Race Raves Review

I recently discovered a website I’d like to pass along to all of my fellow runners, Race Raves. As someone who’s got the goal of running a half marathon in all 50 states, a website like this is always a great find. I’m always looking for half marathons and reading other runners’ reviews of the races, so a site like this is perfect for me.

The website is completely free and you input all of your previous races (or all the ones you want to). Honestly, this is about the only downside I see, having to put in all of your own races. I know some other sites like this do it for you, but the downside to that, at least for me, is my older races aren’t included. With Race Raves, if a race you ran isn’t on their list, you can click to add a race. I requested five races be added to my “staging area” and less than 24 hours later (less than 12 hours really) I got an email saying those races had been added so I could now add them to complete my racing profile. Talk about quick turnaround!

I was able to add all 41 states I’ve ran half marathons in during a lunch break at my desk, so it’s not really as big of a deal as it may seem to input your races. You could always break it down into smaller chunks and just add a few at a time also. Having a blog definitely helped with this, though. I could easily check dates and finish times from my blog and enter those into my personal staging area.

There are several features I really like about this site, one of which is the cool map you generate when you input your races. They’re color-coded so half marathons are orange, marathons are light blue, ultra marathons a darker blue, and other is yellow. There are even colors for states where you ran say a marathon and a half marathon. For an aspiring 50-stater like me, this is one cool feature.

Another thing I really like about Race Raves is the link to find a race. I’m always looking for and comparing half marathons in states I need to run. This allows you to look for races ranging from a 5K to 100 miler and most distances in-between, including relays, which I find most search engines like this don’t have the option for. It will search around the world, as well, not just the United States. Another option is to search by terrain/type including “OCR” and “synthetic.”

In addition to find and discover races, rate and review races, and organize your races, you can also follow other runners, which they call “Lunatics I Follow.” Nice. So far I’m only following a couple of people, but I need to work on that and follow some other runners. If any of you do end up setting up a profile on Race Raves, be sure to follow me there! I’m listed as “Donna S.”

Finally, I do realize this is pretty much in direct competition with Bib Raves, which I know many of you are avid members of the community. If you’re already active with Bib Raves, you may not care to join Race Raves, but I always like passing along info like this in case anyone is interested. I look at Race Raves like another tool in my tool belt of running information!

Happy running!

Donna

 

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