I am helping to time a road race in a few weeks. We have race numbers with pull tags and expect about 200 entries. Last year I used a poster to make a board where I would tape the pull tag next to the place, and write the time in. The problem is that it is really slow organizing age groups and stuff and the final results/awards take too long to get published. Does anybody have any ideas/suggestions? We have numbers with pull tags, a stopwatch with adequate memory a laptop.
A string where you slide the tags town, and a MS Access database.
For small races like you have, many years ago, we'd hand out index cards as they finished with race finish number pre-written on them. Finishers would write their name/age/gender on the card and put them in the assigned box of their age group, where you can add their official time later. If you did this for the first 50 or so, that would probably cover 90% of yur age group winners (how deep in age groups would you go ?).
You could still pull their bib tags and "string" them as backup and for finding winners in the remaining slower age groups. Your local sporting goods store probably has a fish stringer which always worked great for us. Make sure to string all tags face down as they go on. One person pulling the tags at the end of the chute, another person placing them on the stringer in order.
If your race gets bigger, it'll probably be worth it to contact a reputable timing company (local if possible). They'll have software which can quickly spit out results in a standard format, and their service might save you headaches that you wouldn't believe.
Good luck.
With only ~200 runners you can use the same system you used last year but along with the pull tags use the color and shape coded stickers that you can buy along with the bibs. That's an easy visual to deal with getting race day awards out quickly. It's also probably faster and more secure to staple the pull tags to the board.
That doesn't help you with post-race compilation and publishing. If you want that to be faster maybe purchase some commercial race management software like Race Director, but for only 200 finishers you should be able to type it into Excel in under an hour.
Why are we always moving in the wrong direction?? If you want a quality race, spend the $1.50 a runner and have a company do it for you. Put your time and effort into another part of the race.