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[Posting on behalf of /u/Percinho who is busy trying on his new tri suit that he got on Black Friday sale]
Stupid question. How is your time measured in a race: 5k, 10k, marathon etc?
I’ve never run one, but I’m planning to next year.
Is there someone at the end with a timer checking every runner? What if there are hundreds of people in the race? Do you have to keep track of your own time?
More structured runs always have a kit. In the kit you’ll find your Bib with your number. Often there’s something glued behind the bib, it’s a sensor.
In specific places on the route the organizers will ass some sensors on the ground, so when you move across them they’ll register the time.
By going through a few sensors they’ll know when you started and when you finished (with eventual intermediate steps as well).
Your bib will have a timing chip in it and there will be a mat you’ll have to step on at the beginning and end. Usually you can look up your official results soon after the race.
Other replies covered chip timing, but, if a race isn’t using chip timing, the usual way to do it is to have a timekeeper (or several, for redundancy) taking a time each time a runner crosses the line; after crossing the line, the runners are herded into a funnel and need to stay in order until they walk by someone at the other end of the funnel who notes down their number. Then, after the race, the list of times and the list of race numbers are correlated - if things have gone right, there are the same number of each and it’s easy, but even if things haven’t gone right you can usually patch up the results. Doing this two-step dance means that there’s no queue as you cross the finish line, since pressing the lap button on a stopwatch is really quick.
Thanks. I was wondering how they did it in the days before chips