Athlete Trackers: Here’s a Good One!

If you have friends and family that do the full and half Ironman distance races, the waiting is nerve-racking. With the courses that are so large, it’s difficult to cover the distance the athletes do in order to catch a glimpse and cheer them on.
There are maybe half a dozen apps out there to help you keep track of your athlete on race day. I’ve only used two. One got the job done in the end but was frustrating all the way through. I knew my friend had to be way further along than the app was telling me.
All have varying degrees of speed and accuracy. If you’re at home, you also have access to the IM website that gets so inundated with traffic, it almost can’t function.
I was recently introduced to an app called IMtrackr. I really liked it. You choose your race, find your athlete/s and wait for the race to begin. The weekend of June 29, I followed several athletes competing at IM Coeur D’Alene Idaho and another at IM Nice in France. I put all the athletes in both the IMtracker app as well as another popular IM tracking app.
IMtracker was great! It was easy to find the races I wanted and the athletes racing. It didn’t seem to lag which is often a problem. That being said, I wasn’t standing on the course at mile markers watching an athlete go by and wait for the data to populate.
The really cool thing, it will send you PUSH TEXTS when your athlete passes split points. They’re all the same points the other apps use. I found IMtrackr to be timely in posting splits. But I gotta’ say, that PUSH feature is a clincher for me. When I’m not at the race, it keeps me from constantly checking my phone for updates. When I am in the city of the race, it lets me use my battery power to find restrooms and coffee shops.
The app is currently only available for iOS devices, Apple, and is free. The free version lets you track one athlete per race. You can purchase credits, 5/$0.99 or 25/$3.99, that let you track multiple athletes at a time and in multiple races. An updated version, 1.2, is anticipated this week and will include a Leaderboard feature as well as the option to purchase an Ad free 1 Year Subscription for $6.99.
An Android version is anticipated to release in a couple of months.
Check it out