This last weekend, one of the nation’s favorite races, The Flying Pig Marathon, offered two ways for participants to be tracked.
The race offered text alert tracking as participants crossed certain mile points on the course based on their bib tag crossing these points. This provided supporting spectators with the participant’s pace and estimated finish time. Spectators set this up through the Flying Pig Marathon’s official mobile app found in the app store.
Organizers of the Flying Pig Marathon went a step further and let people know that there was a second way to track runners through RaceJoy’s GPS-based phone tracking. Close to 400 participants registered in RaceJoy and activated tracking the morning of the race. Approximately 500 supporting spectators used RaceJoy to track their runner’s blue dot on race day.
In addition, participants using RaceJoy received audio progress alerts at every mile letting them know their elapsed time, pace and estimated finish time. Spectators tracking them also received these alerts in the form of an in-app notification. RaceJoy issued more than 9,100 progress alerts for the Flying Pig Marathon and Half Marathon.
Since the Flying Pig Marathon race organizers were getting the word out about RaceJoy, we added a banner ad for them to brand their race in RaceJoy, and we referred people to their official mobile app for further information on the race.
We also loaded fun pre-recorded pig cheers just for the occasion. Clearly, spectators had fun with this since they sent close to 1,400 cheers to participants during the race. The pleasant sounds of “…an oink oink here and an oink oink there…” and “look it’s a flying pig!” prompted many a smile on race day.
Race organizers of the Flying Pig Marathon clearly embrace innovation and sought out ways it could help their participants and mass amounts of spectators. Another mobile app they corralled into the mix was Uber; they made special arrangements with Uber to ensure transportation on race day. Not only does this race have a great theme that just requires us runners to put it on our bucket list, but organizers offer a fresh, modern experience that we all can appreciate and enjoy. So add this one to your list!
Ble ble ble… That’s All Folks!
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 for free. For more information on the buyout option, please see our PhoneTrak Pricing Flyer.
RaceJoy key features:
Live phone tracking
Audio cheer sending
Near Me Proximity alerts
MeetUp mapping feature
Now Available! GPS Progress Alerts
