With a growing number of running race options to choose from, event organizers are looking for ways to add to their race experience. Rock the Parkway Kansas City Half Marathon and 5K took place this last weekend and is one of the most popular half marathons in the Midwest. The race sells out every year and is known to offer a scenic course with talented live band entertainment throughout the course. Race organizers decided to up the race experience by getting their courses loaded into the RaceJoy app so that participants had the option to be live tracked real-time on the course and receive fun audio cheers from their supporting spectators.
Rock the Parkway had 345 people use RaceJoy on race day. 163 phones were tracked live on the course and 740 cheers were sent out by supporting fans.
In addition, participants were able to try out RaceJoy’s newest GPS progress alerts feature and receive audio performance updates at every mile on the course. Spectators also received these alerts letting them know how their runner/walker was doing real-time. RaceJoy issued more than 4,200 GPS-timed progress alerts during the race.
Participants took full advantage of RaceJoy’s features by also having these progress updates automatically posted to their Facebook and Twitter walls.
On race day, friends and family in 25 different states across the country and 78 cities used RaceJoy to support race participants, with the heaviest support from spectators in Missouri, Illinois and Kansas.
We often are asked by races what they should do to help let participants know their race is in RaceJoy and Rock the Parkway provided great examples on how to get the word out. Specifically, Rock the Parkway included a full page on RaceJoy in its Participant Guide (see page 12).
They also posted the following on their Facebook wall the day before the race:
Thank you, Rock the Parkway, for embracing RaceJoy and helping to bring innovation to the race experience!
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 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. Buyout options are available for race organizers to offer RaceJoy to participants and spectators for free. View our PhoneTrak Pricing Flyer for more information.
RaceJoy key features:
- Live phone tracking
- Audio cheer sending
- Near Me Proximity alerts
- MeetUp mapping feature
- Now Available! GPS Progress Alerts
