The marathon app that puts your friends' voices at every mile

The photos from a marathon always show the finish. What they don't show is mile 20, alone, where the crowd has thinned and your body has started negotiating for a walk. The people who'd say the exact right thing in that moment — your partner, your kid, your training buddy, your dad — can't be standing there. They're at one spot on the course, if you're lucky, or watching a dot move across a map at home.

RacePep exists to put them at every mile instead.

How it works

Before the race, the people who love you record a short pep talk — a few seconds of "you've got this," an inside joke, a reason you started. During the race, one plays at each mile. Mile 3 is your sister. Mile 9, where it always gets hard, is your coach. Mile 20 is your kid. Your own soundtrack of familiar voices, arriving exactly where you need them.

The details are built around how a race actually feels:

• Sealed until race day. You don't hear the voices in advance — every mile is a surprise. You can set a dial for how much stays hidden, from "seal everything" to "show me what's coming."
• Placed where it counts. Put a specific voice at a specific mile — save the one from your dad for the wall at 20.
• Over your music, not instead of it. Keep your own playlist; a voice rises above it for a few seconds, then the music returns.
• Counts the miles offline. On race day it tracks each mile on your phone without needing a signal, and your friends' voices stay on your device.

Nothing for your friends to set up

The usual problem with "get your friends to contribute" apps is that your friends won't install anything. RacePep keeps their part small: they grab the free app once and record right inside Messages — no account, no sign-up, a couple of taps. The ask is light enough that people actually do it.

Where the voices live

This matters more than it sounds. When a friend records a pep talk, the audio reaches you through your own iCloud — never a Kraft server. We don't hold your voices, can't listen to them, and don't want to. They're a private thing between you and the people who recorded them, which is the only way something this personal should work.

What's free, and what's Patron

A 5K or 10K is free, including the highlights screen where you can replay every mile after you finish and save or share any voice. Patron unlocks every distance — the half, the full, or a custom length, and cycling as well as running — as a single purchase across the whole Kraft family, or monthly if you'd rather.

The honest part

RacePep can't run the race for you, and it depends on your people actually recording — an empty course is a quiet one. It also works best when you set it up a little before race day, not at the start line. But if you give the people who love you a few minutes beforehand, they'll carry you through the miles they never could have reached in person. That's the whole idea, and it's what we built RacePep to do.