It’s a wet, bright morning in Glen Coe and Marcus Nicholson is watching several small dots move across a map of the Scottish Highlands. It’s the second day of racing the 500km course at Further Elements and Nicholson is building an evolving image of the event from his desk, pulling in Instagram stories from riders, weather updates from race organisers and snapshots from photographers on the ground. He is one of a growing number of 'dot watchers'.
For those in the ultra scene, ‘dot watcher’ is a familiar term, usually reserved for friends and family who carefully comb race maps to track their rider’s blinking GPS tracker. For the last ten years, it has been the domain name of an organisation drawing the internet’s information into one, traceable online space - DotWatcher.
