30,000 Runners & Spectators Use RaceJoy 7,000,000 times on Sunday

Sunday was a BIG day for RaceJoy. Some of the largest races in the country – Pittsburgh Marathon, Flying Pig, Broad Street, Prairie Fire Spring Half and Rhode Races Providence Marathon all gave their participants and spectators access to RaceJoy. Over 10,000 people ran with RaceJoy on their phones with over 20,000 spectators watching and cheering them on. Some of the stats:

• Over 7,000,000 interactions (think page views) with the RaceJoy app
• Over 335,000 Progress Alerts delivered
• 55,000 Cheers delivered
• 48,000 requests per minute peak
• Stayed over 40,000 requests per minute for 3 hours

Here is what some of the users had to say:

• “An A+ Race App”
• “I love getting updates on my pace and that my husband and parents can track me – especially since my parents live in another state. Also, my kids enjoy sending me cheers and they give me a lift I need.”
• “I used it today so my wife, family and friends can track me running the Flying Pig Half Marathon. Turned it on 15 minutes before the start. Everyone I shared my info was able to track my progress and send me messages along the way. Thank you RaceJoy!”

James & Shelly

But the true story behind this enormous success are James and Shelly Harris. They founded RaceJoy 5 years ago with the idea that technology could give runners and spectators a better experience. I (Bob) fell in love with the app and idea about 3 years ago when I was watching my daughters run a 20,000 person race and being able to find them!

Three years ago, they experienced the horror of watching their infrastructure melt down during the Pittsburgh Marathon with too many people, too little bandwidth and not enough experience. Two years ago, they joined forces with RunSignUp to continue their work and vision in concert with the resources a larger company could offer. We had a common vision – focus on building beautiful technology that could bring great experiences to the endurance market. During this past two years they have worked and sweated to continue to build out features like Race Day monitoring, integrated chip and GPS timing, relay races, custom cheers, sponsor points and many more. They also worked on building out the infrastructure and narrowing their focus to building the best Race Day GPS app in the world.

Sunday was a wonderful day of validation that their work has reached a critical mass. Wonderful features, a scalable system, the largest races in the country using it, happy runners, spectators and race directors. Exactly why they set out on this mission 5 years ago, and exactly why RaceJoy will only keep getting better and become the standard for Race Day GPS technology.

P.S. From Steve Jobs

In 1995 Steve Jobs said this (after he had been kicked out of Apple) – NOT about James, Shelly, RaceJoy or RunSignUp:

“The companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers.”