Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Aaargh!

What a downer: Since Saturday evening, I've been obsessivly clicking on the St. Patrick's Day 10k web site to find out my official results for the race. For some reason, the race coordinators faced a lot of technical glitches and didn't post the women's results until last night.

So, finally, at 6:30 p.m. yesterday, I eagerly scrolled through the women's official results list for my name. And you know what?

It wasn't there. I looked at all 1,965 women's names, and none of them were mine.

A phone call to the race coordinators found that there was a technical glitch with the ChampionChip they gave me, as it didn't record when I crossed the starting line. #%*!@*^!!

The race coordinator, who was very apologetic, told me he'd put my name and best guestimate of my time on the official results list. But I don't care about having my name on some list. I want to know exactly how long it took me to run the race.

Apparently, I'm not alone. Another 1,400 runners were also not timed because of "unusual interference problems."

I would hate to be one of the race coordinators right now.

Anyway, I may have run the race faster than I thought. My SO said he was a dozen feet behind me at the start line, and it took him 1:42 to cross the starting mats (his ChampionChip worked just fine). I thought I crossed the starting line after about 20 seconds, but it could've actually been up to 1 minute, based on what he said.

In which case, my best guestimate of my time now is between 8:32 and 8:38 a mile. But who the heck really knows? Damn these vagaries.

5 comments:

  1. Yuck. That would be SO frustrating!

    Nothing anyone can do now, I guess, but what a downer!

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  2. Hate to be the one to say it, but take it as a lesson learned. I see runners all the time who start their wristwatches the second they cross the start line. You'll never worry about ChampionSh... again...

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  3. THAT SUCKS! That's one of my biggest fears of using the chip. I have this nightmare of my chip failing in the marathon.

    Forerunner. Its my only safeguard.

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  4. If we lived in the same area I could tell you exactly what your time was in the St Patrick's Day 10K. I received an email the other day from our local race organizers congratulating me for a fine run in the 10K with a time of 53.01. I went to the website and, sure enough, there I was: listed. Strange thing is - I didn't race that day! So you must have been wearing my chip and they didn't read it right.

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  5. Leprechauns! They mess up St. Pat's race times everywhere. They added 17 seconds to my St. Pat's 10k time, and I wasn't even wearing a chip!

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