The ones captains actually ask.
Mostly about what happens when the network goes away, which is the right thing to be asking.
What happens when there is no cell service?
Everything except sync. The projection math runs on the phone, not the server, so the schedule, your next start time, and the alerts all keep working with the radio off. Taps you make while you are dark go into a queue and upload the moment you have a bar again. Nothing is ever blocked behind a network call.
Do my runners need to create accounts?
No. A runner opens the link you send them, confirms which slot is theirs, and they are in. Making an account is offered once, is dismissible, and only exists so someone can keep their race history year to year. Captains do need an account — you are the one coming back next season.
Could a login screen lock someone out mid-race?
No, by design. Between your team’s start and finish, the app will not show a sign-in screen for any reason. A failed request inside the race window is treated as bad reception, not as a permission problem: the queue survives, the cached schedule survives, and it retries when you reconnect.
How accurate are the projected times?
Accurate enough to plan sleep, and honest about the rest. RelayJoe learns how far each runner’s real pace sits from the 10K time they gave you, how much a given leg costs everyone, how much the team slows as miles accumulate, and what running in the dark does. Projections widen the further out they are, and past about 90 minutes RelayJoe stops giving times and says something like "Saturday late morning" instead.
Someone dropped and we swapped a runner. Now what?
Substitute them in the roster and the rotation re-derives from that point forward. Legs already run stay credited to whoever actually ran them, and a leg that has already been finished cannot be reassigned — that rule exists specifically so a captain fixing tomorrow morning does not accidentally rewrite last night.
What if a runner forgets to hit Finished?
The captain can correct it. The event log only ever gets added to, so a correction is a new entry that supersedes the old one rather than an edit that erases what happened. Positions that run past their projected window flag themselves as overdue instead of quietly sitting there.
Can family and friends follow along?
Yes, with a link you generate and can rotate. It opens in any browser, needs no account and no app, and shows who is out, the team’s pace against schedule, and the projected finish. It is also the fallback for the one person on your team who cannot get the app installed.
Does it track runners by GPS?
No. Handoffs are a tap by the person making them, which is both more accurate than a GPS fix under tree cover and far cheaper on a battery that has to last 30 hours. RelayJoe never draws a breadcrumb trail of where anyone was.
Is this going to destroy my phone battery?
It syncs when you open it, when your connectivity changes, and after you record something. Never on a timer. A 30-hour race in the cold is not the place for a background poller, and an app blamed for a dead phone is an app that gets deleted.
Does it get dark at night?
On its own, if you want it to. Between 8pm and 6am race-local, RelayJoe switches to a true dark theme regardless of your system setting, so nobody takes a full-brightness white screen to the face at 2am in a tent. You can turn that off.
What does it cost?
Nothing yet. RelayJoe is in early access ahead of its first race and is free for the teams running it now. Long-term pricing has not been set — if you join early, we will tell you before that changes.
Which phones does it run on?
iPhone and Android. Captains also get a browser app for the pre-race work — building the roster, setting the rotation, and sending join links — because none of that should be done with your thumbs.
Ask a person.
RelayJoe is small enough that the answer comes from someone who wrote the thing. Send the question to contact@relayjoe.com.