Thursday, March 19, 2009

FAT vs Hand Timed

Some definitions:

FAT - Fully Automatic Timing - this is when the meet uses a camera at the finish line to find who won and what there times were (accurate up to the .01 of a second)

Hand Timed - Just as it seems, some one used there watch to time a race

All of our invites will be FAT, while the dual meets are hit or miss. (Andrew Hill had FAT, we have hand timed, Del Mar will be FAT, Westmont should be FAT, not sure about Santa Teresa)

When the gun goes off, the FAT timer starts immediately so there is no reaction time. With hand timing, reaction time does play a part. How we reconcile this is by using conversions.

To convert hand time to FAT:

Round hand time up to the nearest tenth and then for all events less then 400 meters add .24; for the 4*100 and 400 add only .14 (timers and starter are near each other so it takes less time to react.)

Example: Erika ran a 12.91 today so we round that up to 13.0, then add .24 so her time is 13.24, to let people know we converted it we put a lowercase f.
13.24f.

In the 400 Vaziry ran a 57.22. So we round up to 57.3 and then add .14. So his 400 time was 57.44 f

The significance of the f is to show it is a converted time. When you see performance lists it may have:
27.63F
27.74 f
27.75 F
28.01 F
28.04 f

The upper case F shows FAT and the lowercase is converted hand.

Just in case people are confused about the PRs. I converted them all.

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