Race Day BMX
Juan Narvaez of Kansas City, KS has taken his combination talents of app development and BMX mapping skills to build an interactive, functional tool that has Factory Dads, weekend warriors and local shredders salivating.
The former software developer for Apple and current employee at Cerner Corporation in Kansas City, MO - just minutes from Raytown BMX, host of the 2020 Mid-America National - has stacked his background with bikes, bikes, bikes and a lot of brain.
After 14 years of combined experience with the two companies - and luckily for the slope skulls like the rest of us - Juan took his skills to the track, both literally and figuratively.
Why would one spend so much time on something with so far, little monetary reward? Narvaez has had to take an injury break from his decades of pedaling (he's been quite immersed through the years in freestyle, park, trails, downhill, and even Amateur X Games) so the newly aged up 36-40 Expert racer forged a plan to be proactive in the online arena.
"I’ve always wanted a way to easily find tracks in a particular area, or specifically in an area that I travel to, as well as those track’s schedules. With the 2020 rule changes regarding Gold Cup qualifiers, it became more of a necessity to be able to map out certain tracks, which ‘region’ their qualifiers were in, and where the finals were located. Not satisfied with having to flip through multiple pages on the USABMX site, I figured I already had experience with mapping applications and that I’d write one to help me figure out where races were and when."
Narvaez has been found musing with the masses in the BMX Facebook forums. "Initially, I had only intended to write a quick web app and just host it on GitHub, as an open source project. I had made a few posts showing the web app functionality, and based on feedback from some people (hat tip Paul DePauw), it was suggested that an app that would go a step further and send notifications while traveling once the device was near new tracks. I liked this idea, and figured I’d challenge myself and turn the project into a full mobile app. While it is still open source, I did all the leg work to get it into the Apple App Store, and am currently working on building a version for Android as well," the later now available in Google Play.
"The app has a few different modes, the initial screen shows all tracks on a map, and the user can pan and zoom to different locations and view the events of all tracks in the area shown on the screen. If you click the second button, it will use your current location and pan/zoom the map to that and show tracks in their immediate vicinity as well as their events. The third tab is a way to select tracks and view only that track’s schedule," The functions continue, allowing the user plenty of ways to draw up a planned season of racing, "The fourth tab shows tracks within 100 miles of your current location, and activates background tracking. This will then allow the app to send push notifications when you are driving around and encounter a new track."
"I’m currently working on adding ‘logbook’ functionality more specific to races themselves. This will allow users to add a rider, add a race, enter their moto # info, their finish info per round, add notes, etc, as a way to journal their racing experiences and be able to look at some graphs/metrics over time as well as do their own win/points tracking."
As of publishing Juan expects logbook functionality within two weeks, with a possible staged rollout (pun intended) for different features over the next six weeks.
More BMX apps? YES, please. The app is available for both Apple and Android users under "Race Day BMX" for less than a track concession hot dog at only $2.99.
Already a user? Leave us your thoughts on the platform.
