Take a run out of your history for good

Sometimes a run just doesn’t belong in your history — and while it’s there, it’s quietly bending every average you look at. Clearing it takes two taps.

What’s worth reading is what happens afterwards, because Apple Health still has its own copy of that workout.

Where it is

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Two ways in, same result:

• From a list: press and hold any run, in list or grid, and tap Delete.
• From the run itself: open it, tap ⋯ in the top corner, then Delete Run.

Either way you get one confirmation, and that’s the last you’re asked.

What goes with it

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The run leaves every list and every total it was in: the week, the month, your lifetime stats, the heatmap, the category cards. If it held one of your records, the record moves to your next best run — nothing is left standing on a run that isn’t there. If it was tagged to a pair of shoes, their mileage drops by that run’s distance.

And everything you typed on that run goes with it — the name, the notes, the favourite star, the type you set by hand, any race photos in it. Those never existed anywhere but this phone, so nothing can fetch them back.

That’s what the confirmation means by cannot be undone. The numbers can come back. Your own work can’t.

It stays gone

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Deleting a run here doesn’t touch Apple Health — the workout is still there, exactly as your watch saved it. Apex Run never writes to Health, and never deletes from it.

Which raises the obvious worry: if Health still has it, does it just come back on the next sync? No. A run you deleted stays deleted, however many runs you record afterwards. You only have to do this once.

Changing your mind

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Deleted the wrong one? Profile→Settings→Data→Sync All Data is what brings it back. Anything Apple Health still holds returns with its distance, pace, heart rate, route and splits intact.

The deletes that are final

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A run that isn’t in Apple Health can’t be fetched back from it, and two kinds aren’t:

• A merged run — the stitched-together result lives only in this app. Deleting it doesn’t lose the running, though: its two halves are still in Health, and they stop being spoken for the moment the merged run goes, so Sync All Data brings them both back and you can merge them again.
• A run imported from a .fit file — nothing in Health matches it, so a delete is the end of it.

The tell is the Source line under the date and time when you open a run. It names where the run came from: your watch, your phone, or one of those two app-only cases — Merged or FIT File. Those two are the deletes with nothing behind them. The ⋯ menu says the same thing faster: a merged or imported run has no Reimport in it, because there’s nothing to reimport from.

Deleting it in Apple Health instead

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The one-sidedness runs the other way too: remove a workout in Apple’s Health or Fitness app and Apex Run keeps its copy. The run stays in your history, with everything it had. Even a Sync All Data won’t take it away — there’s nothing left in Health for it to compare against.

Which gives you the one recipe worth remembering: delete it in both places and it’s really gone. Delete it in only one, and the other still has it.

Worth knowing

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• The confirmation is the only guard. There’s no trash can and no undo button — press and hold, tap Delete, tap Delete again, and the run is out.
• A duplicate is usually worth deleting rather than fixing. Two copies of one session double it in every total you look at, which is a bigger distortion than one missing route.
• If the run is right but its data looks thin, don’t delete it — Reimport fetches that one run again and keeps your name, notes and shoes. Deleting and waiting for a re-sync throws those away for no reason.