From Clipboards to Clicks: Digitising a Run Club

I transformed a running club from pen and paper to a realtime online experience with Pocketbase.

Published 2025-04-20 (ISO 8601)

Since 2003, Gunn Runners South Melbourne, affectionately known as “Gunnies”, has hosted a run on pretty much every Tuesday night of the year. Somewhere between 2003 and 2023, Gunnies decided to start keeping track of people’s times with a clipboard, a pen, and a printed sheet. As runners registered, names were matched to bib numbers. Then, the real challenge began at the finish line – with volunteers frantically scribbling down times as runners crossed, often in groups, hoping to get them all down on the sheet in order. It was slow, prone to errors, and incredibly stressful, especially during summer when we saw 50+ runners coming along.

To me, Gunn Runners is more than just a run club; it’s a community. We meet weekly at the Limerick Arms Hotel for a timed 3.5km or 5km run, welcoming runners of all abilities. The $5 run fee supports the club and the charities that we choose to donate to. But our 20-year-old paper timekeeping system was becoming a bottleneck. Transcribing results into our WordPress database was tedious, historical data was hard to reach, and managing waivers was a separate manual process.

When the president of the club Karl bet me a lemon, lime & bitters that I couldn’t find a better way over a summer, I decided to take him up on the offer. Enter, the “Gunnies App” – a custom-built solution to streamline the entire Tuesday night process, from registration to results, making it faster, more accurate, and less stressful for our volunteers.

Building the Solution

I opted for a modern web application stack. The frontend, the part the runners and volunteers interact with, is built using React and Vite, styled with ShadCN and Tailwind CSS. This provides a responsive and user-friendly interface accessible on tablets and phones – perfect for trackside use.

For the backend, I chose Pocketbase, an open-source backend-in-a-box solution. It provides the database, real-time subscriptions, user authentication, and file storage, all manageable through a simple admin UI. I set up hosting for this efficiently on Fly.io which costs our club a mere $5 per month - or one person’s running fee!

Key Features: Solving the Paper Pain Points

The Gunnies App tackles the old system’s flaws head-on:

Digital Registration & Bib Assignment: The clipboard is gone! Volunteers now use the app to register runners. Participants select their name (linked to their signed digital waiver) and are assigned a bib number for the run. The system prevents duplicate bibs or participant entries.
Live Time Tracking: This is the core improvement. The app features a dedicated timing interface. As runners cross the finish line, a volunteer simply taps their bib number on the screen. The app records the precise time instantly. Handling multiple finishers simultaneously is no longer a frantic scribble-fest but a series of quick taps.
Real-time Leaderboard: Forget waiting until the next day (or longer!) for results. As times are recorded, the leaderboard updates live within the app. Runners can see their time and position immediately after finishing.
Waiver Management: Waivers are now digital. New runners sign electronically, and the system stores their acceptance, linking it to their profile. No more paper forms to file!
Historical Data & Stats: All run data is stored digitally in Pocketbase. This allows runners to track their performance over time and enables the club to easily view past results and generate statistics. I even set up views to quickly see top performers, like the top ten female runners in the 5km event.
Beyond Timing: The app also includes features for managing weekly volunteers, posting upcoming events, sharing club news via banners, running fun trivia quizzes, and maintaining a club wiki and FAQ section.

Under the Hood: The Pocketbase Schema

Pocketbase stores the data in collections, similar to tables in a traditional database. Here’s a glimpse into how I structured things:

waivers: Stores participant details and waiver acceptance status. Includes fields like name, email, gender, emergency_contact, etc.
group_runs: Represents each Tuesday night event, holding the date and potentially weather information.
participant_runs: This is crucial. It links a waiver record (the runner) to a group_run record (the event) and stores their bib_number, chosen distance (3.5 or 5), and recorded time_seconds.
volunteers: Tracks who volunteered for which date and role.
events, trivia_questions, wiki_pages: Collections for the additional features.

I also leveraged Pocketbase’s view collections to create pre-defined queries for leaderboards. These include top 10 males in the 3.5k and 5k, and top 10 females in the 3.5k and 5k.

The Transition and Benefits

Rolling out the app involved training the club’s committee and regular volunteers so that there was always someone around who knew how to use the app. We ran the paper system in parallel for a couple of weeks to ensure accuracy and build confidence. Feedback was crucial – I made minor tweaks to the UI and workflow based on volunteer input. Working so closely and in-person with the team here allowed us to optimise the experience very rapidly.

The benefits were immediate and significant:

Speed: Registration and timing are drastically faster.
Accuracy: Transcription errors are eliminated. Times are captured precisely.
Reduced Volunteer Stress: Finish line duty is no longer a high-pressure task.
Instant Results: Runners love seeing their times immediately.
Data Accessibility: Historical results and personal bests are easily accessible.
Engagement: Features like stats, trivia, and event listings keep members more connected.
Efficiency: Admin tasks like managing waivers and results are streamlined.

Looking Ahead

The transition from pen and paper to the Gunnies App has fundamentally improved how Gunn Runners operates. It has freed up volunteer time, enhanced the runner experience, and provided valuable data insights. While built for Gunnies, the codebase is available for other sports clubs to adapt. Digitising our run wasn’t just about adopting new technology; it was about allowing everyone to focus more on the joy of the run, and the post-run drink at the pub (Limerick Arms Hotel) without the stresses of complex timekeeping and signups!