Our newest virtual race model, the Virtual 5k Anywhere, makes it easy to power fundraising, engagement, and community for participants across the country… or world!

There’s no set-up fee, so the event is risk-free for your organization

While most virtual 5ks are one-day events offering participants little more than time-logging and awards, our Virtual 5k Anywhere lets participants compete multiple times over the course of one week AND share their personal route(s) with other participants via an online map.

This feature means your charity can host a virtual turkey trot in which racers draw virtual drumsticks, pie slices or forks! Or your college can ask alumni to try to run a route tracing the school mascot or initials. (Participants track where they walk, run or cycle by downloading Racery’s Android or iPhone app.)

Each event includes Racery’s great features:

• P2P fundraising links, emails and leaderboards
• A personalized digital bib and finish placard for each participant
• A Facebook-like feed displaying a reverse chronological order log of the distance and time of each run or walk, including photos and comments/likes
• Email instructions and prompts to keep participants on track

Adding to the sense of communal fun, before the race starts, people’s avatars appear on the shared race map at their home-towns.

You can try a free trial Virtual 5k Anywhere here.

After racers exercise, the host organization’s fans can visit the online event to zoom in and view each participant’s specific route(s). A miniature version of each individual’s route is also featured in the tile on the right side of the individual’s log in the challenge’s activity feed. Clicking a tile zooms the viewer to that specific route on the overall map.

This race model celebrates a charity’s geographic breadth and provides plenty of fodder for conversation and sharing. The model taps into the popular trend of GPS art, which first appeared in 2011 and has been covered in publications ranging from Artnet to USA Today

Some participants will try to create fun designs with their routes—whether shapes or words or animals—sparking a run art contest. Participants can record and upload multiple routes too, potentially creating larger designs on the map. A challenge can be any distance from 5k to 100 miles and can last multiple days or a single day, depending on how much socializing and fundraising the sponsor seeks.

Races can include Racery’s time-tested fundraising tools and leader boards, or, for businesses focused on camaraderie, special community-building features.