Common questions, direct answers.

No. Your Clock Time is your official finish time, and that’s not changed by anything LevelField does. LevelField produces a separate time — your finish leveled for the field, the conditions, and the course — that lives alongside the official time, not in place of it.

The engine derives the underlying physiological output your finish time required, normalizes that output for age and gender (so different athletes can be compared on equal physiological terms), and accounts for the day’s conditions on the course you ran. The result is a time you would have produced on the same course, in typical conditions, normalized to a common reference. Different terms (“LevelField,” “LevelField Base,” “LevelField Global”) use different combinations of these adjustments — see the How It Works page for the full taxonomy.

This usually means the conditions you raced in were better than typical for that course — cooler weather, no headwind, favorable temperature — and the leveling normalizes that advantage out. Your Clock Time captures what you ran; your LevelField Time captures what you’d have run under the course’s typical conditions. A slower LevelField Time isn’t a penalty. It’s a more honest reflection of how the day’s conditions helped you.

No. Every athlete’s LevelField Time is calculated and visible whether or not they create an account.

An account unlocks more, though: filters and favorites, team views, and — for athletes connected through TriDot or RunDot — participation in Clubs, Quad Squads, Series, and Most Improved competitions.

Your LevelField Time will be calculated whether or not you have an account. But participation in competitive formats — Clubs, Quad Squads, Most Improved, and others — requires an account that exists at the time of the race, because those formats track who’s competing in them. Athletes who sign up after the race still get their leveled result, but won’t be included in those competitions for that race.

• Public: Traditional results and a preview of LevelField results. No account needed.
• Enhanced: Full LevelField results and rankings, filters, favorites, and team views. Free LevelField account.
• Full: Cross-course comparisons, series and global rankings, and competitive formats. Available with a TriDot or RunDot account.

The full comparison lives on the Get More from Your Results page.

The cross-course capabilities (LevelField Base, LevelField Global, Race Equivalents) and the competitive formats (Clubs, Quad Squads, Series, Most Improved) require verified physiological data — including factors such as your weight, your sustainable power, and your training history — to produce results that compare fairly across athletes. TriDot and RunDot let you connect your training data sources, so the engine can verify that data directly. Free accounts include everything Full participation requires.

Yes. TriDot and RunDot accounts are free, and a free account is all you need for Full LevelField participation. Optional paid plans inside TriDot and RunDot add personalized training prescriptions and other features, but those are separate from LevelField.

The same engine that produces LevelField results has been making predictions about race performance — and validating those predictions against actual outcomes — across hundreds of thousands of athletes for over a decade. Accuracy increases with the quality of the data the engine has about an individual athlete, which is why competitive recognition (cross-race rankings, series standings) requires verified inputs through a connected TriDot or RunDot account.