Posted by Chris Serwan on March 28, 2010 at 10:39:53:
I wanna know what the deal is with the chip times and the official times? I'm not a great runner and ran my first 10k race yesterday with a 6:20 pace. I started a little bit back from the front thinking that everyone in the front was going to take off and I wouldn't be hampered by slow people, which was not the case. I was far enough back that after the starting gun I didn't get to cross the starting line until a couple seconds later. I spent the first mile dodging and trying to get through the mass of people. I thought that the use of the chip times was so that the actual time it took you to run the 10k would be calculated and used. Instead the official time was used and there was a 6 second gap between my two times, which isn't huge, but in the case of such a huge race it was the difference between 2 or 3 finishing positions. Could someone please explain this to me?