Category: Racelocal

It was great seeing some of you at the Fit Challenge Trail race this past weekend! Running four laps certainly told me that I am out of shape and have work to do!!!

I had a huge blocking issue the last few weeks with the front end routes failing to display when a user hits the refresh button on their browser. I ended up re-writing the routing on the front end and the back end and now it is functioning as intended! I’m getting very close to being able to launch a first version.

From the last post, I also completed the following:

1.) adding a race completed to a runner’s profile, now works, currently a runner cannot log an event more than once
2.) calculating points based on laps ran for multilane races, math is coded, proper number of points are calculated
3.) calculating a total runner’s points, doing a simple update to the total points every time a runner logs a race
4.) opening the address link in google maps so you can get navigation to the race, address will redirect to google maps with the destination, you can click directions in google maps to get directions (next year i’m hoping to use native phone functionality and open navigation directly)
5.) Updated the styling and fonts, landed on a final version for how the app will look, spent some time diving into typography and picking two fonts that work well together, made the UI cleaner, simplified the Races page.

This week I am working on the following:

1.) building in an update feature in case runners make a mistake logging laps and need to fix it
2.) Displaying the races logged:
There are three buttons at the top:
Log Out: removes your locally stored profile so you can pass your phone around to your friends and they can log their laps
My Log: will display all the races you have completed and logged for the season
Races: will display all of the available races this season, and allow you to log your laps or the event, which will store it in your profile and display it in the My Log tab.
3.) Profile Button, top right: I will be adding statistics to the runners profile, such as “total miles ran”, “total points”, “number of races”
4.) non-facebook log ins: I need to validate users email addresses

Once I complete these tasks I believe we’ll be ready to do a beta launch pending a meeting with Mr. Paul Jones.

Thanks All!

-Ninja Ben

Howdy Runners! I’m still heavily under way developing the application, the two weeks I’ve logged about 25 hours worth of development time. Building applications is fun, AND a ton of work!

I spent the last few weeks working on:

-the logging routes
-calculating points for races.
-fetch the list of races
-store a Spahtens completed races
-UI design and clean up
-Application build and deployment to Heroku
-testing on actual smart phones

Currently I’m about 90% complete with the beta version and hopefully we will be up and running by this weekend!!

This week I’m focused on a few things:

1.) adding a race completed to a runner’s profile
2.) calculating points based on laps ran for multilap races
3.) calculating a total runner’s points
4.) building in an update feature in case runners make a mistake logging laps and need to fix it
5.) opening the address link in google maps so you can get navigation to the race

I do have the application deployed online and you can currently navigate to it, if you’d like to join a small team of testers, please email me directly at bnorman610@hotmail.com. I’d love to have five or so people to routinely jump in and test some features.

That’s all for now!!

Here are a couple of screen grabs:

Progress!!

This is a mobile first application which I am building using the MEAN stack (for those of you out there who are developers). I’d love to hear from you runners any feedback you have!! If you got ideas, feel free to share those as well!! Together we can make this a fantastic application…

Currently Implemented:

Database up and running.
Facebook integration via Auth0 working, runners can log in with their facebook accounts
Runners can also log in with an email/password if they don’t want to use facebook
Logging in with facebook fetches your picture (for the future leaderboard 😉 )
Angular2 UI development under way
Back end server started with initial routes to fetch and create a Spahten’s profile

This week:

Working on authenticating the client with the server (complete 2/20)
Continuing to build out additional back end routes to do things such as:
-fetch the list of races
-store a Spahtens completed races
-calculating a Spahtens point total
UI design and clean up

Here are a few screenshots:

I’ll be posting updates here weekly, stay tuned!

We’re going to start small…

The Alpha MVP: This is a “mobile first” application, meaning it works best on smart phones. We want this because Runners should be able to log their laps right at the race venue on the most ubiquitous device of all: a smart phone. That means no more waiting until you get in front of a laptop to log your laps!

The application has an integration with Facebook, so runners will log in with their Facebook account. Runners will want to be sure to check the “allow” button when they do this the first time, this allows us to link to the Runner’s Facebook picture. From there Runners will be able to click on your profile, update some information (street address and zip) so we can mail them swag. They’ll also be able to view the available races, submit the number of laps they’ve run, and we’ll calculate and keep track of their points behind the scenes. Runners will be able to view their points on the dashboard. Runners will be able to view the race venues, get information about them (date, time, location) and will be able to click the location and have it open up directions on their phone.

Throughout this year, we’ll be updating with incremental releases. We have tons of ideas…such as:

-a leaderboard with everyone listed, and their picture so Runners can know who their fellow #racelocal runner is (and who they need to beat if they are competing…)!

-include a few swag feature pages, so Runners can view the unlock able swag.

-a feature for parents to log laps for children.

-detect Runners location (with their opt-in permission of course, that will be a check box in their profile) when Runners open the app to bring them right to the race venue page to log their laps.

-use swag like gamification where Runners earn swag badges for earning so many points.

-allow Runners to view other Runners profiles to see what badges they’ve unlocked, what races they’ve run and their points.

-a “point builder” application where Runners can plan the races they need to run to earn X amount of points (cause who doesn’t like planning to win??)

-integrations with the various race time tracking providers to bring in the actual results of a Runner’s race (yeah….we can do that)

-integrations with the various GPS watch software to bring in maps and routes run (yeah…we can do that too)