Want this on your phone? Ready Time sends an alert when it’s time to start each step.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
The race publishes one time, the gun, and leaves the rest to you: when to eat, when the last shuttle goes, when bag drop shuts, and how far your corral turns out to be from bag drop. Corrals usually close somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes before the start. Ready Time runs the whole morning backward from your start time, so you can settle the alarm the week before instead of at 4am in a hotel room.
Want this on your phone? Ready Time sends an alert when it’s time to start each step.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
The site says the gun goes off at 7:30. It doesn't say when to eat, when the last shuttle leaves, when bag drop closes, or how long the porta-potty line runs at 6:45 when several thousand people have the same idea at once. Those are the times that actually shape your morning. They're also the ones people end up doing arithmetic on at 4am on five hours of sleep.
Set the deadline to your start time and Ready Time gives every step its own clock: breakfast, digest, dress, bib, travel, bag drop, bathroom, corral. Build the plan the week before while you're rested, and race morning becomes following notifications. The gap that commonly gets underestimated is bag drop to corral, which at a big race can be a long walk plus a second security line. Keep race day familiar: breakfast included.
Three to three and a half hours before the gun is the common answer, and breakfast is what drives it: most runners want the pre-race meal down two to three hours before the start, which is roughly what Hal Higdon's Novice 1 plan assumes.
A 7:30 marathon start puts the alarm around 4:15 or 4:30. A half needs roughly two and a half hours, and a 5K is comfortable at ninety minutes. Big-city races push it earlier again, because shuttles and security screening can eat an hour before you've done anything at all.
Get a nudge at the right moment, while there's still time to act.
Each step gets its own alert, so you know what's next and how long you have.
With Premium, a Live Activity keeps the countdown on your Lock Screen between alerts.
Save this routine in Ready Time and it tells you when to start each step.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
More on being ready on time