place.
Be generous. Five hundred metres covers a street. Two kilometres covers a neighbourhood and costs you nothing that reads on a print.
What does not help much
Sharing a screenshot instead. A map image centred on your street says the same thing at lower precision, and precision was never the hard part.
Renaming the file. The coordinates are in the contents.
When it does not matter
If the route starts somewhere public — a car park, a station, a café — there is nothing to protect. This is a good argument for starting the recording at the meeting point rather than at your front door, on any ride you already know you will share.
Here
Every route is trimmed before it is drawn, and the trim cannot be switched off. Files brought from your computer are read and trimmed in the browser and never uploaded at all; only the finished, trimmed line travels with an order.
Questions people actually ask
- What is actually in a GPX file?
- Coordinates to about a metre, timestamps to the second, usually elevation, and often heart rate and cadence. Together the timestamps also show what time you leave and how often.
- Is it enough to delete the first few points?
- It helps, but eyeballing it is unreliable — a few points can be several hundred metres or ten. Trimming by distance from the start is the version that behaves the same on every file.
- Is a screenshot safer?
- Only slightly. A screenshot of a map centred on your street tells anyone reading it the same thing, just at lower precision.
- What if I am sharing a route I want people to ride?
- Then the start matters less, because it is a meeting point rather than your door. Start the recording at the café.
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