February 18, 2020
I want to follow-up on some of the items in the long newsletter I sent not-so-long ago. Bob had some good comments and suggestions.
- Regarding the issue of questionable or missing genders in the database. if you do have some of these you should let the race directors know about them so they can either contact the runners (if they have time) or make a note on their registration file to ask them when they show up to pick up their number. We don't want to just ignore a potential issue if we can get the race director to resolve it prior to the race.
- In the discussion about adding a minimum or maximum accepted time to SimpleClient, always err on the side of a runner having a really fast finish. For example, for a 5k, use a 14 minute finish time (unless Joshua Cheptegei is running in which case even 13 minutes might not be fast enough!). If for some reason you use a time that someone beats, just close out SimpleClient and restart it with a more appropriate min or max time.
- The wheelchair section needs a complete rewrite:
Wheelchairs and Duos
We don't often see wheelchairs at smaller races any more. Fifteen or twenty years ago it wasn't all that uncommon, but nowadays it's usually only the big races where you see them. But every now and again you can get surprised when a wheelchair shows up, so you need to know what to do to score them properly as they almost always get a head start. The first thing you need to know is the 'differential' between the start time of the wheelchair(s) and the start time of the main field. Start a Time Machine and/or stopwatch on the wheelchair start, and then stop it when the main group of runners starts. Make note of that time differential.
For wheelchair results, use the separate WHEELS.LST file. You may need to edit it a bit to make it work properly, but usually this will be set to look for times in event WHEELS. That means you need to type the wheelchair athlete's time and bib number into event WHEELS. You can get their time from the overall results when their chip was read at the finish line, but remember that if they started early this is no longer the correct time. So either do the math on their chip time to make it correct for them, then put it into event WHEELS, or put a line in your WHEELS.LST to add the differential amount to event WHEELS. Have it read EVENT (tab) WHEELS (break) PLUS followed by the differential time. And you'll need to make sure that they have a Y in the WHEELCHAIR field of their record in the database. Your regular results files should all require the WHEELCHAIR field to be blank, otherwise the wheelchair will show up in the regular results if they have anything in event TIME. I also recommend having a separate timepiece to record the times for all wheelchair athletes who start early if possible. Dedicate a Time Machine or a stopwatch to them and find a volunteer or two who can just look for wheelchairs and record their finish times and bib numbers.
A very common situation you may run into is a "Duo" or "Assisted" wheelchair, where a runner will be pushing another participant in a wheelchair. These people should usually be treated as runners and left in the overall results (unless the race has a separate category for them) so you should not put a Y in the WHEELCHAIR field for them. But, they may very well start early so you'll still need to deal with a time differential The time from their chip will be off by the amount of the differential. You'll need to find their time in the results and change it by adding the amount of the differential to their chip time. If you do this, keep in mind that if the times get reloaded for any reason their old, faster time will reappear and you'll need to fix it again.
I don't recommend leaving regular wheelchairs in the results as we do for duos, because they will be given a division place in the overall results listing and could confuse the results.