Back once again for everything you wanted to know about running but were afraid to ask.

Rules of the Road:

This is inspired by eric_twinge’s fine work in r/fitness.

Upvote either good or stupid questions. Sort questions by new so that they get some love.

To the more experienced runnitors, if something is a good question or answer, add it to the FAQ.

Post your question – stupid or otherwise – here to get an answer – stupid or otherwise. Anyone can post a question and the community as a whole is invited and encouraged to provide an answer. Many questions get submitted late each week that don’t get a lot of action, so if your question didn’t get answered, feel free to post it again.

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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]

  • SomeSpecialToffee@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    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.