timing a road race

roadrunner31

Hi,
I/m helping with organinsing a 5Mile road race and am just wondering if anyone could tell me of any good timing apps for the I Phone ?
Cheers

ecoli

roadrunner31 wrote: »

Hi,
I/m helping with organinsing a 5Mile road race and am just wondering if anyone could tell me of any good timing apps for the I Phone ?
Cheers

I Phone apps for timing is likely to be messy and inaccurate. If you are looking to set up a regular race to generate funds for what ever reason do things right and don't try to cut corners to save costs. Ultimately this will negatively affect the race reputation.

The market is currently saturated with races as every sports club, charity, etc see the road running market as a quick and easy way to generate funds so you need to stand above the many poorly thrown together races across the country every weekend

Timing is a big thing as well as an accurately measured course (driving the route in the car or doing it off map my run is just a disaster waiting to happen and will create some fairly negative feedback amongst runners)

There are a few different timing companies in Ireland which can give you some of the equipments and expertise which might help you and relatively decent rates;

precisiontiming
Red Tag Timing
Championchip

These are just some of the ones

Hope it helps

RayCun

roadrunner31 wrote: »

Hi,
I/m helping with organinsing a 5Mile road race and am just wondering if anyone could tell me of any good timing apps for the I Phone ?
Cheers

which race?

roadrunner31

Thank you for your feeedback. I agree with having Chip Timing too and as a runner I would much prefer it done that way - however the group asked me just to help out and they got an AAI permit but don't have the funds for Chip Timing at the minute..
So I'm exploring other options for timing the race and have enquired about a Digital Clock for the end also and am hoping to hear back on that.

BeepBeep67

All runners numbered - ideally with number runs per category.
2 stopwatches - 1 for backup.
2 people manually recording finishing places - to allow for human error.

Anything else has additional cost associated with it.

Hard Worker

roadrunner31 wrote: »

Thank you for your feeedback. I agree with having Chip Timing too and as a runner I would much prefer it done that way - however the group asked me just to help out and they got an AAI permit but don't have the funds for Chip Timing at the minute..
So I'm exploring other options for timing the race and have enquired about a Digital Clock for the end also and am hoping to hear back on that.

A digital clock is only just that. It will show people their times as they finish. The clock itself will not do timing for results.
Your best bet for year one, particularly if the numbers are 200 -300 or less, is to do hand timing. As a minimum you will need two people timing and two people doings places. That could be backed up by a video at the finish line. You will then need someone to collate the results.
If you have plenty of volunteers, you will manage fine.

Kurt Godel

roadrunner31 wrote: »

Hi,
I/m helping with organinsing a 5Mile road race and am just wondering if anyone could tell me of any good timing apps for the I Phone ?
Cheers

I've no idea how good this iphone timing app is, but I've seen it recommended a few places.

http://racesplitter.com/

roadrunner31

Kurt Godel wrote: »

I've no idea how good this iphone timing app is, but I've seen it recommended a few places.

http://racesplitter.com/

Ive actually heard a bit about that app alright - tanx!

Racman

Have a look at racetimer.org. It is pc based and I have seen it working well. Practice for an hour before the event and off you go. Only $99. Might be worth a look. You would need one person working the laptop and another one or two writing down the numbers in sequence for the finishers (i.e. you might need a chute). If the numbers are smallish and runners well spread out, you might be able to do it all in the software.

rom

Interestingly most smartphone today use NTP which can usually maintain time to within tens of milliseconds over the public Internet so you could have a starter and a finisher smartphone do the lot. Now the clocks in these devices are pretty accurate also so there is defo a market for this. Now if only the race bibs had QR codes then it would all work perfectly.