Timing



R

Richard

Guest
Well I finished the London Marathon and raised £2000 for Whizz Kidz, what a painful experience
that was!!

I have a question regarding the timing of this event which I am somewhat confused about, I had 4:17
on my heart rate monitor but my official time was somewhat slower at 04:35 (I was aiming for sub
4:30 and was convinced I had done this!) How could this be? I started it just as I went over the
start line and stopped it after the finish, as you would. Each time I reached the marker points the
time they were displaying didn't match mine. I also talked to several people who were saying the
same. I cant beleive my monitor would be that much out, it has new bats too. Can someone explain how
the timing works - I though it was just a matter of reading the chip.

Thanks

Richard
 
[email protected] (Richard) wrote in message
news:<[email protected]>...
> Well I finished the London Marathon and raised £2000 for Whizz Kidz, what a painful experience
> that was!!
>
> I have a question regarding the timing of this event which I am somewhat confused about, I had
> 4:17 on my heart rate monitor but my official time was somewhat slower at 04:35 (I was aiming for
> sub 4:30 and was convinced I had done this!) How could this be? I started it just as I went over
> the start line and stopped it after the finish, as you would. Each time I reached the marker
> points the time they were displaying didn't match mine. I also talked to several people who were
> saying the same. I cant beleive my monitor would be that much out, it has new bats too. Can
> someone explain how the timing works - I though it was just a matter of reading the chip.
>
> Thanks
>
> Richard

I was just told that the times on the marathon web site (http://www.london-marathon.co.uk)are from
starting gun and finish time is clock time. Apparently there may of been a problem with the timing
matts at the start or they just haven't got around to loading the real data yet. Can anyone confirm
this or heard different?

Cheers

Richard
 
Most of the races with really large numbers of participants will eventually post both the "gun time"
and the "chip time". It sounds like this one hasn't done that (at least yet).

For your own personal time, use what you got on your watch.

While awards are based on gun time, I don't count the time it takes to get to the starting line when
I'm asked my marathon time. At Chicago last year, it took me 20 minutes to start. And as someone
else said, things like qualifying times for Boston are based on chip times. If they didn't do that,
there would be a lot of people pushing to get closer to the front at the start.

Hopefully, they'll get the chip times posted eventually for you.
 
Richard wrote:

> I was just told that the times on the marathon web site (http://www.london-marathon.co.uk)are from
> starting gun and finish time is clock time.

That's the way it usually works - from gun to finish mat. The runner eats the time before you cross
the starting mat with the exception of Boston which gives that time back the following year to help
you requalify.

> Apparently there may of been a problem with the timing matts at the start or they just haven't got
> around to loading the real data yet.

What would you do with the data short of say oh, **** it took me N minutes to get to the starting
line that was probably still backed up anyway? In really big races it can take you 2-5 miles to get
on pace. So what should the RD do in this case except start in small waves?

--
Caveat Lector "the further you go outside, the further you go inside" - B. McKibben Doug Freese
[email protected]
 
Doug Freese <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> Richard wrote:
>
> > I was just told that the times on the marathon web site (http://www.london-marathon.co.uk)are
> > from starting gun and finish time is clock time.
>
> That's the way it usually works - from gun to finish mat. The runner eats the time before you
> cross the starting mat with the exception of Boston which gives that time back the following year
> to help you requalify.
>
>
>
> > Apparently there may of been a problem with the timing matts at the start or they just haven't
> > got around to loading the real data yet.
>
> What would you do with the data short of say oh, **** it took me N minutes to get to the starting
> line that was probably still backed up anyway? In really big races it can take you 2-5 miles to
> get on pace. So what should the RD do in this case except start in small waves?

Problem solved! the problem was due to the chip times not being uploaded to the site at the time I
was looking, basically the data hadn't been processed and they used gun to finish time in the
interim. My official time is indeed now correct at 04:17:36 rather than the time before which was
04:35:56. Im a happy man now!
 
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