RunPackGuides · 5 min read
The best way to track runs with friends — privately
How to share your runs with a small group of friends without posting them to the whole internet: what to look for in a running app for friends, and how to set one up.
Most running apps are built for an audience. You record a run, it goes to a feed of followers, and the app nudges you to collect more followers. That’s great if you want an audience. If you just want to see what your four running friends did this week — and have them see yours — it’s more than you need, and it shares more than you meant to.
What a running app for friends should do
- Keep the feed to your group. Your runs should go to the people you invited, not to anyone who searches your name.
- Show the run properly. Distance, pace, time and the route map — the things friends actually look at.
- Work with whatever you run with. Some friends have an Apple Watch, some a Garmin, some only a phone. Nobody should need new hardware to join.
- Make cheering easy. A quick reaction says “nice one” without turning every run into a comment thread.
- Let you leave nothing behind. Deleting your account should delete your runs.
Why private matters for runners
A run’s route usually starts and ends at home. Posted publicly week after week, routes say where you live and when you’re out. Sharing them with five friends you trust is a very different thing from sharing them with everyone.
How RunPack does it
RunPack is built around a crew: a private group you join by invite link or code. Every run anyone in the crew records — with RunPack’s own GPS tracker on iPhone, an Apple Watch, a Garmin or anything else that writes workouts to Apple Health — shows up in a feed only the crew can see, with distance, pace and time. With RunPack Plus the crew also gets route maps and up to four photos per run.
Reactions are preset — 🔥 👏 💪 — and there are no comments, so the feed stays a feed. You can report or hide anything, and block anyone.
Setting it up in five minutes
- Install RunPack on your iPhone and create a crew.
- Send the invite link to your group chat. It opens straight in the app.
- Go for a run — record it in RunPack, or with the watch you already use.
- It appears in the crew feed. React to your friends’ runs.
Want the group to stick? Read how to start a running group and why crew goals beat solo streaks.