Nobody has to text the captain.
RelayJoe puts your relay’s rotation, exchange times and live handoffs on every runner’s phone. Then it keeps answering after the course drops to no bars, because that is when the questions start.
- Race window
- 30 hrRace window
- Needed to work
- 0 barsNeeded to work
- Per handoff
- 1 tapPer handoff
TRAIL MIX
Ragnar Trail Wisconsin
Leg 12 / 24
- 13Sarah K.11:50 PMYellow loop · 4.6 miBe ready by 11:46
- 14Devon O.12:20 AMGreen loop · 3.8 miLikely 12:16 – 12:46
- 15Nia T.Around 1:15 AMRed loop · 6.2 miWindow 12:55 – 2:05
- 16Priya S.Deep overnightYellow loop · 4.6 miRoughly 2:10 – 4:00 AM
7 more legs before the finish
Roughly 10 AM – 1 PM
Each bar is a projected start window. They slide right and get wider the further out they are, because that is the truth about them.
Four questions, on every phone.
A relay captain spends the race being interrupted. These are the interruptions. RelayJoe answers all four without anyone having to ask.
When do I run next?
A single be-ready time on the home screen, with a countdown once you are inside an hour. Two local alerts fire before it, plus one the moment the runner ahead of you starts.
Are we ahead or behind?
A running delta against the schedule you built before the race, updated every time a leg closes. Stated as a signed number, never colour-coded — running ahead is not automatically good.
Who is out on course right now?
Name, leg, and elapsed time, on every phone on the team. The exchange is a tap by the person handing off, so the answer is never a guess.
When will we finish?
A projected finish that widens into a range the further out it is, and gets shared with the people waiting at the line through a read-only link.
The course loses signal exactly where the answers matter.
Most race apps are a thin window onto a server. Put one in a state park at 2am and it shows a spinner. RelayJoe does the arithmetic on the phone, so losing signal costs you sync and nothing else.
The bars go
Somewhere past the first exchange the course stops having coverage, which is also when people start needing answers.
The phone keeps working
Projections are computed on the device from data it already holds. No request goes out, so no request can fail.
Handoffs still count
A runner tapping Finished in a dead zone has recorded a handoff. It sits in a queue on their phone until there is somewhere to send it.
Reconnecting reconciles
Queued events merge into one shared history when any phone finds signal. Sending the same thing twice changes nothing.
It will not pretend to know your finish time.
RelayJoe learns the gap between the 10K pace a runner claimed and the one they actually run, what a given leg costs everybody, how the team fades as the miles pile up, and what running in the dark does to all of it.
What it does with that is the part worth noticing. A projection is a window, not a number, and as the window opens wider the app gives up precision on purpose rather than quoting you a time it cannot stand behind.
How the model worksRunners are shown one be-ready time — the early bound. Captains get the whole window, because they are the ones making decisions with it.
One race, two very different apps.
A captain lives in this for months. A runner opens it for thirty hours, once, and should never have to learn it.
Build the race once, on a real keyboard.
- Pick your race and year, set the start wave and time zone
- Add runners with a pace estimate and a rotation slot
- Send join links by email or paste them wherever your team already talks
- Preview the whole projected schedule before anyone travels
- Fix a missed tap, substitute a runner, or revoke a device mid-race
Open a link. Never think about it again.
- No account, no password, no app store scavenger hunt
- One screen: when you run next, who is out now, are we on schedule
- Alerts before your leg, plus one the moment the runner ahead starts
- A single enormous Finished button while you are out there
- Goes dark on its own at night so nobody gets flashbanged at 2am
Loops out of a base camp, or two vans and a coastline.
RelayJoe models a course as legs, exchanges and a rotation, which is what every one of these races is underneath its own vocabulary.
Ragnar Trail Relays
Three colour-coded loops out of one base camp
8 runners · 4 for ultra · 24 legs · ~120 mi
River to River Relay
Point to point across the Shawnee hills
8 runners · 24 legs · ~80 mi
Hood to Coast
Mt. Hood to the Pacific, overnight
12 runners · 2 vans · 36 legs · 199 mi
Ragnar Road Series
Two vans, three legs each, one night
12 runners · 6 for ultra · 36 legs · ~200 mi
Bring it to your next relay.
RelayJoe is going into its first races now. If you captain a team and you are tired of being the human API for a spreadsheet, we would like you in the next group.