Privacy Policy

1. The Covenant of Discretion

Cult of Running ("we," "us," or "our") is an athletic collective and digital publication based in Washington State. When you inscribe your name in the Ledger or connect your wearable device, you entrust us with records of your movement and physical effort.

This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect across cultofrunning.com, how we store and process it, what third-party service providers we rely upon, and how you can exercise your privacy rights. For specific disclosures governing biometric and physiological telemetry under Washington State law, please also review our separate Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy.

2. Information We Collect

We collect information that you voluntarily provide when creating an account, configuring your profile, or connecting a wearable integration, as well as technical data generated when you browse our site.

A. Account and Ledger Information

When you take the pledge and create an account, we collect:

• Identity and Profile Fields: Username, public display name ("Ledger Name"), municipal region and country, optional photographic likeness, bio, external profile links you choose to list, and runner preferences (preferred ground, running hour, sacred day, distance, and ritual notes).
• Authentication Records: Email address. We use passwordless authentication via single-use sign-in links sent to your email. Login tokens and session identifiers are stored as cryptographic SHA-256 hashes in our database.
• Generated Marks: Your sigil code and creed generated during onboarding.

B. Garmin Connect and Workout File Telemetry

Only after you provide separate, affirmative opt-in consent when connecting your wearable account or uploading workout files (such as .FIT or .GPX archives), we collect athletic and physiological data. See Section 5 for our dedicated Garmin Connect disclosures and our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy for full statutory details.

C. Geographic and Location Data

When synced or uploaded workouts contain GPS data, we receive start and end coordinates, coordinate polylines, elevation profiles, timestamps, and municipal location labels.

3. How We Use Your Information

We process your information for the following purposes:

• To authenticate your sessions and send transactional emails (specifically single-use sign-in links and your initial pledge confirmation letter).
• To render your member profile, sigil, and running statistics in the Ledger according to your chosen visibility settings.
• To compute personal records (PRs), running streaks, and aggregate community progress during collective events and athletic challenges.
• To maintain site security, enforce rate limits, and diagnose technical errors.

No Sale of Data: We never sell, rent, license, or trade your personal information, workout history, or biometric data to data brokers, advertisers, or third parties.

No AI or Machine Learning Training: We never use member data, personal information, or Garmin device-sourced telemetry to train, fine-tune, or feed artificial intelligence (AI) models, large language models, or external machine learning platforms.

4. Location Privacy and Anonymous Route Geometry

GPS traces can reveal sensitive details about where you live and when you run. We provide controls so you can share your running effort without exposing your physical whereabouts:

• Anonymous Route Glyphs: Route coordinates can be normalized into isolated geometric vectors rendered on a blank canvas. This preserves the shape of your effort (such as a track oval or trail loop) while stripping out underlying map tiles, street names, and world latitude/longitude coordinates. Raw GPS coordinates are stored in our database to compute distance statistics and generate route glyphs, but are never displayed publicly when glyph mode is enabled.
• Ledger Visibility Controls: In your account settings, you can toggle whether your profile is named publicly among the Congregation or kept hidden from public view. Publishing physiological metrics (such as heart rate, HRV, or sleep) on a public profile requires a separate, explicit consent, and you choose which metrics appear. Physiological metrics are private by default, even on a public profile.

5. Garmin Connect Integration Disclosures

If you choose to link your Garmin Connect account to Cult of Running, the following terms govern how we handle your Garmin device-sourced data. Garmin and Garmin Connect are trademarks of Garmin Ltd. or its subsidiaries.

• Specific Data Types Collected (Canonical Telemetry List): With your separate, affirmative consent, we collect:
  • Activity and Movement Telemetry: Distance, duration, moving time, pace, split times, elevation gain and loss, running cadence (steps per minute), daily step counts, ground contact time, vertical oscillation, stride length, vertical ratio, running power (watts), caloric expenditure, estimated fluid/sweat loss, GPS route polylines, and raw .FIT workout files.
  • Cardiovascular, Recovery, and Physiological Telemetry: Average heart rate, maximum heart rate, resting heart rate (RHR), heart rate zone durations, overnight heart rate variability (HRV) averages and baseline status, sleep duration, sleep stage durations (deep, light, REM, and awake times), sleep quality scores, device-calculated energy scores, aerobic and anaerobic training effect, training load, and device-calculated fitness age.
• How to Revoke Access: You may revoke Cult of Running's access to your Garmin account at any time either from your Cult of Running account settings or directly inside your Garmin Connect account settings (under Account Information and Connected Apps).
• Data Handling Upon Disconnection: Upon disconnection, we stop receiving new Garmin data immediately and permanently delete your Garmin OAuth authentication credentials and tokens. Your previously synced workout history remains in your Cult of Running ledger so your running records are preserved when you update or reconnect devices. If you wish to delete your previously synced data or your entire account, you may do so at any time through your account settings or by contacting ministry@cultofrunning.com, and we will permanently delete it from our active databases within 30 days (and from encrypted backups within 90 days).
• Transfers to Garmin: If we offer features that send data back to your Garmin account (such as pushing a running course or structured workout to your device), we will only transfer that data to Garmin with your express prior consent.

6. Service Providers and Legal Disclosures

We share data only with essential infrastructure, email, and analytics providers acting on our behalf to operate the site, or when required by law:

• Cloud Hosting and Database: Our application server and PostgreSQL database are hosted on Railway (Railway Corp.) in the United States.
• Edge Security and DNS: Traffic is routed through Cloudflare, Inc. for DNS resolution, TLS termination, and protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
• Transactional Email and Support Inbox: Outbound transactional emails (sign-in links and pledge confirmations) are delivered through Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc.). Inbound inquiries, data access requests, and exports sent to ministry@cultofrunning.com are hosted and processed via Google Workspace (Google LLC).
• Product and Site Analytics: We use analytics, experimentation, and performance measurement services (such as Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity) to understand how visitors and members navigate our site, evaluate feature adoption and active usage, conduct A/B testing on user interfaces, and diagnose technical errors. These tools record standard interaction telemetry such as button clicks, navigation flows, page response times, and device attributes. We strictly separate application usage analytics from health telemetry: physiological metrics (such as heart rate, HRV, sleep stages, and workout load) and raw GPS coordinates are never sent to or processed by third-party analytics providers.
• Legal Compulsion: We may disclose stored information if required to do so by a valid subpoena, court order, or other compulsory legal process, or when necessary to protect the safety, rights, or property of Cult of Running or its members.

7. Aggregated and De-Identified Data

We may compute aggregate, de-identified statistics across the community (such as total collective miles run during a community event or total elevation climbed by the congregation). These aggregate figures do not identify any individual runner unless you have opted to make your individual profile and event participation public. We do not attempt to re-identify de-identified data and contractually prohibit our service providers from doing so.

8. Data Security, Retention, and Deletion Timelines

• Security Measures: Data in transit between your browser, our servers, and third-party APIs is encrypted using modern Transport Layer Security (HTTPS/TLS). Database access is restricted to authenticated application processes, and login tokens are hashed using SHA-256 prior to storage.
• Retention: We retain your account and ledger information for as long as your membership remains active.
• Deletion Timeline and Backups: You may depart the congregation or request complete account deletion at any time via your account settings or by emailing ministry@cultofrunning.com. Upon a verified deletion request, your personal profile and workout telemetry are purged from our active production database within 30 days. Residual copies in automated disaster-recovery database backups expire and are permanently deleted within 90 days. We notify our service providers of your deletion request and require them to delete any of your data they hold.

9. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

Our website uses the following categories of cookies:

• Authentication Cookies: When you sign in, we set an HTTP-only session cookie named ledger_session to keep you logged in and protect against cross-site request forgery (CSRF).
• Security Cookies: Our edge provider (Cloudflare) may set security cookies (such as __cf_bm or cf_clearance) to distinguish human readers from automated bot traffic.
• Analytics and Experimentation Cookies: In production environments, analytics tools such as Google Analytics (_ga) and Microsoft Clarity (_clck, _clsk) set cookies to measure site engagement, test user experience variants, and evaluate application performance. These cookies record device and navigation data to help us improve the platform and never capture or track physiological health metrics. You can block or clear these cookies at any time using your browser settings or content-blocking extensions.

10. Your Privacy Rights

Regardless of where you live, you may:

• Confirm whether we are processing your personal data and request a copy of the data we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate information on your profile.
• Withdraw consent for wearable data syncing at any time.
• Request permanent deletion of your account and all associated data.

To exercise any of these rights, adjust your settings under /account or email ministry@cultofrunning.com. We will respond to all verifiable requests within 30 days. Washington residents have additional rights, including an appeal process, described in our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy.

11. Children's Privacy

Cult of Running is intended for individuals aged 16 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16 years of age. If we learn that we have collected data from a person under 16, we will delete that account and its data immediately.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as our platform and integrations evolve. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated revision date. If we wish to collect new categories of consumer health data or use it for new purposes, we will ask for your consent first.

13. Contact the Ministry

Questions, data access requests, or deletion requests may be directed to:

Cult of Running
Email: ministry@cultofrunning.com
Washington, United States