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Distance Races Run Into Glitch

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By RICHARD MULLINS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 24, 2008

Perhaps no two things matter more to marathon runners than finishing the race and finding out how much time they took to run the course.

Now, two weeks before Tampa's Gasparilla Distance Classic, Tampa race officials are buzzing over a thorny problem: The ultranew timing system they hoped would track every 5-kilometer, 15-kilometer and marathon runner along Bayshore Boulevard had a terrible breakdown when used a month ago in Hawaii.

That new system places disposable wireless tags on each runner, similar to tags that Wal-Mart uses to track inventory across the nation. But the breakdown in Hawaii left some runners there with incorrect race times and thousands of other runners with no finish times at all.

With that breakdown in mind, Tampa race organizers say they are pondering whether they should pull the plug on the new system, made by Michigan-based SAI Timing, and return to a more commonly used but more cumbersome system called ChampionChip.

They plan to decide Friday.
Race organizers know they have a high-stakes decision on their hands. More than 17,000 runners are expected for the races - many of whom use the run to qualify for bigger marathons in places such as Boston.

Organizers would like to be at the forefront of race technology, especially with an up-and-coming innovator. But if they pick a system that breaks down, it could mar the reputation of the Tampa Bay area's highest-profile running event.

"I feel confident we'll be OK, and I'm willing to take the risk with SAI," said Susan C. Harmeling, executive director of the Gasparilla Distance Classic Association Inc., producer of the race. "The good news is that either way, we will have a system in place."

Systems Have Similarities

Both rival systems use wireless transmitters that runners place on their shoe. As runners pass the starting and finish line, electronic sensors register their time and identification, stitching together the data to form race rankings.

That allows the systems to record times for each runner individually from start to finish - rather than from the starting gun. That matters because races often have long lines of participants, so slower runners can spend minutes running before they even pass the official starting line.

However, that's where the similarities end between the rival SAI and ChampionChip systems that Tampa is pondering.

ChampionChip systems have been in use for decades, and the company is considered the de facto standard, used in hundreds of marathons, including Boston, New York and Tokyo.

However, it comes with drawbacks, Harmeling said. There's more work for organizers to match up runners with specific chips. Some runners keep their own chip from race to race, so organizers have to hand-register those chips individually.

And most importantly, after the race, runners must stop after the finish line, bend over and remove their tags. That can be a major burden for dazed runners with seized muscles. The chips cost several dollars apiece, so if runners forget to return the chip, that creates an extra expense for the race.

At some races, organizers set up hundreds of chairs and foot rests for runners, where volunteers must remove the chips by hand. Add up all the little costs, and the overall tab can skyrocket, Harmeling said. Some newer ChampionChip systems offer disposable chips, though they are less widely used.

SAI, the new timing vendor Harmeling hopes to hire, sought to solve those problems. Its system uses disposable electronic tags runners peel off the "bib" pinned to their shirts. Runners then slip a shoelace through a hole in the tag, which looks like a flexible mailing label. Inside the tag is a tiny transmitter that triggers the overall timing system.

Since the tags are disposable, runners can simply walk away at the end of the race.

SAI Is More Expensive

A full SAI system would probably cost about $75,000 to run the races, Harmeling said, compared with about $45,000 for the older ChampionChip system. The SAI system, while more pricey, would save money in other areas, such as runner bib printing and other materials, she said. In either case, runners' registration fees would not change, she said.

The Tampa Tribune is a sponsor of the Gasparilla Distance Classic.

The choice of which system to use has other factors. Tiny SAI is the up-and-coming challenger in the race-timing world, but it comes with roots in its race-proven competitor.

The founder of SAI, David Simms, is a well-known and well-regarded figure in the racing world, and even worked at ChampionChip to help bring that racing technology to the United States.

Simms helped engineer the new SAI tags and ran trial tests at races on Cape Cod and in Pittsburgh and Detroit in the fall - running them parallel with ChampionChip systems.

The Las Vegas marathon used SAI for its Dec. 2 race to time 16,000 runners.

"It worked fine," said Terry Collier, executive race director of the Las Vegas Marathon. He expects to use the system when he organizes the July 2 Los Angeles Marathon with an expected 25,000 runners.

Then came the race in Honolulu on Dec. 9.

Rain Disrupted SAI

The day of the Honolulu race, heavy rain poured on the city. Four of the eight generators running the SAI system shut down. Water shorted out all of the electronic readers meant to sense passing runners.

Some of the wireless readers rebooted and came up with incorrect times. "Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong," Simms said. "But there was no excuse for it. ... This was tragic."

The breakdown likely lost finish times for thousands of runners. Of 27,829 registered runners, the system recorded only about 21,000 finishers, well fewer than the traditional 1 percent dropout rate.

Race managers officially apologized to runners and turned to video recordings of the finish line to try to gauge finish times.

Knowing he would have to rebuild systems, Simms called race organizers in Houston and Tampa who had signed up to use SAI and warned them to change plans.

"We were planning to use SAI, then the Honolulu marathon came," said Steven Karpas, director of marketing for the Houston marathon Jan. 13. Karpas said they think the SAI technology will work in future races, but "our event was so soon after Honolulu that we could not risk having issues at our race."

For now, Harmeling plans on sticking with SAI to time the race. On Friday they plan a conference call, and if Simms says the system isn't ready, they'll switch to ChampionChip. If they do switch, it will mean a lot of work for organizers and some re-education of runners.

Runners here have been told in prerace literature that their tags are disposable. If Tampa switches systems, race participants will have to be told to use the ChampionChip tags instead, and turn them back in at the end of the race.

For now, she says there is enough time to change plans and switch back to ChampionChip. Still, she expects SAI will eventually become the standard in the race world.

"It might not be ready in time for this year's Gasparilla," she said. "But it's the next wave."

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919 or rmullins@tampatrib.com.

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