Timing

Every year, there have been fewer and fewer timing errors. We know how annoying these can be as a competitor!


Although the priorities of the event are
1. fundraising for the two charities,
2. every person's health and safety,
3. a great day for our community,
we are still working hard to crack this one.

We have divided the problems into two: (a) errors in recording time and (b) people going the wrong way.
The former are really rare now as we use two timers at each point and they have a marshal minding them so they are not distracted. The reasons they list for making mistakes are: not seeing the numbers, transposition errors, distraction. In two instances this year (2009) a transposition error led a competitor to have a longer time in one discipline and a shorter one in another. This type of error is very rare and chipping and other expensive solutions would merely reduce the funds to the charities without significant (or any) improvement in measurement accuracy.

The major issue is people going the wrong way! In spite of comments that the course is well sign posted and that there are an exceptionally high number of marshals available to help, a minority get lost. There are various reasons for this. One can have sympathy for some. Every year there is someone who, inspite of signage and marshals shouting, goes the wrong way and comes back. It is somewhere different ever year and we lock the probelm down with more signs.
In some cases, two people have an issue at the same roundabout. Two people went wrong at Wellingtonia roundabout this year and we will be changing the signage and procedures next year. Although it has never happened before, we can see how it happened adding twenty minutes to one competitor (who did extra loop) and potentially taking several minutes off another.

A couple of people were momentarily confused in the run and we were able to place a reserve marshal there to direct people.

Lastly, there were several complaints about a couple of people who went directly across the fence after swimming and straight to their bikes instead of running the length of the transition zone.

If you have any other feedback that will help us improve, please write in or discuss it with others on this forum.

Rick Marengo.