A run for Need2 Suicide Prevention
Pacific Marine Circle Route
Manuel ran 250 km around the Pacific Marine Circle in five days.
Every kilometre raised money for suicide prevention.
I built the site that held it all together.
- Timeline
- Live on Oct 6, 2026. The run was Oct 17 to 21. Updated until the wrap-up on Oct 23.
- What I did
- Design, build, hosting, forms, analytics, sponsor updates, post-run wrap-up
What mattered
- •Donations first. The Need2 donate button is always in the menu, one click away.
- •A tone the whole crew could stand behind.
- •Sponsors seen and thanked, by name, on the day they said yes.
- •A site that could keep changing as the plan changed.
Eleven days
Manuel decided to run 250 km around the Pacific Marine Circle Route.
Five days. Four camp nights. All of it to raise money for Need2 suicide prevention.
The run started on October 17.
The first version of the site went live on October 6.
Hero, route, timeline, crew, sponsors, a way to donate and a way to follow along.
Small decisions
A friend read the early copy and flagged one line.
She said "nobody" sounded ambiguous, and the ending could land on something positive.
We rewrote it. Every night the crew gathers to share the day, and keep each other grounded, energized and present.
I made a small trail icon for the favicon and the menu logo.
The social share image stayed as Manuel's photo, because that's what people should see when the link travels.
The domain stays clean, with no www. The www version redirects to it.
Sponsors, one at a time
Sponsors signed up while we were building.
Aqueduct Foundation, who match donations. OM Foods. Cura Cacao. Café Vosino, who hosted the closing event.
Celebrator came in as the place to collect photos, videos and messages for the mini documentary.
Each one went on the home page and the sponsor page the same day.
Email, numbers and press
Sign-ups go to two email lists in Resend, so people can hear about the run, the documentary or both.
PostHog shows where visitors click. How many went on to Need2's donation page, for example.
The day before the start we wrote tailored outreach to local news, radio and community groups.
Victoria News, Sooke News Mirror and Peninsula News Review all ran the story. It now has its own section on the site.
What we cut
We built a Live page for updates from the trail.
There was almost no phone reception out there, and nobody had time to feed it.
On October 22 I took it out and pointed every link to Manuel's Instagram.
Better to have less on the site than a page that goes quiet.
After the finish
Manuel finished all 250 km and raised $4,460 for Need2.
The site changed one more time. The hero now says Finished.
A thank-you to everyone who showed up, ran along, covered it and cooked.
Photos and short video clips, sorted by day. Videos trimmed to 15 seconds so the page stays light.
Donations are still open. The documentary is coming.
What we delivered
- •A one-page campaign site with route, timeline, crew and sponsors
- •Donation path to Need2, with the matching-donations sponsor called out
- •Email sign-ups with two lists
- •Analytics to see what visitors do
- •A custom domain, favicon and share image
- •Press section, and a day-by-day photo and video wrap-up after the finish
Built with
- Next.js 16 + React 19. Fast pages, easy to change
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS 4. Styling
- Vercel. Hosting, deploys when code is pushed
- Resend. Email lists
- PostHog. Visitor analytics
- Celebrator. Collecting photos, videos and messages
Have something like this in mind?
Tell me what you're building.
We'll talk it through, and I'll tell you honestly if I'm the right person for it.
