How technology made keeping track of finishes much more organized

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.

This was a good system with the only drawbacks being that it took a longer time since you had to wait for most of the runners to finish before going through each age group bucket and picking out the lowest three finish numbers in that bucket. You did not go by the time the runner wrote down but by the place number on the card. Another drawback was on occasion, a runner would not turn their finish card in until after we had already determined the winners. Sometimes they were one of the award winners and wanted an award that we had already handed out to the runner that put their card in the bucket. We either told that runner they were too late and needed to turn in the finish card to get an award. Or if we could find the other award winner and ask them to give the award to the late runner. Either way left a disappointed runner. The other problem was when the runner put the finish card in the wrong age group bucket or even the wrong male or female bucket. 

Later race times developed “chip timing.” Runners tied a small chip to their shoe and it recorded the runner's time and place. The difficult part of this system was that the “chips” cost a few bucks and race organizers had to stop each runner and untie the chip from their shoe. Some runners had knots that were a sailor’s knot nightmare. If you missed a chip, the race organizers had to pay for the chip. Of course, with technology, some runners bought their own chip and it needed to be entered into the system. One more problem if the runner did not enter their chip number into the system.

Then along came the bib numbers that had the chip in them and were disposable. This was a great benefit for race organizers. No more untying shoelaces and sorting them back into the correct storage space. This method is almost the standard for local small races. There is a fee for using this system but that cost is usually included in the entry fee. 

Now with more technology, a friend can track another runner throughout the race. There are programs now that will let you know how many miles along your friend is in the marathon race. A person in Texas can track a person in New York and see how they are doing. The printout of the runner will include their finish time, their average pace in the race and what their finish place was in both their age group and overall finish amongst all the runners. All of this technology costs extra for race organizers but the time and effort going back to the card and bucket system is usually worth that cost.