Monday, March 14, 2011

A quick note: race results

When you run a marathon in the US, your family and friends can get race updates while you run, in real time. Every time I ran Boston, my wife would get an update when I passed a 10K marker, and after the race I would grab my cellphone out of my bag and check my result, accurate to the second.

Not so in bike racing though. Not only do you have to travel miles into nowhere land, and rise at some ungodly hour to race in front of a stack of windmills, or -if you are lucky- a herd of cows, but you won't see results until hours later. And most likely these results will be wrong to boot. Your friends and relatives on the other hand will have to wait several days for those results to appear on the web. And that in the land of Google!

NCNCA has only recently discovered the race chip and even with that chip, it still took several days before the results of the first race, the Snelling road race were posted. Since I did not go there I don't know how accurate these results were, but if history is any indication, then don't hold your breath.

When you race in Belgium however, your friends and family will get accurate results within hours. Because of the time difference, these people will often find results as soon as they wake up on the very day you raced. You will get results within 15 minutes. Unlike cows, people do not like to wait around for podiums!

To find results for your loved ones who race in Belgium, go to wielerbond vlaanderen  and look at the bottom right under "Wedstrijdkalender en Resultaten." Find the city where the race was held and look for a star icon. As soon as results are official they will appear there. You click the star and voila, accurate, up to date results.

To find out about categories and the race calendar, check this out.

And finally, a few pictures of Annelise climbing a 50ft indoor wall.

Annelise taking on the 10a/b


 Here is another one:

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