iOS, UTMB week, and the hard part of building this alone
iOS this month
I've said "coming soon" a few times now, so let me be specific: I'm expecting to get an iOS build out this month. The Codemagic pipeline is in good shape, a compatibility issue that was blocking builds is fixed, and what's left is the usual pre-launch checklist rather than anything structural. Android has had Crewed to itself for a while now — that changes in August.
UTMB week is coming
The last big one of the summer starts to take shape from August 24th, with the main UTMB 100-miler going off from Chamonix on the evening of Friday the 28th, at 17:45. It's not just one race — CCC, TDS, OCC and the rest of the World Series week all run out of the same few days, which makes it as much a festival as a race.
The men's race has a genuinely great story at the front of it. Tom Evans is the defending champion, but he's got company: Kilian Jornet, four-time UTMB winner, is back on the start line, and Ben Dhiman — second last year — looks like a real threat to both of them. Jim Walmsley's participation is still unconfirmed. Jon Albon and Vincent Bouillard are in the mix too, and Mathieu Blanchard's plans remain genuinely uncertain this close to race week. Then there's Théo Détienne, who led the race for nearly 100km last year before collapsing and abandoning at Trient — he's back, and he's already predicted a "hécatombe," a wipe-out among the favourites, in 2026. After what happened to him, he'd know.
The women's race lost two of last year's podium before it even started. Katie Schide, the course record holder, is still out with a stubborn case of plantar fasciitis. Camille Bruyas, runner-up in 2025, announced her pregnancy earlier this year. That leaves Ruth Croft as the clear favourite defending her title — she won all three UTMB World Series races in 2025 and just won Tarawera for the fourth time this year, so the form is there. But with two of her closest rivals out, the rest of the field has more room than it looked like it would a year ago.
If you've got runners you follow in Chamonix that week, this is exactly what Crewed's notifications are for.
The honest part
I want to write about something other than races and features for a minute.
We passed 100 installs recently, and I'm genuinely grateful for that — every one of those is a real person who decided to give this a try, and I don't take it lightly. But I'd be lying if I said this were easy. I'm not seeing organic traction yet, and conversions are slow. I'm working on that every day, and it's taking longer than I'd like.
The clearest lesson so far has come from trying, and mostly failing, to market this on Reddit. There's a specific problem there right now: a flood of gamified running apps, often thrown together fast and pushed hard, has made a lot of the running community reflexively suspicious of anything new — including things that aren't trying to do what those apps do. I understand the reaction. I've scrolled the same threads.
So I'm trying to do this differently, even if it's slower. I'd rather show up as a person than as a launch post. I'm not adding streaks, badges, leaderboards, or social feeds — not because I haven't thought about it, but because I have, and I keep landing on the same answer: Crewed is supposed to be a hub for finding and following the races and runners you love, not another app competing for your attention with mechanics borrowed from somewhere else. Staying narrow is the harder path to grow on, but it's the one I trust.
Where the sport is, too
It feels worth saying that the sport itself is going through something similar, in its own way. Records are falling constantly right now — some of that is obviously just better athletes, better preparation, better shoes and data than the sport has ever had. But the same week records fall, so does the question of where exactly that improvement stops being training and starts being something else. Trail running is still building the testing infrastructure to match the money and attention it's suddenly attracting, and that gap is real and known, not something I'm speculating about.
I don't have an answer to that, and I'm not going to pretend this app is the place to relitigate it. But it's on my mind as someone trying to build something honest in this space, and I suspect it's on a lot of yours too. Worth naming, even briefly.
Thanks
If you're one of the hundred-plus who've downloaded this, thank you — genuinely. iOS is coming this month, UTMB week is about to be excellent, and I'll keep doing this the slow, human way.
More soon — plenty to cover before the month's out.