I was looking over the results of the Houston Marathon and Half Marathon last week. The women’s winners both broke the American records for the distances. I have had several friends run the Boston Marathon and the New York Marathons. Things have really changed over the years with regard to posting results and times of the runners.
The early method of determining winners in age groups and their times was what is termed the “Card and Bucket System.” We had a “bucket” that was usually a black plastic pot used to transport flowers or plants. There were enough buckets for each age group of runners and a series of buckets for men and women. This meant if we had 10-year age groups to 70 years and over, we had 16 of those black plastic buckets on a table with a card labeling the age group. It usually started with an under-15-year bucket, 15-19, and then in 10-year increments to 70 years and over. One line of buckets was for the men entrants and another row for women entrants.
The “Card” part of the system was a three-by-five-inch white card with spaces for the runner’s name, age, address, hometown and finish time. Each card was numbered numerically from 1-200 or more, depending on the number of runners. The No. 1 card was handed to the first runner and on through the sequence of numbers until the last runner came across the finish line. The runner would take the card over to the table with the age group buckets on it and fill the card out and put it in the correct age group bucket. After all the cards were in the buckets, the race director would take the cards out of the bucket and determine the top three finishers in each age category. We usually took the No. 1 winner in both the men’s and women’s overall finish and took those runners out of the age group awards.
