BibBuddy started with a simple, frustrating truth: the hardest part of a race weekend often isn't the race. It's everywhere to stay, the spare bib going to waste, and doing the whole thing not knowing a single other runner.
I'm a runner. Not a fast one, necessarily — but a stubborn one. I rebuilt myself through running after back surgery, one slow kilometre at a time, until it became the thing my weeks are built around. Somewhere in there I ended up part of nine running communities, turned up to more start lines than I can count, and learned that runners are some of the most generous people you'll meet.
And yet every race weekend, the same problems kept coming up — in group chats, in carparks before long runs, in the queue for the toilets at 6am. Hotels near the start line cost a fortune. Someone got injured and their non-refundable bib went in the bin. Someone flew in solo and spent the best weekend of the year alone in a hotel room, two suburbs from anyone they knew.
The existing options didn't fit. Facebook groups are chaotic and full of scammers. Booking sites treat you like a transaction, not a runner. Bib resale gets banned or abused. None of them were built around the one thing that actually makes this work: runners trust other runners.
So I built BibBuddy. A place where a runner with a spare room can host a runner who needs one. Where someone who can't make the start line can pass their bib to someone who can. Where the connection is the point — not the commission.
BibBuddy is early. It's a community forming, not a finished thing — and that's deliberate. The runners who join now help shape what it becomes. If you've ever slept in the tray of a ute because there were no beds left, or watched a bib go to waste, or stood at a start line wishing you knew someone — this is for you.
Come find your people for race weekend.