RunSignup’s RaceJoy GPS tracking was in full swing this last weekend at the Charlottesville Marathon in Charlottesville, Virginia. A total of 225 race participants and spectators accessed RaceJoy for live phone tracking, cheer sending and progress alerts. On race day, 44 phones were tracked and close to 400 cheers were sent to race participants for both the half and full marathon.
Live tracking of runners at the Charlottesville Marathon:
We have been fine-tuning GPS Progress Alerts, as it is a balance between providing high accuracy and preserving the phone’s battery life. Without the progress alerts, our tests have consistently shown at least seven hours of battery life for live GPS tracking. At the Charlottesville Marathon, we tracked several full marathoners for more than six hours on the course. We are still perfecting this, but it looks like we have the adaptive algorithms at a good place.
Race participant, Donovan, had this to say about RaceJoy:
“I enjoyed using RaceJoy tremendously. My family signed on as spectators and were delighted with how accurate it was and the progress reports. The cowbells were a nice touch. They were able to use the cheers functionality as well. Everything worked fine for me as a participant also. Great product, thank you.”
RaceJoy issued close to 1,500 GPS progress alerts at every mile on the course, which alerted participants and spectators to the participant’s location, pace and estimated finish time.
Another Charlottesville Marathon race participant, Rheannon, gave the following feedback:
“I never actually looked at my phone during the race . . . it was in the backpack of my running partner, but I could hear the alerts. My fiancé used the app to keep track of us during the race and it was great to have him waiting for us at the finish line. He really appreciated being able to see where we were so he could better plan when to arrive at the finish line.”
We will be tracking runners at 15 different races across the country this weekend! A record weekend for RaceJoy! So, if you are doing a race this weekend, check to see if it is loaded in RaceJoy.
If you are a race organizer and would like to get your race added to RaceJoy, simply enable RaceJoy in the RunSignup GO platform and provide your course map electronically (KML, GPX or link to map). You can also email this to addrace@racejoy.com. We require a minimum of two weeks to load and will send you a notice and promotion toolkit once it is active. This is free to the event and the participant and spectator pay a 99 cents per race upgrade fee.
RaceJoy key features:
- Live phone tracking
- Audio cheer sending
- Near Me Proximity alerts
- MeetUp mapping feature
- Now Available! GPS Progress Alerts