A German court recently passed a landmark ruling restricting the right of the security services to spy on the computers of suspected criminal and terrorists. German society is nervous about these things because of the history of the former East German Stasi and the Nazi era Gestapo. Questions over the monitoring of citizens is often a topic of debate in Europewhere the degree of perceived state intrusion varies considerably. The United Kingdom security services are said to use some of the most advanced systems in the world to monitor criminal activity and while it is said that there are strict laws to prevent misuse, there will always be a question mark over how easily systems intended for one purpose can ‘evolve’ into being used for something else. It is perhaps a sad reflection of modern times that society needs to have these measures operating to keep us safe. What has this go to do with running - absolutely nothing.
The use of chip timing is almost universally expected at well organized races, except many of the off road ultra distance events. The small number of entrants and possibly access problems to position timing mats make use of the technology impractical . Yet timing systems have significantly improved the recording and subsequent publication of results, so much so that races that don’t use them often find their award ceremony is devoid of recipients because they’ve all gone home by the time the results are announced! At long distance events the significance of timing systems has, in my opinion, less to do with timing and more as a means to bring the ‘thrill of the chase’ to the attention of fiends and family back home. If you hang around fellow runners that run ultras, you’ll know what I mean. A role of a runner’s crew is to handle calls from friends asking for progress reports. It isn’t a very precise science as cellphone coverage is often lacking in remote regions but having a means to get word home does help bring some of the excitement into the lives of those not taking part. A few of the more established off road ultras provide an on-line results service which is often nothing more than an excel spreadsheet updated regularly with split times. The Western States 100 uses a map to display a runner’s estimated position based upon their last known pace and adds predicted times to the next check and/or finish line. Two years ago a friend ran this race and I ‘wasted’ nearly an entire day monitoring his progress. He ultimately finished within the cutoff time but his estimated pace suggested it was going to a close thing and that even caused me to get up in the night to check the latest news. And he thought running it was tough!
The technology exists where an individual runner could be monitored much more accurately, but cost is probably a prohibitive factor as to why it isn’t used. Maybe one day that will become less of an obstacle, then ultra races would truly open up to a wider audience. But image watching from the comfort of home as your runner appears to get lost and deviates well off course, or upon finishing a race you are remined by an official of the number of times you had taken bathroom breaks because they’d been watching each time you took a side trail!
Maybe as in other walks of life, too much surveillance isn’t always a good thing?
