Herb Cratty is a friend and former competitor from the road race scene in the 80’s. Miles of Smiles, Herb’s timing company has timed over 3400 events and over 627,000 runners. I asked him if he would want to share a little bit about what goes into timing a race. Herb sent the following:
Times have changed. Not just because of age where the race paces now used to be the slow warmup pace back then, but how timing is done. Back in the 80’s when even the large races were pull tagged (pulling the bottom portion of your race bib). Chip timing then became available and your finish line would have a timing chip that got your time within hundredths of a second. Then starting mats were used to get your individual start time and also your finish time making large races into individual time trials. Now in the past year due to Covid, many smaller races are doing time trial racing to keep large number of runners from being together in large groups at the start. Also, many races are doing wave timing where a certain category or age group will take off together.
Even timing chips have changed throughout the years from ankle chips or shoe chips to disposable chips on the bib numbers themselves. Being higher off the ground means that the chip readers need to be stronger and more powerful. Also how the chip system times is different, for example the shoe chips gets to be read when the chip crosses the timing mat by first read while the bib number chips times the runner many multiple times before the runner crosses the mat and continues to time the runner while going thru the finish line. The strongest chip read which is exactly above the timing mat is your chip read for finishing. The chip system throws out the chip reads after you get your finish time so if a runner stands on the timing mat or comes back thru the timing mat their second time will not get read into the results.
How i got involved with timing , (I never thought i would ever back in the 80’s and 90’s when i was racing), I got injured when I was 40 years old with a torn IT band. I have never been the same runner since, even though I still run and have nearly 110,000 miles logged in my career.
A small timing service came up for sale back in 2002 called Time by Kline when the owner was moving to Colorado. I thought it would be something I would enjoy since my passion of serious racing was over. I wanted the name of the company to be something positive so Miles of Smiles came about with a smiley face.
I have seen the sport of running from many different views from competitive runner, to coaching, to race timer. I was inducted into the Pittsburgh Marathon Hall of Fame because of it and have enjoyed the many runners that I have met along my journey and continue to meet wonderful people in my lifetime. There are many good folks in this sport.
Check out Herb’s company at: http://www.smileymiles.com.
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