This past weekend the 2nd Annual Rock Lobster Relay, a multi-day 200 mile course along the scenic Maine coastline, offered RaceJoy for the second year in a row. 52 teams competed and 614 runners and supporting spectators used RaceJoy over the weekend!
The Rock Lobster Relay is known for its firsts…
This relay is the first of its kind in Maine.
A truly unique experience, the relay is a 36-leg 200-mile course completed by teams of 7 to 12 runners. The race starts in the beautiful town of Bar Harbor on Friday and runs through the night, ending in Portland’s famous Old Port on Saturday. Runners enjoy Maine’s eastern rocky coast in its most beautiful time in the summer, soak up the historic Portland neighborhoods, and wind their way to the finish passing unique stores and micro-breweries.
Rock Lobster Relay is organized by a company first to offer RaceJoy in Maine.
This relay is managed by GiddyUp Productions, a race management company that was the first to offer RaceJoy at a number of events in Maine, including the Maine Coast Marathon and the Old Port Half Marathon.
First ultra-distance relay course to use RaceJoy’s newest relay team release.
And, this year, the Rock Lobster Relay claims another first – its participants used the new team release of RaceJoy that provided progress alerts every five miles and included location, team pace, leg pace and estimated finish time. This was the first time RaceJoy had a course of this length use the team progress alert feature and nearly 5,000 alerts were issued over the course for the weekend.
Over the course of the two days 300 runners opted to use RaceJoy’s live phone tracking feature. This is one of RaceJoy’s most popular features – it allows users to know where team members are at any given time by watching the runner’s blue dot move along an interactive course map in real-time. RaceJoy uses the runners’ phones as GPS trackers, so it shows users the true position versus a simulated location.
For the runners, RaceJoy provided a real-time, interactive map of where the runners were on the ground at all times. This made it easier for teams to meet at transition points.
Runners also experienced real-time support while they were running the long course from their team members and family and friends through RaceJoy’s Send-a-Cheer feature. 1,300 cheers were sent as encouragement while the runners completed their legs.
Additionally, RaceJoy provided the race management team a safety tool, providing continual live tracking of runners’ locations during the overnight portion of the course. The race operations team could watch participants through the RaceJoy Race Day Monitoring system or have them loaded into the app on their phones. Through the monitoring system, the race ops team could also view how many teams had crossed milestones along the course to better plan or be alerted if participants were off-course – a concern for many ultra-distance courses with overnight legs.
Relays are growing in popularity and we see more and more races offer relay options at their events. Relays offer a great way to achieve something with others and to participate in a race you might not do on your own. The team spirit of accomplishing this Rock Lobster Relay was evident and it was great to see the reception from both the relay race organizers and the participants on race day!
Congratulations finishers and thank you GiddyUp Productions for your continued support of RaceJoy.
If you’d like to offer RaceJoy to your participants and spectators at an upcoming event, you can easily load your race through RaceJoy’s website or your RunSignUp dashboard. We require a two-week minimum load time and an electronic version of your course map (preferably in GPX/KML format).
