RaceTrak
Runner tracking for races that lose signal.
RaceTrak is built for ultra-marathons and trail races, where aid stations sit hours from the nearest bar of reception. Tablets keep recording whether or not anything else is working, and catch up when they can.
What RaceTrak is for
RaceTrak is software for the organisers of ultra-marathons and trail races. Its purpose is to record where each runner is during an event, so that the organisers know who is still out on the course and can act when somebody is overdue.
Who uses it
Race directors, aid-station volunteers, radio operators and medical staff working an event. It is not a consumer app and not a fitness tracker: runners do not use it, and it does not track anybody's phone.
What it does
A volunteer at an aid station records each runner arriving and leaving, on a tablet that keeps working with no mobile signal. Those records sync to a shared view of the whole race when a connection is available.
What signing in does
Organisers sign in at my.racetrak.us to create a race, import a roster and decide which volunteers may see it. Signing in with Google uses only your name and email address, to identify your account. RaceTrak requests no other Google data and reads nothing from your Google account.
What it costs
A race director buys a credit and creates a race with it. Volunteers install the app and join with a code, free and without a limit on how many. See pricing.
How RaceTrak handles personal information is set out in the privacy policy, and the terms of service cover what a race credit buys. Questions about the software, or about a race that used it, go to support@racetrak.us.
Offline is the normal case, not the failure case
Most timing systems treat a dropped connection as an error to recover from. On a hundred-mile course through the backcountry, it is simply Tuesday. RaceTrak assumes it from the start.
Records without waiting
Every tap is written to the tablet immediately. Nothing pauses for a network round trip, because at a busy aid station a two-second wait is a runner nobody logged.
Syncs opportunistically
When a device finds signal it uploads what it has and collects what everyone else recorded. A station offline since dawn loses nothing by reconnecting at dusk.
Corrections, not deletions
Mistakes are fixed by recording the correction, so the log always shows both what was written and what put it right. Nothing is silently overwritten.
Radio is a first-class path
For a station with no data at all, the radio is the only way off the mountain. Net Control types what it hears, following read-back procedure, and those calls become part of the same record.
Knowing where everyone is
The reason to track runners at all is that somebody eventually asks where one of them is, and the answer matters.
Whole-race view
Every runner's position across every station, and which stations have gone quiet — the thing no single aid station can see.
Cutoff warnings
Who has missed a cutoff, and who is behind pace for the next one, with the numbers behind the estimate rather than just a verdict.
Contact details stay restricted
A runner's phone number reaches the race director and medical command. It is never sent to a station tablet at all — not hidden there, absent.
Who uses what
Three jobs, three surfaces, one record underneath.
A tablet with oversized buttons for cold, gloved hands. Tap a runner in, tap them out. Works in the dark and with no signal.
A queue of what still needs calling in, and a desk that copies calls off the air with read-back and correction before anything is recorded.
The whole field at a glance, roster import from a spreadsheet, and the privileged views nobody else gets.
One race, one credit
The race director buys a credit and creates a race with it. Everyone else — every aid station, every radio operator, every volunteer you hand a tablet to — installs the app and joins with a code, free and without a limit on how many.
Volunteers pay nothing, ever
Charging per volunteer would make a director ration the people they hand tablets to, which is the opposite of what the system is for. Bring as many as you have.
A race that has started, runs
A credit is spent once, when the race is created. Nothing is re-checked on race morning. There is no state of the account that can stop a race already under way.
Buy for the season
Credits sit on your account until you use them, so a series can be bought once and drawn down race by race. Paid by card or invoice, through Stripe.