IMKY Athlete Tracking

I really don't have a clue about automatic email or txt updates.  However, your family can have somebody track you from ironmanlive.com and manually send them updates.  Just as a note, the little town of LaGrange, which we will pass through twice on the bike course has an "Ironman Festival", which might be something for your family to look into.  I'm sure its a long day as a spectator, so it might give them sometime to do for a little while anyway.

http://www.discoverlagrange.org/ironman.html

Yep, Ironman Live Tracking I think is the only way.  I will say, I ran in the Houston Marathon last January, and a friend ran in the Boston Marathon.  Those two races each had the email or text message updates, and they did NOT work.  And as I think about it, I did Ironman 70.3 Hawaii last year and those email alerts didn't work well either.  So, Ironman Live is the way to go.

 I reserved one of these devices for IMKY, guys.  I just have to pick it up at the race site.  I am now hoping it isn't painful to wear! I don't see why i couldn't just stuff it in a jersey-pocket, though. 

I think this will be great to have, particularly for my wife who will be taking care of our young daughter (needing naps and snacks and such), so that she'll have a much better chance of seeing me throughout the day.  Besides that, my family and friends are scattered throughout the country and will all enjoy being able to see my pace/distance/etc updated constantly.

~B

At IMFL last year, and several other races, a company did a text message checkpoint tracking for free connected to your timing chip.  I remember going online and registering my race number and several phone numbers for family and friends to which they received texts throughout the day alerting them where I was on the course - swim finish, mid-bike, bike finish, mid-run, finish.  I cannot seem to find anything on this, does anyone else remember/have info?  I have no idea whether they will offer this at IMKY, though.

FYI, I gave out copies of the course maps and marked with my estimated times and the time of day I expected to be at various points on the map, which seemed to work well. 

I emailed them after I saw it function at IMLP.   Andy said that he would check to see if they had enough units for IMKY and would be getting back to me.  Haven't heard back from him yet, but I'm still holding out hope that I'll be able to get one.

Good idea Karen.  You can carry a Blackberry with you on the race to see how you are doing!  ;-)

I just spoke with Andy as well and reserved one for IMKY. What a great service! I'll buy one of these when they're available before wheels or a new bike.

I got an email back from Andy today and I'm on the reserve list for IMKY.  BT is gonna be ROCKING the GPS transmitters.