Frank Meza...marathon runner.

[bobz]

Are pace mats expensive?

Seems a marathon could just put one down every mile or so - then the trying and get on and off the course in time would end up taking more time than just running between them.

Of just a gps for everyone.

Or if you want to run Boston say - you have to send them your official time and the .gpx file for the race you did it.

I'm still mostly of the view that this isn't that big a problem; nearly all race runners are chasing whatever challenge they care to for personal reasons, not for "bragging rights". That, and no one cares all that much what anyone else's race time is.

But, since you asked, we're actually very close to where optical systems can cheaply track runners much more intensively. Race timing and data handling is currently contracted out (mostly) to the "chip" (and electronic mats) system providers. Current tech (just read this in Slate a few days ago) would allow them to additionally include automated video camera checks, of the majority of runners who don't have their race numbers half-crumpled into their shorts, for a very modest one-time investment in cameras, plus a few hundred dollars a year in software licenses. The only thing stopping them is that they'd need to spend some real money on programmers to do the DB etc system integration.

Failing that, just putting up a few time-coded HD video cameras on the course (and the bigger races probably already do), not networked to a DB or anything, should make it relatively easy to confirm that award contenders, and anyone else who gets red-flagged by the chip splits, most likely did the race for real.

[LHutz Esq]

I was thinking of all those folks chasing a Boston qualifier - every few years or so the times are lowered - how much of that is because of Frank types? Seems a bit unfair to those people to not at least try and catch the cheaters considering what they are paying to enter some of these big marathons. I found a chip mat on the googles for $1000 bucks or so- so an extra couple pennies for each of 20,000 or so that run the LA Marathon?

[SumJongGuy]

Why can't they just require all competitors to wear a small GPS device that allows the officials to see the route they traveled in real time and review the track taken before certifying the times? Certainly they could employ a little AI to flag anomalies in the data for 20 thousand entrants and manually validate the top 100 or so in each major category.

[bobz]

Eh, not even AI; just a half page of Python script would flag the few dozen people worthy of a video check. Which would also be easy, because a strong race pace is an even, predictable race pace; a simple calculation would indicate what time to expect someone at a particular location, and the runner should show up on video within a couple minutes of that. Very doable; I'm sure some are already doing something like this, and the others should step it up. And much of this could easily be automated with cheap OCR systems.

[Danno]

RIP Rosie Ruiz. https://www.espn.com/olympics/tracka...cutter-dies-66