I'm racing the Denver half-marathon this Sunday, and a few weeks ago I got an email from my friend Sonja that one of her sponsors, Trakkers, was doing some beta testing at the race and was looking for volunteers. Since I know how much all of you love to follow my racing (yes, I'm kidding), I jumped on the chance!
Trakkers is a company that is developing a real-time GPS-based athlete tracking system so that you can follow your favorite athlete during their race, even from far away. If you've got nothing better to do at 7 AM mountain time on Sunday, you can "watch" me run, however slowly it may be.
I've copied the email from Carole at Trakkers below. Just click the link on race morning, and make sure to take the online survey so they can get some honest feedback on how the device is working and how they can improve it!
Below is the link you can send
to your loved ones to use to follow you on race day. At this point I don’t
think our application is compatible with iPhone but we are moving in that
direction. I think (but am not 100% certain) this test is only viewable from a
computer – and I have heard MAC causes problems. ?
(Feel free to forward this email
to your friends and family if you’d rather not take the time to explain
everything I am below.)
When sending the link to your
friends and family, please ask them to fill out the online user survey they’ll
find on race day. We are specifically not giving online user instructions how
to navigate the system as this is part of our test (frankly, it’s the primary
purpose). We realize not every person who wants to follow their loved one will
be computer savvy and we are trying to create a system that is fairly intuitive
to navigate. Our online user feedback has been critical to improvements and we
truly appreciate everyone’s time they’ve taken to give feedback on their
experience.
I thank you (and your friends
and family) in advance for any feedback they offer. Ultimately, we are
creating this device and website for THEM so they can follow you during your
training and racing. Knowing how to make this better for them is our primary
objective.
We are continuing to make
modifications to URL page until race day, so know the final version will not be
ready until the morning of the race. Also, if you have difficulty getting to
this page, try copying and pasting the URL directly.
Here is the link they will go to
on race day.
http://www.trakkersgps.com/trackevents/event-test.aspx?eventid=16&subeventid=19
Thanks again for your help! We
are excited for this test and eager for your loved ones to have an intimate
connection to your progress!