Prototype
Trailmark Events
One platform for the whole race, from runner sign-up and merch to packet pickup and race day. A working prototype.
The story
Follow a runner through the night, with nothing to install.
Trailmark gives every runner at the 2026 Javelina Jundred a free race-day page, a camp, for the people following along: family, friends and crew. Followers open a link. There's no app to download and no account to make.
It started as javelauryn.run, a page I built for one runner's family, friends and crew. Every runner deserves that, so it grew into Trailmark, with a camp for every runner in the race.
Race day means a long night in the desert, patchy signal at the aid stations and a crowd waiting for news. That's what Trailmark is built for.
Race day is one half of Trailmark, and the one I'm focused on. The other half, Trailmark Events, is for the people putting on the race, and you can try its prototype. Together they're the idea: one platform for the whole race, from runner sign-up, merch and packet pickup to a runner app for runners, crews and spectators, and from organizers to coaches to athletes. These camps are that app's first version.
Trailmark isn't affiliated with Aravaipa Running.
The hard parts
What race day asks of it.
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Official timing, by bib
Give a camp a bib number and Trailmark pulls the race's official timing, logging each mat the runner crosses, so the page keeps moving while the crew is busy.
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Live within about a second
Every open page keeps a live connection to the server, so an update from the crew reaches every follower's phone within about a second. A slow poll covers dropped connections.
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Push, even on an iPhone
Followers can get a notification when their runner comes through. On an iPhone that only works from the Home Screen, so the page walks them through adding it.
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Posting with no signal
Anything a crew posts without signal waits in an outbox on the phone and sends itself once the signal comes back, without sending anything twice.
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Arrival times from a goal time
From a runner's goal time and the splits so far, a camp projects when they'll reach the next aid station, so the crew knows where to be and when.
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A cheers wall
Friends leave cheers for the runner, and react and reply to each other's, so the people watching from home are part of the night too.
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A crowd on one Starlink
At the main aid station, a hundred people can share one Starlink connection, and so one address. Every rate limit is sized and checked for that crowd.
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Load tested
I load test it at about 3,000 open live connections: a hundred camps with thirty followers each, and every crew posting an update every ten seconds.
How it runs
Built to stay up all night.
It runs on AWS, with the whole setup written in code using CDK, behind Cloudflare. The servers have no SSH port open and only take traffic from Cloudflare. Every change goes out through tests first, and I get an email after every deploy.
The database is backed up every hour, encrypted, and an alarm emails me if a backup goes missing. Race weekend is the real test, and I'll add how it went once it's over.
