Rojo says he might start a Kip Litton thread but only 1 and only 1 thread

RE: Rojo says he might start a Kip Litton thread but only 1 and only 1 thread 10/13/2011 8:49PM - in reply to RL

RL wrote:

d2xccoach Couple questions and points

ive done vcm in 10 and 11 - after the final? mat at mile 20, near the end of the small inner 'hood loop, seems 30+ min would be plenty to get in a car or even bike on that main route the loop exits onto, trek back to the finish line about 3 miles south while the runners continue north for another 1+ miles before heading back.

diff ? for my info - i was several of runners missing a halfway split. always wonder why often see top runners missing mid-race splits - would think more likely to see the mid packers missing splits when several dozen runners crossing mat at once - not when its a small pack of lead runners.

none of this anwsers how kip manages to hit the mats on schedule. especially boston last year when, i believe, his 5k splits were very consistent EXCEPT for the ONE split from 20k to half where the pace went from 6:3x to 8:x - I believe - the only mats soo close there no way to advance himself off course - makes no sense.

finally on the topic of DQ .. at this years meeting the usual race rules overview seemed to touch upoun cheating without mentioning a specific incident or person. my recollection from that talk was someone really needed a bib# of that runner you felt broke a rule.

Hi RL-

First off, thanks for coming up to Burlington for VCM the past few years. I think I understand what you wrote but not 100% positive, so if I misinterpret anything below my apologies.

You noted that it would not be difficult to get from the final mat at mile 20 back to the finish in a reasonable time via car or bike. That is true, however some years we have put an unannounced mat or video or audio recorder out near 21.5. (In 2010 we had an audio recorder at mile 12.5, we move it around.) From Kip's splits, I'm not that concerned about how he got from 20 to the finish in 2010, I'm more concerned with how he got from 13.1 to 20. If you saw how traffic gets tied up near Oakledge Park and on Park St during the time he would have been trying to get from 13.1 to 20 you would know how tough it is to move between those points.

As far as missing splits for top runners vs mid-pack runners, additional density of runners crossing those mats at mid-pack times would not cause higher incidence of missed splits. A properly set up chip system can easily read a much higher density of runners crossing it at max times than any race can create. As it has been explained to me by professional timers, a couple things come into play. For one, at times they are setting up the chip system immediately prior to the lead runners arriving. In our case, we move the start line mats to 13.1, the spot where we missed you in 2010 (found you in our results!). The system may not be tuned 100% properly when the leaders come by. If their technician starts hearing chips not beeping when runners cross, he can adjust the settings. All this is outside my realm so I'm probably getting some details wrong.

Also, 2010 was our first year with B-Tags. We had a very high incidence of no-reads that year. I think I had to research finish times for about 55-60 runners who didn't show up with finish line times but contacted us outraged because they weren't in the results. We also had a ton of missing midway splits. Huge numbers. In 2011, year 2 for us with B-Tags, we were down to about 15-18 finish line issues, and on midway split no-reads decreased by something close to 70%. It's a combo of runners becoming more familiar with how to make the B-Tags work best (i.e. don't put them under a FuelBelt), the B-Tags getting beefier, and our timing company learning more about how to make it work better. We're confident that we'll see a similar curve as we saw with Champion Chips a decade ago.

As for the info we communicated at the meeting you were at regarding DQ's (Invited Runner meeting I believe, not the general course info and rules meetings), it wasn't specifically done due to Kip. In fact a few years ago we received a complaint about a coach on a bike giving water bottles to a top level competitor, so that's more what we were targeting. I believe we said that a bib number or solid description would be most helpful for the race officials. For a report along these lines a bib number would not be necessary, but we're not able to act on a non-specific report the better the description the more confident we can be in our decision. I know it's super difficult to remember stuff like that in the heat of a race (no pun intended after this year's race), but with money on the line we wanted to be on the record that if infractions were witnessed and reported that race officials wanted to know to take appropriate steps.

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