Every brevet has a handful of checkpoints along the route called controls. At each one you collect proof that you were there: a volunteer’s signature, or a receipt from the corner store. At the finish you hand it all over, and that proof is what turns a long day on the bike into an official result. For a hundred years the thing you collected it on was a small paper card, folded into a jersey pocket and slowly dissolving in sweat.
We now have a digital version. It’s a web page on your phone with a “Check in” button beside each control. You tap it, your phone notes where you are and what time it is, and a little green stamp lands on the row. That’s it.
The rest of this page is detail, but the one thing to understand is this: the digital card never says no. Like the paper card, it just writes down what happened. If you’re early, late, out of signal, or your phone has decided it doesn’t know where it is, you can still check in. The organizer sees a note next to anything unusual and sorts it out afterward, the same way they’d squint at a smudged time on a paper card.
If you’ve never ridden a brevet, start with What is Randonneuring? and Your First Brevet. This page assumes you know roughly what you’re signing up for.
What it actually is
The digital control card is not an app. There’s nothing to install, no account, no password. Your card is a private link that is unique to you, so don’t post it in the group chat.
You’ll find the link in your registration confirmation email, under a “Digital brevet card” heading. If the organizer printed you a paper card, a QR code on it opens your digital card too.
Open it on the phone you’ll carry on the ride and leave the tab open. Any modern browser works. On an iPhone, Safari gives GPS the best chance of a clean fix; if the link opens inside Gmail’s or Instagram’s built-in browser, look for the option to open it in Safari instead.
Paper or digital? Pick one when you register
The registration form asks which card you want. Paper is the default. Choose digital and the organizer won’t print a card for you, which is the point (fewer cards to print out and fold at 5 a.m.). You can use the digital card either way, and you can carry a paper card either way. The choice only tells the organizer what to prepare.
Some advice for your first brevet: pick paper, and use the digital card alongside it. Once you’ve done a ride and trust the process, go digital. A paper card is a comforting object to have in a pocket when your phone reads 4% at kilometre 180. Some riders also just like keeping the cards.
Before the ride
Test your location at home. Open your card a few days ahead. Near the top there’s a “Test your location” button. Tap it, let your phone ask for permission, and say yes. If it says “Location works on this phone,” you’re done. If it says location is blocked, the page walks you through the settings for your phone. It takes about a minute at your kitchen table. It takes considerably longer at a Tim Hortons at dawn with cold fingers.
Charge everything. The card reads your location only when you tap the “Check in” button, so it won’t drain your battery the way a tracking app does. But your phone is often also your map and your way of calling for a ride home. Bring a small power bank if you’re not sure your phone will last the whole ride.
Read the control list. Each control shows its distance from the start and the window it’s open, like 07:12 – 09:40. Those times come from the same formula as the paper card. Nothing about the ride changes. The intermediate control times are guidelines rather than hard cut-offs, though you should still try to reach each control before it closes. The finish control’s closing time is the time limit for the event, and that one is firm.
On the day
Check-in opens two hours before the official start. Until then the buttons are greyed out and the page tells you when they’ll be active. At the start line, tap Check in on the first control. If you’re a few minutes early, the page says so and records your time as the official start. Nobody gets a head start by tapping at 5:47.
At each control after that, same thing. Roll up, stop, tap Check in. Your phone spends a few seconds finding a GPS fix (up to 45 if you’re indoors, so tap before you go in for coffee). Then the stamp lands, and the next control’s button turns solid so you can always see where you’re headed.
Each control has a radius around it, generally 500 metres, so you don’t have to stand on a specific square of pavement. Check in from the wrong side of town and it still records, with a note that it happened outside the radius. If your phone thinks you’re at a different control than the one you tapped, the page asks which one you meant before saving anything.
Tapped the wrong row? There’s an Undo link beside every check-in for 15 minutes. After that, ask the organizer.
When things go wrong
Something will go wrong. Not to you, necessarily, but to someone on every ride.
No signal. Tap Check in anyway. The stamp appears, the row says “Waiting to sync,” and your phone holds the check-in until it finds a connection. It remembers the time you tapped, not the time it eventually uploads, so a control in a cellular dead zone costs you nothing. Just keep the page open. If you close the tab while offline, it won’t reload until you have signal again, which is the one real reason to keep a paper card in your pocket for now.
GPS won’t cooperate. Sometimes it can’t get a fix; sometimes your phone has quietly blocked location for the browser. Either way the page offers Check in without GPS. Take it. The check-in records with a note that it was manual, and if GPS starts behaving in the next 15 minutes, a Retry GPS link adds a location to the check-in you already made without changing the time.
You’re early, or late. Both are allowed. Early gets a quick “are you sure?” and a flag. Late just gets a flag. The organizer looks at flags after the ride, the way they’d look at a paper card with an odd time on it. Remember that only the start and finish times are firm; the intermediate controls are guidelines.
Your phone dies. This is what the paper card is for. Get it signed as usual. If you went digital-only, get a receipt or make a note at each remaining control and tell the organizer what happened. Riders were finishing brevets on receipts long before phones. Sharing your Strava or GPS data can also help the organizer verify your ride.
The finish
Check in at the final control and the card congratulates you (you’ll have earned it) and shows a button to submit your result. Your finish time has already been worked out from your check-ins. You’ll get an email asking for one last thing: a link to your Strava activity or a GPX file of the ride. Add it, hit submit, and go find something delicious to eat!
The fine print, briefly
- The card works for brevets, populaires, and permanents.
- It reads your location only when you tap. It is not live tracking, and nobody can watch you ride. (If you want people to watch you ride, there’s a page for that.)
- Your check-ins live on the phone that made them. Don’t switch phones mid-ride.
- Organizers can correct a check-in afterward, and they can see when one was early, late, without GPS, or outside the radius. That’s the whole idea.
Something not covered here? Your ride organizer’s name and phone number are on the card itself, near the bottom. They’d rather hear from you before the ride than at kilometre 150.