PentaRace

Tap the green play button at the bottom-center of the screen. Your duration, distance and speed will start updating live, and your route will be drawn on the map as you move. Tap the orange pause button to pause, and the red stop button to finish and save the activity.

PentaRace tracks your activities using your phone's GPS. The app needs permission to access your location, including in the background, so that it can keep recording your route when your screen is off or you switch to another app.

Yes. As long as you've granted location permission, the app keeps recording your activity in the background, even with the screen locked. You'll see a small blue indicator at the top of the lock screen to confirm location is being used.

Any standard Bluetooth Smart heart rate sensor works, including:

• Polar H10, H9, OH1+, Verity Sense
• Garmin HRM-Dual, HRM-Pro, HRM-Pro Plus
• Wahoo TICKR, TICKR X, TICKR FIT
• Suunto Smart Sensor, Smart Belt
• Decathlon / Domyos / Kalenji chest straps with Bluetooth
• Most GPS sport watches in heart rate broadcast mode (Polar, Garmin, Suunto, COROS, Apple Watch via third-party apps)

There is no manual pairing step. Simply turn on your sensor, place it near your phone, and PentaRace will detect and connect to it automatically the first time it appears. You'll see your heart rate displayed in a colored zone banner under the main stats. The first time, your phone will ask for Bluetooth permission — accept it.

Yes — most modern sport watches can broadcast their heart rate over Bluetooth using the standard Heart Rate Profile. Activate the broadcast mode in your watch settings, and PentaRace will connect to it like any other sensor. Note that on some watches, broadcasting requires an active workout to be running on the watch.

• Make sure Bluetooth is enabled on your phone
• Make sure the sensor is turned on (most chest straps activate when worn against the skin)
• Make sure the sensor isn't already paired with another app or device — heart rate sensors can usually only be connected to one device at a time
• Force-quit PentaRace and reopen it to trigger a fresh scan
• Move the sensor closer to your phone (within 1 meter for the initial scan)

Open your activity history (clipboard icon at the bottom-right of the main screen), then tap the profile icon in the top-right corner. You can set your age, sex and weight. These values stay private on your device and your iCloud account, and are only used for calorie calculation.

Calorie tracking only appears when you've set your fitness profile. Without your age, sex and weight, the app cannot estimate energy expenditure accurately. Set your profile from the activity history screen.

The tilde indicates that calories are estimated from your GPS speed using metabolic equivalents (MET tables). This is less precise than measuring with a heart rate sensor. As soon as you connect a heart rate sensor, the tilde disappears and calories are computed using the Keytel formula, which uses your live heart rate, age, sex and weight for a much more accurate estimate.

PentaRace estimates your maximum heart rate using the Tanaka formula: FCmax = 208 − 0.7 × age. This is the most widely used scientific formula for the general population, but individual variations exist. The estimated max heart rate is used to compute your effort zones.

• Zone 1 — Warmup (50–60% max): light effort, recovery
• Zone 2 — Endurance (60–70% max): fat burning, easy aerobic
• Zone 3 — Cardio (70–80% max): improving aerobic fitness
• Zone 4 — Threshold (80–90% max): lactate threshold, hard effort
• Zone 5 — Maximum (90–100%+ max): all-out, short bursts

Tap the clipboard icon at the bottom-right of the main screen. You'll see your activity history, sorted by most recent first. Tap any activity to view its detail screen with charts of speed, altitude and heart rate over time, including effort zones overlaid on the heart rate chart.

In the activity history, swipe left on any activity to reveal the delete button.

Yes — all saved activities and your fitness profile sync automatically across the devices signed in to the same iCloud account. Make sure iCloud Drive is enabled in your phone settings, and that PentaRace is allowed to use iCloud (Settings → your name → iCloud → Apps using iCloud → PentaRace).

Yes — every saved activity is written as a workout to the Apple Health app, including the GPS route. Your activities show up alongside your other health data and contribute to your activity rings.

Open any activity from your history. Tap the share icon in the top-right corner of the detail screen. PentaRace generates a beautifully rendered image with the map snapshot and your stats, which you can then share to messages, photos, or any social app via the native share sheet.