Ok so I posted a few months back with some questions about starting an Indoor Tri and got a lot of helpful responses. Well my event is a go now so if you are in the dayton area the last weekend of feb. you should come.
Ok shameless plug is over so on to my real question. I have an idea on how to score the event but wanted some feedback from others as to how it sounds.
Heres what im thinking. Upon check in each entrant will get a 3x5 notecard with their name and race # on it. They will also get body marked with their number on their right shoulder (maybe) to make sure people dont swap cards.
at each leg of the race the entrant will give their card to the scorer who will record their distance on the card and give it back to them to take to the next leg.
At the end the entrant will surrender their score card to the official score keeper for entry into the computer.
My concerns are mostly with the card getting wet after the swim and people just not taking the card seriously and losing it. But this is the best idea I have come up with.
For these races, each person has a volunteer who follows them around and keeps track of stuff, and then when you are finished, the athlete signs the official card for scorekeeping. This lets the athlete just do their thing–it’s easy to miscount swim laps or indoor track laps.
Contact the owners of www.eliteendeavors.com They have been holding an indoor tri in Toledo for years. It is 15 minutes in each sport and they have a formula to rank and compare times.
S
I like the idea of each person getting a volunteer but I just dont know if we will have that many volunteers. The way I was thinking I could, if I had to, double up with volunteers. So I would have 1 person watching two swimmers and marking down their laps. Then 1 person watching two bikes and two treadmills etc. We can only accomodate 4 people per wave so if I fill my race with 50 people its going to be a long day.
The indoor tris I’ve done have had lap counters/timers that stayed at their stations (bikes/pool/track). Each had a clipboard and recorded the time for the athletes (they kept a watch running and just wrote the start and finish times (they typically started the athlete at the start of a minute to make calcs easier, and the time for each event was computed as part of the results…this also makes sure athletes don’t spend forever recovering in the locker room between events). Athletes were assigned an event order, so all stations could be fully used. If you have 4 slots for each event, then 12 people can “race” at once. You can do rounds (all 12 finsh the events before the next 12 start), or just give folks a lot of rest time while the other waves finish their first event.
In some races there were lap counters, but the athlete was responsible for timing themselves, and reported the time to the lap counter, who just writes it down next to their race number. You don’t really need bodymarking, but it makes the experience more authentic ;).
Indoor tris are never going to equate to outdoor ones, since the indoor bikes cannot compensate well for aero position, or rider weight; but these are early season fun events and a way to get some speedwork in…it’s not Kona. There are always going to be a few TypeA folks who will want to race the event anyway, let them group together in a wave so they can race head-to-head.
you could look at a company called write in the rain. they make waterproof paper and pen products. just getting out of the marines i have used their stuff in more than favorable conditions and they worked great.