I am a fairly competitive runner and have won my fair share of local road races. Whenever I run road races, I usually start 5-6 seconds behind the first group or people who I think are my main competition so that their chip time starts before mine does. I can easily catch back up to them within the first 400 meters of the race and now have a pretty solid cushion on them if it comes to a sprint. This strategy has helped me win races a few times when I have beaten people by chip time and they beat me by the gun time. Most races I run give the winner to the chip time and so I won these races. This is a great strategy which I hop you employ in your races.