Allocating Trackers

We published a version of this on Facebook following the Lakeland 100 / 50 event.

How do we do it? handing out well over 2000 trackers and making sure the right person gets the right tracker? Does it work? is it fully charged? Will it last till the end of the event?

Many events in the UK now use trackers and its not unusual to see a table full of trackers with bib numbers or names attached to them. Whilst that approach may work with say 200 or 300.. it won't work with over 2000. The space needed let alone collecting the right tracker. That's not to say we don't use that approach on events of that size, just that won't work on the Lakeland 100 / 50.

For this event we charged all of the trackers up in the week before the event sent the settings and confirmed they were working. We also tested the timing chips in our trackers to make sure they were all functioning and then powered the trackers down.

We have a bespoke app on some industrial scanners that scan the participants bib number and then the next available tracker. The app checks the battery status of the tracker, and if its powered on. If you ever hear the sound of crashing glass - the app is saying hang on something is not right. The allocation of the tracker only happens if everything is right.

What makes this event a challenge is that we needed the trackers to last from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon.. longer in case one goes home. However we also want the ping rate to be the best it could be. To keep it simple we allocated the same trackers to both the 100 and the 50 - so we didn't have the faff of asking what event someone was doing and selecting a tracker off a different pile.

There is a bit of secret sauce in here - in that we set all of the trackers up on a 5 min interval. But on arrival at Dalemain they automatically switched to a 60s interval. At Dalemain the mobile signal often tanks so this had to be an automatic thing and we didn't want those trackers on 60s all day Friday whilst 50 runners are doing laps of the event centre.

For the 100 we resent settings after registration closed and put them on a 90s interval. And for both events we had the trackers switch to 30s interval when they were 3km away from Coniston.

Whilst that all seems simple - occasionally people make it complicated. To make sure we have given everyone a tracker, we scan all of the left over race packs which removes them off the active participant list. In theory everyone left on the list should have a tracker.

Sadly we do have people pick up packs with no intention of running. It does cause a lot of problems - invariably we try and call them - but also double check to see if they had a photo taken. Our nightmare is that someone starts without a tracker - it does happen, particularly where English is not someone's first language and they misunderstand the purpose of the device. So if you pick up a pack on a race and don't intend to take part - expect a phone call. If you want the map etc.. arrange to collect it after the event has started.

For the 100 we had readers up by the cattle grid, just outside Coniston. This was to verify all that had collected a tracker had actually started. Its not unusual for people to register, come to the start and change their mind. The result is people swearing at us that X's tracker is not working - the reader helps us confirm how many exactly are heading up the Walna Scar Road. An approximate number is just not good enough.

The 50 was a bit more complicated.. if interested I'll rabbit on a bit more about how we managed the wave starts, but also how we managed to account for all 2450 trackers and know that there was 1 missing before the presentation on Sunday had finished. Comment below if interested.

James (Open Tracking)

Photo of Lord Mills