Where the data comes from

OpenStreetMap

The surface and difficulty of a course's legs come from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors. The data is available under the Open Database License (ODbL), and so is what mypb.run derives from it as described below.

mypb.run reads a copy of OpenStreetMap that it runs itself. The copy is refreshed from time to time rather than kept live, so a path changed on the map recently may not show yet; where the copy states its date, the credit beside the legs gives it.

How a course is read

Each course is read once. Its line is cut into windows of 10 km, and for each window mypb.run asks for every mapped way close to the line, leaving out ways marked proposed, construction, abandoned, razed, platform.

The course is then sampled every 10 m. Each sample is placed on the nearest way within 25 m that runs in the course's direction, within 45° either way, so a road the course only crosses is never taken for the one it follows. The way the previous sample was on is kept unless another is nearer by more than 10 m, and a piece shorter than 30 m between two pieces of one other way — a junction or a crossing — counts as that way. Where no way qualifies, the course runs across unmapped ground.

This is version 2 of the method. When it changes, every course is read again.

Surface

A way's surface is read from its surface tag into one of the groups below. Any other value counts as untagged.

Without a surface, a track's tracktype decides, as the table's last column shows.

Without either, a road whose highway is motorway, trunk, primary, secondary, tertiary, motorway_link, trunk_link, primary_link, secondary_link, tertiary_link counts as asphalt or concrete.

Asphalt or concrete, paving or cobbles and boardwalk are paved; gravel, dirt or grass and rock are unpaved. A leg's paved and unpaved shares are the sums of their groups.

Everything else is untagged. A path, a forest road or a street without a surface is often unpaved in the mountains and often paved in a town, so mypb.run does not guess. Unmapped ground is untagged too.

Kinds of way

Every way carries a highway tag, so the kind of way is known for nearly all of a course even where its surface is not. Ground along no mapped way is unmapped, and any value not listed below counts as other ways. A forest road is OpenStreetMap's track, a forest or farm road.

Difficulty grades

A way's grade is its sac_scale tag, the Swiss Alpine Club's hiking scale from T1 to T6. A way without one, or with a value outside the scale, has no grade.

What a leg shows

A leg's shares are the parts of its length that are paved, unpaved and untagged, and they add up to the whole leg. A leg is measured along the course between its two stops, placed at their published distances exactly as the leg's climb is.

A leg's hardest grade is the highest grade covering at least 100 m of it, or 5% of a shorter leg, so a few metres of a harder way at a junction do not make the leg harder. Beside it is the share of the leg at T3 or harder.

Kept apart from the catalog

What is read from OpenStreetMap is kept beside each course and never written into the event catalog — not into a course, an aid station or a cutoff. Those come from organisers and the people who edit the catalog.

The derived data

The stretches mypb.run derives — for each course, which way each part of it follows and how that way is classified — are available under the ODbL. Write to privacy@mypb.run to ask for them.

Terrain

The three-dimensional view of a course draws the ground from a terrain archive that mypb.run holds and serves itself. It is an extract of build 0.0.13 of Mapterhorn's terrain, downloaded on October 19, 2026, covering 34°N to 71°N, 25°W to 44°E at zoom levels 0 to 12. Outside that region the view draws the course over flat ground. Terrain is drawn only for a race course, never for your own routes.

The terrain is © Mapterhorn, which combines the open elevation models listed below — national terrain models from airborne laser scanning where a country publishes one, and a global model everywhere else.

The global model is Copernicus GLO-30: © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved.

These are the sources of the build, each with its producer and licence. A build covers the whole world, so some of them describe places outside the region held.