This covers two non-race formats: a meet-up (social, untimed, everyone rides or runs together) and a point-to-point event (start, finish and optional waypoints in between, with the athlete picking their own line). In both, athletes set off individually and it's about taking part, not placing.
1. Create the event
When you create the event:
- Pick Meet-up for a social, untimed activity together.
- Pick Point-to-point for a long-distance adventure with a start, a finish and optional waypoints along the way.
Either way, athletes start when they're ready; there's no shared gun.
2. Route and landmarks (meet-up)
Add your route so athletes and spectators can see the way. You can then add Milestones: named landmarks on the route (a regroup point, a café stop, a notable climb). Milestones show up on the map in advance, but who reached one first is never a live leaderboard. That's part of a meet-up being untimed: results and order only surface afterwards, in the recap, not during the ride.
3. Checkpoints define the course (point-to-point)
A point-to-point event doesn't need a GPX file; your checkpoints define the course:
- Your first checkpoint is the start gate.
- Your last checkpoint is the finish gate.
- Any checkpoints in between are waypoints the athlete has to cross, in order.
Athletes register a crossing when their GPS comes within the trigger radius of a checkpoint (50 m by default, adjustable per checkpoint). You can still add a GPX route alongside your checkpoints if you want a line on the map, but the checkpoints, not the route, are what the event actually times against.
4. Timing and cut-offs
A meet-up is untimed: athletes end their own activity when they're done, and nothing about it is ranked or timed. A point-to-point event is timed: an athlete's elapsed time is tracked from their first checkpoint to their last, and reaching the last checkpoint ends their tracking automatically. In either format you can set a cut-off if there's a hard course-closing time.
5. Registration
Set registration to Open for a one-tap, relaxed sign-up, or Managed if you want a capacity, a deadline, categories or a registration form. Categories are optional: run a single group, or split by distance.
6. On the day
- Athletes start when they're ready and are tracked the whole way.
- Spectators follow everyone's live position along the route, and through the checkpoints on a point-to-point.
- Athletes can raise an Alert if they need help, and you see it on your dashboard as usual: see Handling alerts. Remind them an Alert reaches you, the organisers, not the emergency services; brief them on that beforehand (see What to tell your riders before the event). An Alert here can also start automatically: Aster's crash detection watches for a hard, sudden stop during this activity too, not just on a Just Ride, and raises the same cancellable alert if the athlete doesn't dismiss it.
- For remote adventures, reassure athletes the app keeps recording even with no signal and catches up when they reconnect: see What happens when I lose signal?.
7. After
Athletes' activities are saved with full routes, stats and a replay. A point-to-point event that finishes at the last checkpoint can publish results if you've brought in timing data for it; a meet-up never has a results page; its value is the live following, the Milestone recap, and the saved activities.
On a meet-up, an athlete who ends early — a mechanical, weather, running out of daylight — is recorded as Finished, never DNF: it's untimed, so there's no standing to fall out of. A point-to-point is different: it's unranked, but still a challenge to complete, so an athlete who ends early there is recorded as DNF, the same as a race or sportive.
Things to get right
- On a point-to-point, checkpoint order is the whole mechanism. The first checkpoint starts the clock, the last one stops it, and anything in between must be crossed in sequence.
- Milestones are for a meet-up's story, not its scoring. Place them at meaningful points on the route; they never produce a ranking.
- Brief athletes on offline behaviour. On remote routes, reassure them the app keeps recording with no signal; their live location just catches up when they reconnect.
- Brief the safety limits. For self-supported adventures, make sure athletes know an Alert reaches you, not the emergency services, and that they must carry their own means to call for help.