Adidas Race Series - Chip Timing explained

daymobrew

After each of the adidas race series races some people are confused by the results listing "Chip Time" and "Finish Time". I am going to provide a few examples here that hopefully will explain it.

I am not involved with the race series (just a participant) so I might make some mistakes. I will ask the chip timing company for their input on this thread.

The races have each had 3 waves. For this explanation I will assume that they started 5 mins apart. I will cover the start and finish times for 6 runners, 2 in each wave. To demonstrate the Chip/Finish times, each runner will complete the course in a very similar time.

When the gun goes, runner 1, who was right on the start line, heads off.
Runner 2 is a little back and it takes him 20 secs to cross the start line.

Runner 1 takes 30m00s to complete the course. He crosses the line as the finish line clock reads 30:00.
Runner 2 takes 29m50s. He sees 30:10 on the finish line clock.

In wave 2, runner 3 is right on the line and heads off exactly 5 mins after the first wave.
Runner 4 takes 20 secs to cross the start line.

Runner 3 takes 30m00s to complete the course. He sees 35:00 on the clock.
Runner 4 takes 29m50s. He sees 35:10 on the finish clock.

It is similar in wave 3, runner 5 is well positioned to start running 10 mins after runner 1. Runner 6 is also 20 secs back.

Runner 5 takes 30m00s and sees 40:00 on finishing.
Runner 6 takes 29m50s and sees 40:10 at the finish line.

The results will list the runners as finishing as Runner 1, Runner 2, Runner 3, Runner 4, Runner 5 and Runner 6. This is per IAAF rules.

When they look at the results they will see the following:
Place Overall |Name |Chip Time |Finish Time |Finish Line Clock
1 |Runner 1 |30:00 |30:00 |30:00
2 |Runner 2 |29:50 |30:10 |30:10
3 |Runner 3 |30:00 |30:00 |35:00
4 |Runner 4 |29:50 |30:10 |35:10
5 |Runner 5 |30:00 |30:00 |40:00
6 |Runner 6 |29:50 |30:10 |40:10


Edit: Add Finish Clock column to show what runners see on the clock as they cross the finish line. The Finish Time is the adjusted Finish Clock for the wave.

28064212

daymobrew wrote: »

Edit: I am not sure if the Finish Time is right for those in waves 2 and 3.

Yeah, I'm not sure either. For the 10-miler, I started in the last wave, about 10 minutes behind the first people to start. My chip time was 1:34:59, which sounds about right, given the clock at the end showed 1:44:something. However, my finish time is shown as 1:35:19.

It seems that the organisers are counting your finish time from the moment your wave starts, not the overall race. I've had a look through the relevant sections of the IAAF rules, and can't see anything which allows this, so I'm not sure what basis they're doing that on.

daymobrew

28064212 wrote: »

Yeah, I'm not sure either. For the 10-miler, I started in the last wave, about 10 minutes behind the first people to start. My chip time was 1:34:59, which sounds about right, given the clock at the end showed 1:44:something. However, my finish time is shown as 1:35:19.

It seems that the organisers are counting your finish time from the moment your wave starts, not the overall race.

Thanks. I have added a "Finish Line Clock" column to the table.