It’s a wet, bright morning in Glen Coe and Marcus Nicholson is watching several small dots move across a map of the Scottish Highlands. It’s the second day of racing the 500km course at Further Elements and Nicholson is building an evolving image of the event from his desk, pulling in Instagram stories from riders, weather updates from race organisers and snapshots from photographers on the ground. He is one of a growing number of ‘dot watchers’.
For those in the ultra scene, ‘dot watcher’ is a familiar term, usually reserved for friends and family who carefully comb race maps to track their rider’s blinking GPS tracker. For the last ten years, it has been the domain name of an organisation drawing the internet’s information into one, traceable online space – DotWatcher.
“[In the past] the only way people knew what was going on was via forums, social media and the tracking maps,” Kitty Dennis, DotWatcher’s Managing Editor, explains. “It meant that unless you knew exactly what you were doing, or you were following a specific person and they were sending you texts, there was no way to see what was going on in these races. So it was basically a mining exercise on the internet, and we sort of brought that all together.”
“If you think about something like the Tour de France, everybody’s within seconds to minutes of each other, right?” Dennis explains. “There are motorbikes that know where the route is, whereas in ultra-distance racing, people can be thousands of miles apart, and the budget isn’t there to follow everyone.”
(Image credit: DotWatcher)
For the riders tackling these monumental distances, often unsupported, DotWatcher is a way for them, their family and friends to stay connected.
“I know at least one person in a lot of races,” ultra rider and DotWatcher’s web developer, Millie Gibbons tells me, “especially in the race season over the summer – every week, there’s a different race and a different friend you want to follow. So from that point of view, I’m looking and sending messages of support, watching where they are, seeing if they’ve stopped for a while, giving them that motivation. Then, if I’m racing, my friends and family are doing the same, checking up on me, knowing what’s going on, sending encouragement.”
But who are the people watching the dots?
Dennis began working with DotWatcher after swapping a medicine degree for a job at Canyon. The cycling world had her hooked, and she spent her time on whatever bike she could get her hands on: mountain biking, gravel riding, bike packing. It was a few years after her work at Canyon – and one ultra ride later – that she joined the team, with the task of scaling up the small website.
“Millie’s more interesting than me,” Dennis says of their new website recruit, Gibbons. The ultra-rider recently finished sixth in the Kromvojo race (and as the fastest woman). A tech-head happiest on two wheels, becoming DotWatcher’s web developer was a dream: “Sometimes we’re just talking about bikes on the work chat, and I think – is this really my job?”
As the Managing Editor of DotWatcher, Dennis self-describes as an “avid bike packer who is sometimes found doing shorter things”. Ultra distance riding is, for her, one of the sport’s least attractive disciplines. “I feel stressed the entire time,” she confesses. “ Some people thrive off of that. I remember cycling out of Hebden Bridge towards a reservoir at like, one o’clock in the morning and being like, I just want to go to sleep. I don’t know where to go to sleep. I’m so tired, and it was so stressful. Whereas some people absolutely love stopping their bike, sleeping on the side of the road and then carrying on. I don’t love it.”
But for Gibbons, ultra-racing is pure joy. “It’s the most empowering and self fulfilling thing you can do. [When you’re riding] You’ve fixed all your problems, you’ve solved everything – you got from one location to the next. That sense of achievement is just so wonderful. But then also, I do just really enjoy pedalling my bike all day. It’s meditative. All you’re doing when you’re racing is thinking about where you’re going to sleep and where you’re going to eat, and riding a bike, it’s like the most simple, enjoyable thing. “
DotWatcher has filled a gap in the ultra racing and bike packing scene. People now have one place to get their information about racers, riders and events without having to search the corners of the internet for morsels of information. Without a governing body behind ultra-riding, it’s the community who build and support the sport, Gibbons tells me.
I ask the pair what’s next for the site, as they attract record numbers (their latest race drew as much traffic than the whole of 2024 combined), but they’re keeping it under wraps – for now. “I like to keep a bit of mystery,” Gibbons smiles in conclusion.
Dennis is measuring their growth by another metric, too. “When I first started cycling, nobody had a saddle bag on their bike, nobody had a frame bag. It was cringe. Whereas now everyone, even if they’re going out for a 100k ride, has a saddle bag and a frame bag on the bike. I think ultra-distance racing is massively growing.”
