Thanksgiving weekend is coming up and with it a season best known for record times between the fridge and the sofa. There’s nothing like a little friendly competition amongst Track Runners to keep us all moving so we organized the first Remote Turkey Trot 5K race.
WHAT’S THAT?
It’s super simple: All you do is go to your favorite 5k track/trail/route a few minutes before the official starting time (see table below), start a run (can be freestyle or pacer), get the live-tracking link for your active run and tweet it out using the #TrackRunnerApp tag – and bang, you’ve entered. Simply start running at your designated starting time and let the world watch in awe as you break your – and hopefully anybody else’s – record.
WHEN’S THE SHOWDOWN?
Well, it depends… We are so blessed to have Track Runner users from all over the world. We tried hard to find a time that would work with most time zones so as many as possible could participate. For most of us,the race will be on
Saturday, November 29, 2014
although our friends from India, Australia, and New Zealand will be running on Sunday, Nov. 30, 2014. The table below shows some popular race times but you can always go by GMT to calculate your own. (Please check whether your country is currently observing daylight savings time as this will affect your calculations in relation to GMT).
| AK Time | PST | Central | EST | GMT | CET | IST | NZ Time |
| 10AM | 11AM | 1PM | 2PM | 7PM | 8PM | 12:30AM Sunday | 8AM Sunday |
HOW DO I GET LIVE TRACKING TO WORK (AND WHAT’S THAT ANYWAY)?
When you are live-tracking a run it means that the app creates a link to a Google Maps website* on which watchers can follow your run if you share the link on Twitter or other social networks. Watchers can also cheer you on and you will be able to hear their comments via voice notifications if you are using headphones or have the volume turned up.
To turn live tracking on, start a run (or pacer run), then hit the back button to navigate to the “tracking paused” screen. Tap “live tracking” (bottom left) and choose a sharing option. For Windows Phone 8.1 users: Please note that direct Twitter sharing has not been made available as of yet so you will have to use the copy URL option and paste the link into your Twitter client (don’t forget to tag it with the #TrackRunnerApp hashtag so watchers will find you). Watchers please note that it can take up to a minute after the runner started his run for the map to show up. If you see Track Runner’s app store page keep hitting refresh until the Google Map appears.
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BUT I JUST STARTED RUNNING…
Great! Take this turkey trot as your first race. Aim for the finish line, don’t stress about timings. We’ve all started out at some point and are excited to share our hobby with all of you new to running so I am sure you will find the running community supportive and the experience energizing and rewarding!
In that spirit, have an awesome race on Saturday and make sure you share those live tracking links!
*Privacy advice: Since the point of the remote race is to share your run with Twitter (and Facebook) followers/friends and your route will be visible publicly, we recommend that you don’t start your race at your front door.
