popsicle stick at the finish line

I like to put the popsicle stick up my ass before handing it back

Yup. I belong to a club that has been doing races with popsicle sticks at the finish for years. It works fine even with up to a couple of hundred runners. Cavets:

The person handing out the sticks needs that to be his/her only job. ( You need someone else writing down finish times, and another person at the scoring table taking down names and the corresponding number on the stick.) An extra finish line helper is even better.

The person handing out sticks needs to be able to make the occasional split second decision on who beat who in a close finish.

Sticks would not work as well in a short race with lots of runners. The longer the race the more the racers put distance between each other.

The finishers need to take care of getting the stick and themselves to the scoring table. We do have people forget and take the sticks home without reporting to the table. This leaves a hole in the results that makes it hard to match the times to the runners.

I prefer the sticks for a low key race, better for cost and you don't need to worry about a complicated registration. Plus you runners don't need to pin a number on.

Good luck!

The North Medford club in Massachusetts has had a regular race series in Cambridge (the Fresh Pond area) for many years, if not decades.

The late Fred Brown (for whom a relay race is run around Lake Winnepesaukee in NH each Sept.) was the guiding spirit

and major domo of the event. He was a long-time pre-boom runner; North Medford had a MAJOR rivalry with the BAA in them thar days.

These folks have used the ol' reliable popsicle stick/tongue depressor method all along, with NO problems.

The runners' have to be responsible, too. This particular race series (5K and I think 8K) is a low-budget event and more or less on the honor system, but everyone in the Boston/ Eastern New England region understands this going in.

You NEVER know who may show up, the competition has been known to be fierce, especially if any of the local college kids or club runners show up. Definitely worth your while for historic reasons if nothing else.

YUP and Stomper, thanks for the insight

There's a small-town race I do almost every year -- it started with probably 50 or so people 20 years ago and now has close to 1,000. They do the same simple and nearly foolproof system they've always done.

After you get your race #, they put your name on the tag at the bottom and rip it off before the race. At the finish you get a card with your place on it. They have a crew of volunteers divvied up by age group and you take your card to the appropriate area, where they staple your name/# tag to your card and put it up on an easily visible bulletin board (and re-arrange the order as more come in). Viola -- you instantly know where you finished in your age group.

it is especially useful for scraping off the inside of my legs after I shit myself a quarter mile from the finish

Small town races don't have much choice...and it's good enough...I did by a digital display, because I think that's good to have at a finish line.....accurate curse..that's the most important..

we used popsicle stick at our XC meets in HS. It was hilarious- our coach wanted the winner to see a congratulatory greeting in writing, but his spelling was a bit suspect. He wrote CONGRADULATIONS! on the stick. I used to crack up when I got that stick.

I don't know if there is any correlation but I have noticed in twenty years of road racing that the races that use the sticks post the results soon after the runners come in. You can see how you ran comparatively within minutes of your finish.

The races that use bibs sometimes do this. The races that use chips - well, you might see the results in 24 hours on the net.

I've also noticed the races that use sticks tend to be well managed. The races with chips are usually disorganized - they expect the chips to do the work.

nittanyboiler wrote:

I don't know if there is any correlation but I have noticed in twenty years of road racing that the races that use the sticks post the results soon after the runners come in. You can see how you ran comparatively within minutes of your finish.

The races that use bibs sometimes do this. The races that use chips - well, you might see the results in 24 hours on the net.

I've also noticed the races that use sticks tend to be well managed. The races with chips are usually disorganized - they expect the chips to do the work.

I think another aspect to this is that races that use computers to score are often slower than hand-tabulated results. The reason for this, I believe, is that once that first stringer of tags come in, the race director can start working on the age group awards. We have a list with top 3 (or 5 or whatever) of each age group, and once we get that first stringer, we start putting each person in their appropriate age category. Most of the top age groups are filled out before the last person finishes, so we can go straight to the awards ceremony shortly after the last person is done (depending on the length of event). If you are scoring by computer, you are reluctant to do multiple sorts- you want to wait until everyone has finished, then sort out by age group, and then deal with any problems that have arisen. By the time this happens, it is often far beyond when the last finisher finished, and you now have a restless crowd.

I ran the 1st Cooper River Bridge Run. Big race! 100s of people. I recall getting a popcicle stick at the finish. Most races used them.