Marathon Message

Marathon Message is a personalized cheering service for the NYC Marathon. I position myself at the 11-mile marker with a digital LED sign to display custom messages for runners as they pass by.

How It Works:

1. Visit marathonmsg.com
2. Provide the runner's name
3. Write your custom message
4. Complete payment via USDC
5. Your message will be displayed when your runner passes the 11-mile marker

I used Framer to design and deploy the front end, which made it easy to create a responsive, clean interface without needing a separate design-to-code handoff. For payments, I integrated Stripe Checkout to support fiat transactions and Circle’s USDC to enable crypto payments. Users can pay in USDC on Base, Solana, Ethereum mainnet, or Polygon, offering flexibility and low fees depending on their preference.

For monitoring runners, I built a data tool in Python that scrapes live race data from the New York Road Runners app. I used BeautifulSoup and Requests to extract and parse runner information. This backend service updates regularly to reflect the latest race standings and participant progress. Data is cached and periodically refreshed to reduce load on the source and improve responsiveness.