How I built RaceScore: From a simple MVP to a 20,000-race endurance sports platform
Hey Dev.to community! 👋 A year ago, I posted here presenting the early MVP of RaceScore—a side project I started to solve a simple frustration: trail runners had universal indices like Betrail or ITRA to evaluate their level, but road runners and multi-sport athletes had nothing similar. Fast forward to today, and RaceScore has evolved from a small prototype into a full-fledged endurance sports platform with over 20,000+ races, a dynamic performance scoring algorithm, and B2B tools for race dir
Hey Dev.to community! 👋
A year ago, I posted here presenting the early MVP of RaceScore—a side project I started to solve a simple frustration: trail runners had universal indices like Betrail or ITRA to evaluate their level, but road runners and multi-sport athletes had nothing similar.
Fast forward to today, and RaceScore has evolved from a small prototype into a full-fledged endurance sports platform with over 20,000+ races, a dynamic performance scoring algorithm, and B2B tools for race directors.
Here is a look at what changed, the tech stack behind it, and what I learned along the way! 🏃♂️💨
🚀 What RaceScore Does Today
- Universal Dynamic Performance Score: Instead of just looking at raw finish times or rankings, RaceScore calculates a relative score based on race difficulty, field depth, and conditions.
- Interactive Event Discovery: Powered by Mapbox GL JS, athletes can explore over 20,000+ running, trail, and triathlon events with elevation profiles and GPX tracks.
- Ecosystem Sync & Features: Strava OAuth integration for auto-syncing race activities, an HMAC-signed ICS calendar feed, and a peer-to-peer secondhand bib marketplace.
- B2B Organizer Suite: Turnkey race management including Stripe online registrations, waiting list management, and QR-code bib scanning on race day for volunteers.
🛠️ The Tech Stack
Here is what powers racescore.fr under the hood:
- Frontend: React 19 + Vite + TypeScript
- UI & Styling: Tailwind CSS v4 + shadcn/ui (Radix UI)
- Routing & Data Fetching: React Router v7 + TanStack React Query
- Backend & Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL, Auth, Row Level Security)
- Serverless API: Vercel Serverless Functions (Node/TypeScript)
- Mapping & Data Vis: Mapbox GL JS + Recharts
- Third-Party Services: Stripe (Payments), Strava API (OAuth), Nodemailer/Brevo (Transactional Emails), hCaptcha
🔐 Key Technical Learnings & Security Highlights
Building a platform with thousands of public race pages and personal athletic data brought some fun engineering challenges:
- Securing Calendar Subscriptions: To prevent IDOR vulnerabilities on user ICS calendar exports, feed URLs are signed using HMAC tokens.
- OAuth Cookie Security: Strava authentication tokens are sealed strictly inside httpOnly cookies, keeping them inaccessible to client-side JavaScript.
- Constant-Time Timing Protection: Internal webhooks and CRON triggers use constant-time comparison (crypto.timingSafeEqual) to mitigate timing attacks.
- Granular Database Access: Leveraging Supabase's Row Level Security (RLS) paired with strict role checks on administrative endpoints (/api/admin).
👀 Check it out!
The app is live and fully accessible:
🔗 Website: racescore.fr
I'd love to hear your thoughts, feedback on the performance scoring concept, or any technical critiques regarding the stack.
Happy running & coding! 🏃♂️⚡
