{"id":277506,"date":"2025-11-22T16:23:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T16:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/277506\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T16:23:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T16:23:18","slug":"it-was-a-mining-exercise-on-the-internet-and-we-brought-it-all-together-meet-the-people-behind-ultra-cyclings-dot-watching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/277506\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It was a mining exercise on the internet, and we brought it all together’ \u2013 meet the people behind ultra-cycling’s dot watching"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a wet, bright morning in Glen Coe<\/a> and Marcus Nicholson is watching several small dots move across a map of the Scottish Highlands<\/a>. It\u2019s 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’.<\/p>\n

For those in the ultra scene, \u2018dot watcher\u2019 is a familiar term, usually reserved for friends and family who carefully comb race maps to track their rider\u2019s blinking GPS tracker. For the last ten years, it has been the domain name of an organisation drawing the internet\u2019s information into one, traceable online space – DotWatcher.<\/p>\n

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\u201c[In the past] the only way people knew what was going on was via forums, social media and the tracking maps,\u201d Kitty Dennis, DotWatcher\u2019s Managing Editor, explains. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf you think about something like the Tour de France<\/a>, everybody’s within seconds to minutes of each other, right?\u201d Dennis explains. \u201cThere 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Website\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: DotWatcher)<\/p>\n

For the riders tackling these monumental distances, often unsupported, DotWatcher is a way for them, their family and friends to stay connected.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know at least one person in a lot of races,\u201d ultra rider and DotWatcher\u2019s web developer, Millie Gibbons tells me, \u201cespecially 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

But who are the people watching the dots?<\/p>\n

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Dennis began working with DotWatcher after swapping a medicine degree for a job at Canyon<\/a>. 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. <\/a>It was a few years after her work at Canyon \u2013 and one ultra ride later \u2013 that she joined the team, with the task of scaling up the small website.<\/p>\n

\u201cMillie\u2019s more interesting than me,\u201d Dennis says of their new website recruit, Gibbons. The ultra-rider<\/a> recently finished sixth in the Kromvojo race (and as the fastest woman). A tech-head happiest on two wheels, becoming DotWatcher\u2019s web developer was a dream: \u201cSometimes we’re just talking about bikes on the work chat, and I think – is this really my job?\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Managing Editor of DotWatcher, Dennis self-describes as an \u201cavid bike packer who is sometimes found doing shorter things\u201d. Ultra distance riding is, for her, one of the sport\u2019s least attractive disciplines. \u201cI feel stressed the entire time,\u201d she confesses. \u201c Some people thrive off of that. I remember cycling out of Hebden Bridge<\/a> 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for Gibbons, ultra-racing is pure joy<\/a>. \u201cIt’s the most empowering and self fulfilling thing you can do. [When you\u2019re riding] You\u2019ve fixed all your problems, you\u2019ve 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. \u201c<\/p>\n

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 <\/a>behind ultra-riding, it\u2019s the community who build and support the sport, Gibbons tells me.<\/p>\n

I ask the pair what\u2019s next for the site, as they attract record numbers (their latest race drew as much traffic than the whole of 2024 combined), but they\u2019re keeping it under wraps – for now. \u201cI like to keep a bit of mystery,\u201d Gibbons smiles in conclusion.<\/p>\n

Dennis is measuring their growth by another metric, too. \u201cWhen I first started cycling, nobody had a saddle bag on their bike, nobody had a frame bag.<\/a> It was cringe. Whereas now everyone, even if they’re going out for a 100k ride, has a saddle bag<\/a> and a frame bag on the bike. I think ultra-distance racing is massively growing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a wet, bright morning in Glen Coe and Marcus Nicholson is watching several small dots move across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-277506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}