When you think about running culture in a city, what are the first things that come to mind? Major marathons and 5Ks? Yes, but only to a degree. There's a whole subgenre of local races—think 5Ks, 10Ks, and trail runs hosted in parks or on some industrial routing we all pretend we care about, but love to hate when race day rolls around. The reason to love local races? Fewer elites and Type As with carbon plated shoes and sub 3-hour race goals. A mix of every runner you've met at your local running store, plus random families and weekend warriors you didn't even know did the "running thing". The energy is a lot different at a local race. It's lower pressure, more... intimate? Less anonymity and more community.
Sounds great. But here's the problem: finding out about local races is no easy feat. In 2025, it still isn't that simple, which is more than a little ridiculous. The "big three" events are everywhere, plastered across websites, social media, race-related apps. Smaller local races are on one of a million event-specific Facebook pages you only find if you already follow the groups they are posted to, or ads at local coffee shops, or just running store flyers. I have missed races I would have loved because I wasn't aware they were happening until a friend posted a finisher photo a day after the race. This is a major problem.
Signing up for a race, bizarrely, is one of the easiest parts. Click a box, lie about your birth year, indicate if you want a T-shirt (why are T-shirts a “thing” for every race? they’re all some weird color and fit that no one wears more than one day unless you’re that guy who wears old shirts as ironic party costumes to impress new people who’ve never met you in real life shout out to all my retro shirt race tee wearers), then indicate team vs individual and you’re done. You can normally pay online, but for the older local races, sometimes someone’s mom who is in charge decided she wants people to pay on paper forms at the counter of the local bakery with an order of coffee, so…. If you see one of those, let me know, because it’s basically a scavenger hunt to sign up, but true. Also: look for discounts. They just show up randomly, usually some time before some holiday, and of course every race has those “early bird” “secret” prices if you click around enough, but half the time those countdown timers are broken and out of date. Can’t be helped, we’re not rich.
Of course, a local races website can (and ideally should) do a lot more than just serve as a sortable "list of races." Local race websites should be able to accommodate community-based review systems around the events. What makes a good race listing isn't "this race has a scenic route through historic downtown," it's "the course markers are a little confusing after mile 2, but post-race snacks are surprisingly good, and parking is a nightmare so get there 45 minutes early." That's the type of stuff you want to know before you register, and if you don't get that information from the official race website, you're going to have to find it elsewhere. Official race descriptions are great, but they are just that: official. Digging around for user-submitted reviews lets you figure out exactly what the race is like in real terms rather than marketing speak.
Calendars! We tried to link it with Google but it always breaks every two weeks so don’t count on it unless you’re the kind of person who likes missing races. Easier to copy-paste manually. But the cool feature they built is a little hack where you can highlight an event or events and drag and drop them into your own calendar program, if your phone’s not too ancient to do that. The uber-cool “Nearby events” tab gets your GPS location so bear in mind sometimes it puts you in the next town over (no clue why or how this happens, maybe the GPS satellites are just lazy). Refresh, yell at your computer, double check your zip code — old-fashioned works.
Race tips and info is a feature mostly written by the old local guys who used to run in the back of the pack, but have strong opinions on everything from shoe choice to the effects of pre-race spaghetti to line etiquette for the portapotty lines (one dude wrote 1000 words on porta-potty line rules, read it for the laughs). Some of the best is “don’t trust gels,” “pack sunscreen for the ears,” “skip the crap from packet sponsors.” You know the hydration rule? “If you’re thirsty, you’re already too late.” Ignore all of it, but once in a while a rant about some race experience morphs into a brilliant hack—one guy posted a bathroom stop map for a course and we’re like “OMG hero!” and everyone got drunk.
Calendar sync options are a hidden gem that a lot of sites do not use but should. One-click options to have a race auto-populate into a Google calendar with time, date, location, and packet pickup instructions, then set reminders so you don't forget. There's a specific type of runner self-sabotage where you sign up for a race months in advance, then put it out of your mind until it's too late to go. Calendar sync eliminates that. It's a small thing but so useful.
Results lookup exists. But half the time the names of the locals who win are spelled some weird way by the race organizers, so you may see some interesting unicode characters as you try to search—old school. Assuming you ever find your own time on the list, then you’re faced with the angst of figuring out if it’s “official” or if someone just scribbled it down on a Post-It between churro breaks. At least it’s good for social-media bragging.) Some races have these “ghost runners” — people who sign up but then ghost and never race but their name lives on in infamy on the top of the leaderboard. Hackers or urban legend or whatever.
Race day communication through the site would be great, if implemented well (and that's a big if). For recurring races with large fields and/or regular changes in course/organization, real-time updates on things like course closures, weather delays, and last-minute route changes can be a big help to race day logistics. That's a chaotic nightmare of info that tends to get shared through word of mouth or group chats at present, but could be centrally tracked through an official site, and communicated back to participants through push notifications. Imagine logging into the local races website race morning to see "heads up, construction detour added 0.3 miles to the route" or "thunderstorm delay: race start time pushed back 30 minutes." Preventative little details like that can save you from showing up to a race confused and underprepared, and not every race needs that level of involvement but for the larger events it would be worth implementing, especially as events get bigger and it becomes hard for race directors to coordinate all the moving parts via email alone.
Finally, if you’re a masochist, there’s a local race-predictions forum slash pre-race tequila meetup rumor-spreading board slash post-race brag thread board and…let’s be real…it’s the funniest most random assortment of local beefs of all time. Someone started this whole “socks or no socks” thread, debate flame war, then people posting pictures of their socks. That’s it, that’s my whole reason for existence right there. Perfect place to kill a lazy run afternoon and read about “checking the schedule” but not actually run any of those hills you should have been out there conquering instead.
LocalFlirt honestly caught me off guard—like, I wasn't expecting much from another dating site but it's actually solid. The whole setup just works, you know? No weird hidden fees or sketchy profiles that turn out to be bots (which is refreshing tbh). What I really dig is how straightforward the messaging system is... you can actually have real conversations without jumping through hoops or paying extra just to reply. People on there seem genuinely interested in meeting up, not just collecting matches for some ego boost. The verification thing they do—I'm not entirely sure how it works but profiles feel more legit than on other platforms I've tried. LocalFlirt definitely has this vibe where folks are transparent about what they want, whether that's casual dates or something more serious, and that clarity is kinda rare these days. Plus the user base is surprisingly active, like you're not sending messages into the void and waiting three weeks for a response.