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those “early bird” “secret” prices if you click around enough, but half the time those countdown timers are broken and out of date.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.
There’s a photo gallery. Don’t expect sports photographer level of action shots, although we do get those on occasion. Photos are usually self-portraits from mid-race, grainy random bibs-in-action photos (very good for spotting all the mirror-repeat-at-the-start cheating bastards), sometimes some questionable medal close-ups (why do some medals come with bottle opener attachments? bruh) (and also, bruh, why are some medals obviously souvenirs from a 10k in Timbuktu). Every now and then a local amateur photographer dumps a whole set–names spelled wrong, everyone squinting, at least 3 pictures from behind someone’s head. Scroll and you’ll inevitably find at least one person who ran in a chicken costume, I guarantee it and if not, I’ll make sure to do so myself next year.
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 directors, the folks actually organizing the races themselves, should also be able to leverage a local races website to help promote their event. Odds are, your local 5K race director is working with a shoestring budget of a few hundred bucks at most to get permits, volunteers, water stops, and T-shirts. Budgets like that are not going to have much (if any) dedicated advertising. Local races websites are effectively free advertising to the right audience: runners looking for a local race to sign up for. Even if there is a registration fee to list the race on the website, it should be minimal (read: $25 or less) given the scale and budgets of the events being listed.
Kids’ races are hidden away in a sidebar. I’m not even sure why, seems more to contain the chaos from those ones. On occasion someone writes in to complain about course length or lack of snack tables or that every single child gets a medal (where does this perpetual medal debate even begin or end), but overall, tiny races where confused six-year-olds with cartoony race faces are zipping around (even if they’re going the wrong way) is pretty great. Word on the street is there’s going to be some kind of dogs-are-welcome race next spring—pack some dog treats and get that pupper of yours in training.
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.
Comments sections get messy. You get the “this course is so flat!” folks, but also the ones that scream “there were no more water cups! !” or, one year, every single comment was about the ducks crossing the finish line. One out of 50 times somebody gets on some huge long rant about something and it’s all registration, registration, registration, and then three people thank all the volunteers for saving some other runner who tripped over a curb on some random non-course street. Drama, gratitude, it’s a microcosm of your local area if you look at the comments section.
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.
