For race directors

Course Studio

Draw the actual course for every distance of your event, drop aid stations and points of interest, and publish an interactive map — with elevation profile and a play-the-course animation — straight onto your event page.

Open Course Studio

From your event's director dashboard, click Course Studio in the sidebar (under Manage event). You get a full map editor with your sub-events ready to draw, plus side panels for course checks, elevation, GPX, and map settings.

Drawing a route

Pick the distance you're drawing
The dropdown at the top lists every sub-event (5K, 10K, …). Each one gets its own route; aid stations and markers are shared across all of them.
Tap the map to drop points
In Snap mode (the default), each new segment follows roads and trails automatically. Switch to Manual for straight lines — cross-country stretches, track laps, anywhere the road network is wrong. The mode applies per segment, so you can mix both in one course.
Refine
Drag any point to move it (the route re-snaps around it). Click on the line to insert a point mid-segment. Click a point to delete it or flip that segment between snap and straight.
Close the loop
If your start and finish are the same spot, hit Close loop (or press L) and the route snaps back to the start.
Save
The Save button shows how many things changed. Pick what to publish — anything unchecked stays as local work-in-progress on your device.

On a phone, use Crosshair drop: pan the map so the crosshair sits where you want the next point, then tap “Drop point here.” Much more precise than tapping with a thumb.

Already have the course as a GPX?

Click Import in the GPX panel and pick a file exported from Strava, Garmin Connect, RideWithGPS, or any mapping tool. The track replaces the active route exactly as recorded — no re-snapping. If the file carries elevation, Run This trusts it as-is (the same numbers you saw in Strava); the moment you edit the route, elevation is recomputed from terrain data. Export goes the other way — and if you turn on GPX downloads (Edit event → Event page map, off by default), athletes get a “Download GPX” button right in the event page's course viewer, on the web and in the app.

Markers

Switch to Markers mode and pick a kind, then click the map. Twelve kinds: aid station, bathroom, parking, medical, checkpoint, road closure, packet pickup, spectator point, cutoff time, crew access, DNF/SAG, and photographer — plus a generic marker. Each takes an optional name and notes; athletes see both in the marker's popup on the event page.

Course checks

The checks panel watches your work and flags common issues: no aid stations on a 3+ mile course, the first or last aid station more than 4 miles from the start or finish, big gaps between stations, and a start/finish that's almost a loop (want to close it?). Checks are advisory — nothing blocks saving.

Publishing to your event page

Show course on event page: The master switch. Off (default) — athletes see no course section. On — the interactive viewer appears on your event page after you save.
Default style for athletes: Which of the six map styles (Blueprint, Satellite, Outdoors, Light, Dark, Monochrome) the viewer opens with. Athletes can switch styles themselves.
Elevation profile on event page: On by default. Turn it off for pancake-flat courses where the chart adds nothing — the map, markers, and playback stay.
Let viewers download routes as GPX files: Off by default. On the Edit event page's Event page map card. When on, every displayed course gets a Download GPX button so athletes can load it into a watch or app.
Other routes: Reference routes that aren't a race distance — a parking-to-start walk, shuttle path, or expo loop. Athletes find them in the course picker under “Also on the map.”

Looking for the map pin that adjusts where your event shows on maps when no course is published? That lives on the Edit event page, inside the Basics card right under the address it fine-tunes.

Embedding on your own website

Click Embed in Course Studio's header to copy an iframe snippet for your race's own website. Visitors get the same interactive map — routes, markers, styles, elevation, playback — with a small “Powered by Run This” mark linking back to your event page. The snippet's URL accepts a few options: sub_event opens a specific distance, style picks the starting map style, and play=1 auto-runs the course animation on load.

What athletes get

The course line with mile markers and direction arrows, in any of the six map styles.
A picker to flip between distances, plus an Overview that shows every course at once in distinct colors.
Your markers — tap any for its name and notes.
An elevation profile with total gain/loss; hovering it highlights the matching spot on the map.
Playback: a dot runs the course at 0.5×–4× speed with live distance and grade readouts — mile markers and aid stations pulse as it passes them, and crossing the finish throws a little confetti.
Click anywhere on the elevation profile and the map flies to that exact spot on the course.
Share links that remember the selected distance and map style, plus fullscreen.

Elevation gain is computed the way Strava and Garmin do it, so the number on your event page will match what athletes expect from their watches — no more “the website said 400ft but my watch said 900ft” emails.