Silverstone half-marathon

[El Gordo]

Hi John

Welcome to the forum, and nice to meet you yesterday.

I just mailed a reply to you, but I'll repeat it here.

You shouldn't start at the top of the field when you run a race with a champion chip. The use of the chip in your shoe is designed specially to get an accurate time, wherever you start. Your chip, and therefore your race time, begins only when you cross the mat on the start line, regardless of whether it takes you 30 minutes to reach the start.

So the good news is that I looked up your time (at http://194.77.28.97/2005/silverstone/list.php) and see that in fact you did 2:02:05, which is a great run, and even better than you thought.

The clock starts when the gun goes off, so it stands to reason that if it takes 2 minutes to reach the start, you'll pass it when it says 2 minutes. All it means is that you have to take the 2 mins off at the end of the race. Though with a chip, it's done for you.

The main point is, you did the right thing to start where you did. If you start further up, you'll annoy the faster people who will have to overtake you.

Cheers

Andy