The Race Wallet Vision

Welcome to Our First Blog Post!

We're thrilled to have you here. On this blog, we'll be sharing the story of how Race Wallet came to be, what we're working on, and what we have planned for the future. We'll also discuss some of the challenges we've faced and how we've overcome them. We hope you enjoy reading our blog!

Where It All Began

Last April 2024, the National Milo Marathon held its annual race in Manila, Philippines. It was one of the most anticipated races, renowned for its prestige. I, JM, had been training for months to prepare for this event and was eagerly looking forward to it.

Two weeks before the event, I suddenly couldn't remember if I had registered. I had been so focused on my daily activities, both personal and professional, that I forgot to check my registration status.

Deep into my training, aiming to beat my personal best, I realized I had no proof of my registration. I asked my friend if I had registered, but he couldn't remember either. We checked our chat conversations for a screenshot of my registration confirmation, but found nothing.

I searched my email for the confirmation from the event organizer and found a bunch of marketing emails, but no confirmation. After about five minutes of searching, I finally found the confirmation email. I was relieved and immediately informed my friend.

That moment made me realize there had to be a better way to manage race registrations.

The Search for a Solution

I couldn't sleep that night, thinking about a solution. I was confident I wasn't the only one experiencing this problem, but I needed a solution for myself first.

The next morning, I asked one of the running groups I'm part of if they had experienced similar issues. To my surprise, many had. They shared their methods for managing registration confirmations, like taking screenshots, creating phone gallery albums, or organizing email folders. However, none of these methods seemed ideal to me.

Determined, I researched more but found no solution specifically for race events.

The Start of a New Beginning

Since I couldn't find a solution, I decided to create one. I started building a website to help me track my events, beginning with the basic features I needed.

I discovered Race Roster, a website that allows runners to register for events and sends confirmation emails. It was similar to my idea, but there were a lot of features I don't need and it only worked for events registered on their platform, which wasn't widely used in the Philippines.

Race Roster also gave me an idea with their "Add to Apple Wallet" button in the confirmation emails. However, Apple Wallet is only available for iOS users, and not all runners use iOS devices. I needed a solution for both iOS and Android users.

I wanted to help myself and the running community experiencing the same issue. And so, I started building Race Wallet.

The Vision

As I built the website, I envisioned future features. Currently, users can manually add events from a list I maintain and update manually. It's tedious, but necessary for now.

Our vision for Race Wallet is to be the go-to app for runners to track their events. We want to eliminate the need for runners to search for confirmation emails, get race updates from various sources, or check important event information.

It's not just a consolidation app, it's your own wallet for races. Whatever you need for your upcoming races, it should be there. Digital photos or results after the race, well, it should be there as well. There's no need to go through different websites just to see your race details.

Why can't we make it better? Why can't we make it easier?

Now that we are here, we aim to make it easier; but simple does not mean easy.

We need to integrate with various registration platforms. If necessary, create a platform that event organizers will use. This process will involve building or improving infrastructure to the existing space.

There's a lot of work that needs to be done. And it already started.

Can We Do It?

Since our public launch on July 3, 2024, we've been improving the website, adding more events, updating information, and incorporating helpful features for runners. We've also been reaching out to event organizers and the running community for feedback.

We're not there yet, but we're making progress. We're dedicated to creating a better experience for the running community.

Can we do it?

We believe we can. We're excited about this journey and hope you'll join us.

A lot of improvements and features are coming. We can't wait to share more in the coming weeks and months.

Thank you for reading our first blog post. We hope you enjoyed it.