Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Marathon Timing issues

It seems the story of this year's event was the timing. Not sure what all the issues are (aside from people actual start times being either completely off or exactly the gun time), but I am having my own set of problems. One of their big deals this year was live results being updated every few seconds, and after the race - you could print out a little slip of paper to get your finish time. As part of their going "green", this made perfect sense.
After about 15 minutes after finishing, I found myself by the tent with computer screens set up. Typed in my bib....nothing. 30 minutes later. Nada. Another 30 or so minutes later as I was leaving: Zilch.
At that point, a female was asking how she did not place in her age group when she was the 4th finisher overall (or something similar). I wasn't hanging around to hear their answer.
The awards were held up by at least 30 minutes (if not an hour), which was good for me as I got to see the overall winner get Her award...yep - a woman won! :-) And earned a trip to the US Olympic Marathon Trials.
Until Sunday morning, my buddy could not view the results. I got home Sunday evening and got online. Had a message from my co-workers (and his 3:58) asking if I got DQ'd. Huh?
Then I found the results - and I was missing. Nowhere to be found.
I sent off an email with all the info I had (bib, splits, etc) including the fact that I had video of me crossing the line. I will give them this - they did reply back quickly saying they didn't have me crossing the finish line and they'd have to check their videotape.

3 days later (tonight) I emailed again and got a quick reply back: "would you please send me a clip of your finish video?"
I did that, but have to wonder...did they have finish line video?


Hope to get it resolved. I know I finished, but that isn't the point right now...

3 comments:

Georgia Snail said...

You were so fast in the closing meters of the finish that you out ran the video feed & time clock?!?!? Sweet!

Kathrin said...

You would think that an event this big won't have the issue.

I was on the website, trying to see were all of you guys are (via live results posting) and the link didn't go anywhere... Very professional. At the House of Blues party, they only showed guntimes, but I found the results online the next day...

I hope they resolve that quickly, especially after they did so much shenanigans about checking your chip before leaving the expo.

Anonymous said...

And people think our pull tab timing is old fashioned :)