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Changes to race setups

Submitted by teschek_bill on

July 12, 2021

With the race season finally getting under way and scheduled to get very busy in the fall I'm going to do a bunch of these newsletters to update you all on a few things and to send out some refreshers and reminders. I'm using this Newsletter format so that the information will always be available on our website (under the Staff menu). All of the old ones I've sent over the past few years are in there and I strongly recommend reading through them all again when you get a chance. You'll probably find that you've forgotten a lot of what is in there. I wrote the things and even I find rereading them to be useful reminders! You can just click the GSRS Lead Timer Newsletter link at the bottom of this email or page to see all of them.

Sometimes these newsletter emails get trapped by spam filters, so please shoot me a text or email after you receive this so that I'll know that you got it. If I don't hear back from you in a couple of days I'll contact you to find out if you got it.

In this first newsetter I want to talk about some changes to race setups. Over the course of the past year I made a number of changes to the way some of the Runscore race setup files worked that you all need to be aware of. Those of you who do your own race setups need to know all of this, while those of you who don't won't need to know right now. But hopefully you all will be doing your own setups some day so I'm passing it on to all of you.

  1. All 2019 race setups have been upgraded (or will be by the time the 2021 event comes around), as well as the three races from 2020 that had normal events – 8TUFF, HYANNIS, and CLOVER. Going forward be sure to use these files in dropbox for templates until the race has already happened post-pandemic with the typical mass starts. Races that used staggered starts have significant changes to their setups so shouldn’t be used when they next go with a mass start. I'm keeping track of which year's setup to use next time and will let you know before each year's race. When in doubt, use 2019. If using a 2019 setup be aware that the course records in that setup will be from 2018, so check all years that the race has been run since then in your new setup, not just the 2019 event.
  2. All setups now have a DOB field in addition to BIRTHDATE. When importing pre-registration files from Excel rename any birthdate column to DOB to have the information go there instead of into the BIRTHDATE field. BIRTHDATE is now reserved for use on race day entries only where you don’t have an age and need to type the birthdate in order to have it calculate the age. Using DOB will prevent the problem that occasionally arises with incorrect birthdates automatically changing peoples’ ages when it shouldn’t.
  3. The AGE field has been expanded to three spaces in length instead of two. This accomplishes two things. One it allows for people over 100, in the rare event you get some. But more importantly, it eliminates the problem where we would type a one digit age and forget to hit carriage return (because we’re not used to having to do so after typing an age) and the one digit age would turn into two digits when you started typing the zip code immediately afterwards. It will take a little while to get used to having to hit enter after you type a two digit age, but once you’ve created that muscle memory it will be smooth sailing. To prevent accidentally creating three-digit ages the AGE field is being set to only accept ages between 1 and 109, so you'll get an error message if you type three digit ages outside that range. Only with 10 year olds is it possible to make an error that sticks.
  4. The field PHONE has been added to all setups (except some cross country-type meets) so when importing data from pre-registration Excel files, leave the phone numbers in there if you have them. It’s not information we normally need, but sometimes it comes in handy.
  5. In the race ini file there are now some new lines to help make your lives easier.
    1. Any entry without data in the last name field will now have UNKNOWN RUNNER automatically added to LAST NAME. This means that unidentified chips that cross the line won’t have blank entries any more, and you’ll never need to run the UNKMAKE.LST file again. In fact, that listing file has been deleted everywhere.
    2. Any entry with just a zero in the age field will have that field blanked.
    3. The commands SHOW ADDITIONAL, NOT FOUND ADDED, and SHOW SELECT EVENT have automatically been set to YES so that your results screens will display properly all the time.
  6. The OPERATOR field has been eliminated from all races where we aren’t likely to have more than one computer doing data entry. The only need for that information now is when there is more than one person typing and you may need to know which person’s entry pile might contain an application you are looking for – when searching for a dupe, for example.
  7. All event to database listing files have been streamlined into one @EVENT2DB.LST for all races. No need to run separate 2DBGUN, 2DBNET, and 2DBSTART files, for example. They all run with one file. Included in the @EVENT2DB listing file is the process whereby all data in the database such as DIVPL, TIME, PACE, SEXPL, DIVTOT, etc. are blanked out and then rerun. This will prevent bad data from test races or from runners who needed to be DQed from remaining in their records. In addition the process deletes the DIV field (for everyone with an age) and then recalculates their divisions based on age. Doing this will prevent someone who had their DIV previously set to MOPEN or FOPEN, who then gets DQed, from keeping that info in the DIV field. The @EVENT2DB.LST file has been added to almost every @ listing file so it will be run frequently without you having to think about it.
  8. The OPEN2DB process that makes the top X number of male and female runners have a DIV of MOPEN or FOPEN is now added to most @ file listings using a file called @OPEN2DB. This way top ten listings, and prelimin and final result listings will all show MOPEN or FOPEN for those runners' divisions. Inside the @OPEN2DB file is the number of excludes, so during setup in addition to the existing EXCLUDE lines in the @AGERES listing files you also need to check this @OPEN2DB file. The ##SETUP file has @OPEN2DB in it to make it easier to get at when doing your setups. If a race goes from no excludes to having them, you’ll only need to activate the two lines in the @OPEN2DB file and you’ll be all set there. Then activate the lines in @AGERES listing files as well.
  9. All final and preliminary results listings have been turned into @ files, even if they don’t have to run the OPEN2DB process. This way if a race decides to do excludes where in the past them have not, it’s a simple matter to activate them. By making them @ files I’ve been able to also add the ADDSUB and @EVENT2DB lines to them.
  10. @AGERES listings have been changed so that they select only on the DIV field, and don’t worry about sex and age. For one thing, having them do both never worked, and even if it looked like they were selecting on sex and age, it wasn’t working, and they were only selecting on DIV. And now when you need to change the age divisions, it involves less work.
  11. All @FINALRES files for standard distances have a column for age grade percent.
  12. In the IRESULTS2 files the DIVISION TOTAL command has been spaced over. Since this file is what the iResults Connector program uses to send emails, having it include a Division Total figure before the race is over is sending inaccurate information. It's not critical information anyway. If you want to include it after the race you'd have to reactivate that one line, but then also reload that IRESULTS2 file in the iResults Connector program. Not really necessary to do that.
  13. Due to a change in policy by Marathon Sports (who owns iresultslive.com) we can only use that website and the iResults connector program on races that use Lightbox for registration. For all other races I have been posting results to the Race Roster website. Posting results and emails is done right out of Runscore listing files. Before any race where you'll need to use this I'll work with you individually to explain how it works.
  14. A DQ field has been added to all races. Most already had it, but a few didn’t. All listing files now must include DQ = blank so that these people don’t show up in results listings. Best practice is to always DQ every bogie who shows up in the results, and not just delete their times from the screen. Those deleted times often end up coming back, so if they now say DQ in their DQ fields it won’t matter if their times pop back up in results.
  15. We now are creating a results archive on our website (thanks Chris!) and it requires that the results files be named in a particular format. So when you save results .txt files please save them with names like this:
    1. 2021 Overall.txt
    2. 2021 Top Ten.txt
    3. 2021 Age Groups.txt
    4. 2021 Teams.txt
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