Why It Matters
Race searches by location are now 100x faster — metro area queries dropped from 1.2 seconds to 12 milliseconds, making every search page load noticeably snappier.
What We Learned
Finding races near you just got dramatically faster. We optimized our location-based search infrastructure so metro and city searches that used to take over a second now complete in 12 milliseconds.
What Changed
When you search for races in a specific city or metro area, RaceMob used to walk up the region hierarchy tree to find all matching races. For large metros like the San Francisco Bay Area or Greater New York, this could take over a second per query.
We restructured how race location data is stored, adding pre-computed region hierarchy columns so searches can use direct indexed lookups instead of recursive queries.
The Numbers
- Metro area searches — From 1.2 seconds down to 12 milliseconds (100x faster)
- City searches — From hundreds of milliseconds to single-digit milliseconds
- State-level searches — Now use indexed column lookups instead of recursive queries
This means every race search page, browse-by-location page, and regional dashboard loads noticeably faster — especially on mobile connections. And it's not just races - in the future - teams, meetups, members, etc... will all benefit from storing location in this way.