Activity sport and sub-sport: pool, open water, indoor, outdoor

The five sport choices

Every Activity carries a sport value picked from:

• swim
• bike
• run
• strength
• other

This drives:

• Which threshold the Load computation uses (CSS for swim, CP or FTP for bike, run threshold pace for run).
• Which analytics page the activity contributes to.
• Which zones the activity is binned against.

Strength and other do not currently contribute to Load or any sport analytics; they exist to let athletes log non-endurance training (gym sessions, mobility) without breaking the totals.

Sub-sport: indoor vs outdoor and pool vs open water

The sub_sport field is a finer split for the three endurance sports:

Why this matters

The sub-sport tag changes how the parser interprets and displays the activity:

• Pool swims show stroke rate, DPS, SWOLF, lap counts. The pool length is stored on the activity.
• Open water swims show GPS pace and distance but lap-based metrics are typically absent.
• Indoor cycling typically has no GPS, no elevation, and no wind. Aero adjustments are skipped.
• Indoor running typically has no GPS, distance comes from the treadmill, and pace comes from device estimates.

When to override

The parser usually detects sub-sport from the file. Override manually if the auto-detect is wrong (e.g. an outdoor run mis-tagged as indoor because the device was paused). The edit happens on the activity detail page.

See also: Activity FIT parser metrics, Sport analytics page.