Posted by Monetta Roberts on March 17, 2008 at 16:19:54:
In Reply to: Re: ATR question??? posted by Dan Detman on March 14, 2008 at 04:40:13:
Yo:
While Dan D's anwser (hi Dan!) is plenty sufficient, I would add one observation and one rationale, as I understand it/them:
I have been in more chipped races than I can remember---big marathons mostly, but not exclusively--and I have never known the gun time/chip times to be used any differently than ATR plans to use them. Never, not even once have I known, or even heard of chip times to be used over gun times for awards.
And the explanation that makes the most sense to me (even more sense than, "it's the rule,") is because IF awards were meted out by chip times, then you could be bested by one second--less even--for the overall title, or age group title, or whatever, but never even know it during the race, because that chipped athlete what beat you wasn't really one second or less ahead of you in real time, he or she could have been behind you whole minutes for the entire race, but because he/she crossed the start line (and thus his/her chip timing started) later, you would never know that person was covering the course faster than you. And that is not really fair to you, because if you could SEE a person one second ahead of you going into the finish line, you most likely could redline it much harder than just your normal super-fast kick to the end.
So, the way it makes sense to me is that if awards went by chip times, the event would be a whole bunch of individual time trials and not really a race against one another. Of course you may not be able to identify everyone on your age group during the race, but at least with gun time-based awards, you do know they all started the race (or should have) at the exact moment you did---so beat everyone to the finish that you can!
It's great to have the chip because it gives you a lot of valuable information about your performance, depending on how many chip mats there are: I know in marathons they almost always have them at the halfway point--and it's always nice to compare your first half to your second--and also usually at selected other spots which helps race officials identify any short-cutters---if you don't have a chip time from that mat at the way far turnaround, it's not likely you're going to get any gun-time award you may have placed for, unless there's an exceptionally good reason for that missing chip time. Plus the more chip times the better you can analyze your race.
Ok,
Monetta