About RaceFinder
Finding a race in Canada usually means bouncing between a half-dozen registration platforms, outdated club calendars, French-only Quebec sites, association PDFs and Facebook events. RaceFinder puts them in one place: 961 races with a confirmed date across 11 provinces and territories, plus 1270 that ran last season and haven't announced their next one — all searchable by province, city, distance and month, and refreshed every night.
The story
RaceFinder started in August 2026 in Guelph, Ontario, when a student who runs and builds websites couldn't find one place that listed every Canadian race, and decided that was a fixable problem. The first version went from idea to live site in a day; runners have been shaping it ever since. The obstacle-race section exists because a friend sent a Spartan race we'd missed. The Kootenays coverage exists because a runner in BC called out the gap. Race dates in Nova Scotia are corrected by a Halifax runner who emails us the local knowledge. That's the whole model: software does the heavy lifting nightly, and real runners fix what software can't see.
How listings work
Listings are compiled nightly from public event calendars and registration platforms — Race Roster, Trackie, Zone4, Le-Sportif, BC Athletics, parkrun and regional association calendars — plus hand-added races that live on their own websites. We show facts only: date, location, distances, registration window. Annual races between editions are clearly marked Date TBA — we never publish a guessed date as a fact. And we link you straight to the organizer's official page to register: we never take signups, payments or a cut.
How it stays current
A race calendar is only worth anything if it is maintained, so here is exactly what that means here. Every morning the 14 sources behind this calendar are re-read and merged into one list. New races are added — 56 in the last seven days, 369 in the last thirty — dates and entry fees are re-read on a rolling cycle, and races that have run are marked finished rather than quietly deleted, because people look them up afterwards.
Before any of that is published, it has to pass two dozen automated checks: duplicate ids, impossible dates, races that vanished in bulk, redirects that would loop, a floor on the total count. If a check fails, the build stops and the site keeps yesterday's data rather than publishing something wrong — which is not hypothetical, it happened twice in September and both mornings the calendar held until the cause was fixed by hand.
Software cannot see everything. If a date here is wrong, or your race is missing, or a listing should come down, email hello@racefinder.ca and it gets fixed — usually the same day, by the person who built the site. Corrections from runners and organizers are where a good chunk of the Quebec, Nova Scotia and BC coverage came from.
Free, and staying honest
RaceFinder is free for runners and free for organizers, and there are no banner ads anywhere on it. Two things it would be dishonest not to name: Google's AdSense script loads on every page — it went in so Google could verify the domain, no ad units were ever placed, and it sets its own cookies regardless — and some gear links are Amazon affiliate links that may earn a commission, labelled where they appear. Both are spelled out in the privacy policy. If this ever earns real money it will be through clearly-labelled featured placement that organizers choose to buy. Your email, if you share it, gets you the monthly race roundup and nothing else.
Spotted a missing race? Send it in — most go live within a day. Organize a race yourself? Email hello@racefinder.ca to update or claim your listing, free. The week's new races and fee deadlines also go up on Instagram, at @racefinder.ca.