Thank you for volunteering to help with our FKT submission process! We receive dozens of submissions per week from all over the world. Your local knowledge is key to accuracy and to efficiently adding these activities to our site.
Please make sure you thoroughly read and understand our Guidelines. The Guidelines around support style can be particularly tricky & create some confusion, so if you need any clarification please just ask.
Our aim is to approve FKTs within ~ 2 days of when they are submitted. Please do your best. If you need to take a break for any reason please let us know & we (meaning Peter) will fill in during your absence.
- You can access the FKT submissions for your region either on your Dashboard page, or via email. On your Dashboard page, click on the name of the FKT you wish to process. You will see the FKT submission in DRAFT status. In email, click the link at the bottom of the email "See this unpublished FKT".
- There are three things that need to be checked:
- Is the stated TIME accurate? To check this, click on the submitted Verification link (such as Strava). Make sure the person entered the ELAPSED time, not MOVING time (Strava gives both, as does Garmin Connect). If the FKT is part of a longer activity (such as an ascent FKT within an activity where the person ran up and down a mountain) you may have to dig deeper. Do your best to verify the time, and don't hesitate to change the time if they obviously got it wrong. If you have questions, you may want to email the person who submitted the FKT. NOTE: People often forget to make their Strava or Garmin Connect (etc.) pages PUBLIC. If their Strava link takes you to your own Strava Dashboard the activity is private. If their activity is private you have to ask them to make it public. You might still be able to verify the time from a GPX file, if one has been submitted. To do this open the file in a standard text editor and look at the times for the first and last GPS locations. Another way is to load their GPX file into your own Strava, which gives a fuller picture of what they did. Be sure to set "Who can see?" to "Only you" in the Privacy Controls section on Strava.
- Is the stated STYLE accurate? Check the written report to see if what they say is in line with the style they selected. For example, if someone selected "Unsupported", but ran part way with another person, that should be changed to "Supported". (Flyby in Strava is a useful way to see if someone ran with another person.) Many people don't understand nuances of the style categories, and don't bother to read about them in the Guidelines.
- Is the stated time actually the FKT? Check the Route page to see if someone has run faster. Note that someone might submit an older activity that was an FKT at the time it was run, but isn't anymore, which is fine.
- If you need clarification feel free to email the person who submitted the FKT, and also copy info@fastestknowntime.com
- If these things check out, click on "Edit" at the top of the Draft FKT page.
- The person will have entered information for each Athlete that is involved with the FKT. This information resides on the form, but still has to be entered into our database. You will have to enter each Existing Athlete or New Athlete into our system. You will probably not know if an Athlete is in our system already, so the quickest way to do this is first click on "Add existing Athlete" and enter the person's LAST name (or part of it) - the system will prompt you with Athletes that are in the system who match what you have entered. If the Athlete doesn't exist in our system, click "Cancel" and then "Add new Athlete", and add the Athlete's information. You will have to do this for each Athlete on the submission form. Be sure to click "Create Athlete" or "Add Athlete" to complete the Athlete process.
- Make any other corrections you need to the form (such as correcting the TIME or STYLE, etc.) Note that some people include in the Report section comments meant only for the FKT team - you should remove those.
- Once you have completed editing the FKT form, scroll to the bottom of the form. Change "Draft" to "Published", and click "Save". Note: If for any reason you determine that the submission is not valid (not an FKT), then change "Draft" to "Unpublished", and click "Save". If you reject the FKT you should email the person who submitted it explaining why, and please also enter a brief explanation in the "Log Message" field.
- I like to click on the Route page link to make sure the newly added FKT shows up correctly.
- You may EDIT any Route in your Region to improve the information we have on that page, such as adding Distance and Vertical Gain data, or route description.
* If you approve a really fantastic FKT that you think might be a good nomination for FKT of the Year, let us know! * (Currently for N. America and Europe only.)
Here are 3 websites we find really useful for dealing with some FKT submissions:
- caltopo.com : Mapping. E.g., use to visualize a person's GPX file if they didn't submit Strava (etc). You can also compare the submitted GPX with the GPX for the route.
- gpsvisualizer.com : Convert other types of GPS files ( .fit , .tcx ) to .gpx
- metadata2go.com : Display metadata from photo files. Will include things like the date & time a photo was taken, device used to take the photo, often also GPS coordinates where the photo was taken. Note that photos copied from social media will be stripped of their original metadata.