Starters over timing mats

ChampionChip

Was doing some stats about how many runners will cross the mats per minute at the start and comparing an 8 meter system like we had at the Belfast Half Marathon in September with a 4 metre at Charleville Half 2012 and then the 3 metres we had at Run in the Dark in Cork in November.

Put your thinking caps on and have an educated guess:

Belfast had 3267 starters, so how long did it take for them all to cross the 8 metre start line?

Charleville had a 4 metre start and 634 starters, how long until they were all away?

Finally RITD Cork had 1903 starters crossing mats 3 metres wide?

I know the estimate that the Ballycotton 10 guys use for their start and its very accurate when you see my stats.

I'll put up the answers after you've had time to mull it over.

Timmaay

Hmm pulled outa my ass, but Belfast, 3minutes, Charleville 2mins, Cork 4mins? I know of some races that must take well over a minute for the people at the back of the pack to start moving, and only gun timing used! Which is perfectly fine if you're main aim is to get positions correct for prizes etc, but doesn't really cut it for the average runner.

Actually quick question, do you get many (or any!) miss-reads on the starting mat? I know the finishline is fairly bulletproof by now, but much hire density at the startline.

ChampionChip

Thanks for the reply Timmy, thought it would appeal to someone like you.

Usually get 100% reads at the start if you have 2 sets of mats acting as main and backup, about 97% at the main and the rest at backup. Depends on factors like EMI, cabling under the road, location of nearby generators and speakers etc.

Gonna hold off revealing the answer for a while until I get a few more guesses.

Krusty_Clown

So are you talking about the width of the starting line/area? In that case, I'll go for:

Belfast: 2.5 minutes
Charleville: 1 minute
Cork: 4 minutes

Tipp man running

I'll take a stab at this for the craic..

Belfast; 3.20
Charleville; 1.30
Cork; 4.50

ChampionChip

At Belfast with an 8 metre wide start line the first 1160 were across the line in one minute, it was approx. 1000 a minute after that so the vast bulk of the field were gone by 3 mins 30 seconds after the gun sounded. I have ignored the few stragglers who took a while longer due to queues at the toilets.

Charleville had a 4 metre start line and all 634 runners were gone by 54 seconds after the gun.

Finally Cork RITD in November past used a 3 metre wide start line. They passed over it at approx. 100 runners every 10 seconds so all were gone by 4 mins 12 seconds after the gun.

Timmaay

Tipp man wins it so, remarkably close to all the answers ha!

Anyways, from a race director/course design point of view, what do the most of yous try to do? I'll always keep the start as wide as possible for at least 400m if I can, and then avoid any bottlenecks at all within the 1st km, this allows most people to sort themselves out by then. I don't know the stats on say smaller volume races which are either manually timed, or using a timing system with no startline mats but I'm guessing if you have say access to the full width of a road (which you will do for the start of almost all races), then the runners wont have any restriction at all. Assume the average road is 4m wide, say the Charleville race, 634 gone in 54 seconds, so if your local manually timed race has 200 athletes, that would correspond to 17seconds to get them all over the line. Quite significant I'll admit, considering a 1second PB can mean alot ha! Next time I'm timing a race I'll have to do a quick check myself to see how long it takes the bulk of the runners to get over the line.

ChampionChip

We did the Seeley 10k on Saturday and with PSNI resources stretched due to demonstrations we could not get the road closed to do start mats. Last car came through the hoard of runners standing about at 2.27pm and race went off at 2:30.07. I kept a close eye on the runners starting and they were all over the line by 22 seconds and that was just shy of 800 runners. The road is about 9 metres wide.

Krusty_Clown

Timmaay wrote: »

Tipp man wins it so, remarkably close to all the answers ha!

Hope your 'mats' are better than your 'maths'!
I demand whatever prize was being offered.

ChampionChip

First prize was a night out with me and the boys in Belfast, second prize two nights out with me and the boys.