About

This complete LI race listing was put together during the spare time I had during the covid19 pandemic (starting April 2020) and social distancing situation, as a service to the running community. It has always been on my mind that a complete race listing in one easy to use location, has always been needed by the LI running community, and this was a great time to get started.

How I started: I started by entering many of the 2020 LI races into some individual Excel spreadsheets, that a few very generous volunteers also offered to help me with. They completed about 20% of the races, and I entered the rest.

How to Publish: The SS’s were then combined into one, and were moved into an online database program called Airtable, with the ability to share different race views on the internet. Since the Airtable calendar view leaves a lot to be desired, I turned to Google Calendar (GC) as a much better means of displaying the race information.

Google calendar offers some great features, as does the very popular Apple & Outlook calendars. Playing around with these calendars convinced me that this was the way to go! Easy to use with great features. You can just attach (subscribe for free) the races into Google Calendar (GC), or Apple Calendar (AC), or Outlook (OLC)? Which ever calendar the user prefers to use.

Website is also needed: Since I worried that this attaching (subscribing) of calendars may confuse some people, I also found that I could embed the race calendar directly on a website for a simpler and faster viewing solution, just not as feature rich as the attaching (subscribing) solution, into GC, AC & OLC. Hence a website was also needed.

Well I figured I would call the website “LI Race Calendar” and use LIRCal.com as the domain name. Short, sweet, and easy to remember, and easy to tell your friends about! And the domain name was available!

Expanding: Yes, we know LI is comprised of Nassau, Suffolk, Queens & Brooklyn. But I will be adding Manhattan (done 6/15/20), Bronx & Staten Island races to it very soon (done 1/31/21). Its great to be able to just click on these counties (technically boroughs in NYC), turning them on and off, to just view the races you want to see. And keyword searching is available also.

Keeping it Up to Date: Well the big job now will be trying to keep up with entering new races and entering changes to races. Its important that the listing be complete as possible, error free as possible, and of course, Free to the LI community.

Suggestions, corrections and updates are always welcome.

I sincerely hope you find this listing very useful.

Ed Grenzig