LA-DU chip timing mystery solved.

So I sent an email to the LA-DU race director about my concerns about the chip time. I am really glad I did, because this is the response he sent me:

Hi Patti,
 
This is the explanation I just received from the timing company.  We will certainly make the necessary changes so this will not happen again.  Thank you for bringing this to my attention and sorry for the timing error.
 
Mike
 
Pattie Reaves is correct.  Her time is closer to the time she claims. I don’t have it in front of me as I’m at work but when Beryle went looking in the chip output files for her time she found where she was read twice at the finish line. Once at 1:43 something and once at 1:49 something. I would assume she was read while standing at the finish line cheering others on.
 
 Our system has filters that we set which tell it when to read chips and when not to. One of them tells the system to ignore all chip reads that occur more than 5 seconds after the last read. We use this filter to avoid this exact issue. Before the race it is customary for us to do a prerace checklist to make sure everything is ready which includes checking the filter settings.  This was done yesterday and all the filters were set correctly. We are speculating that when we lost power during the 5K and had to restart our system somehow this effected the filters. This resulted in double reads for Pattie Reaves and 4 other people. We have adjusted the results on the website. Fortunately none of the adjustments effected the overall or age group awards.

We apologize for this error, we should have gone back in upon restarting and checked the filters but there was little time since 5K runners where finishing just as we were able to switch to generator.

Penalized for standing at the finish line cheering others on? For shame. 🙂 But now I can take credit for my TOTALLY AWESOME 5K TIME! *fist pump*

Pattie Reaves

About Pattie Reaves

I'm a new mom and renegade fitness blogger at After the Couch. I live in Brewer with my husband, Tony, our daughter Felicity, and our two pugs, Georgia and Scoop.