MapRun course timings were about 5 seconds quicker than SI timings for the faster runners – fully explained by the placing of the start and finish controls being in a slightly different position. There was virtually no difference in the offset between runners showing that results would have been the same in both systems. The course timing difference was up to 15 seconds for the slower runners. This was because they were travelling at a much slower speed over the extra distance. Again, there was little difference in the offset for similarly paced competitors. Therefore, had it been a full MapRun course with no SI timing the results would have been coherent.

In summary, trying the parallel timings systems was an interesting experiment which demonstrated that MapRun is an effective method of putting on events, particularly local ones. Added to this is the fact that very little volunteer input is needed on the day as events can be set-up in minutes by one person – something I would very much have appreciated in Saturday’s torrential storm.

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