How to post your Maine Marathon timing alerts to Twitter

So, one of the awesome things about the Maine Marathon and Bay State Events, the service that is providing chip timing, is that they will let your friends and family subscribe to e-mail updates (or text messages) from the race.

Well, sort of. It’s only when you cross the half-marathon line and at the end. But still.

And, they only let you have 10 people subscribe to your time.

So, naturally, I thought, how can I get this on Twitter?

Step 1. Register for an account with ifttt.

This is a really cool service – “If this then that” — which helps you connect two services on the Internet. In this case, email (from the marathon update) and Twitter.

Step 2. Authenticate your Twitter account with iftt (you do this by selecting the Twitter icon from the channels grid).

Step 3. Authorize your Gmail account with Twitter. If you don’t have one, create one. But everyone has one, right?

Step 4. Now, go to create a task.

Your trigger is Gmail.

Your trigger is a any email from alerts@raceit.com.

Then that > Twitter (or any service you want, really):

Post a new tweet.

I got an email from the timing company that told me the format of the alert would be like this:

Yeah, I'll keep dreaming about that time, there.

I’m pretty happy with that text as it is, so this is how I set up my tweet:


Now. Create action > create task. Almost done!

Step 4. Create an account an account for the Maine Marathon here.  Make sure you use your Gmail account to sign up (my email redirects there):

Search for yourself in the participant search:

Hit “track” on the right hand side of the window — and voila! You’re done!

Now, the caveat is that I have not run a race that offered this service before, and therefore haven’t tested it … but I did email someone at Bay State Events to check the format of the email and the email it was going to be sent from.

So, moral of the story is, follow me on Twitter, and you can be among the first to know if I finished the marathon.

And even if this doesn’t work, ifttt is a really awesome service worth checking out.

Less than 3 days to go! I’m so excited that the days are starting to go by as days spent in anticipation before the marathon. The weather is not getting better as the days get closer, though:

A little cloudy … OK. Not digging the idea of rain, though.

I have an ice block under my knee and it feels heavenly.

Pattie Reaves

About Pattie Reaves

I'm a new mom and renegade fitness blogger at After the Couch. I live in Brewer with my husband, Tony, our daughter Felicity, and our two pugs, Georgia and Scoop.