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Chester County Press

Run the Day named as official timer of 2015 Kennett Run

05/12/2015 12:54PM ● By Richard Gaw
Since its beginning 26 years ago, the Kennett Run has earned high praise not just for the funding it raises for the Kennett Square community, but for its fastidious attention to detail, which has been made possible from year-long planning and a dedicated army of volunteers.

Ask any particpant to name the one Achilles heel in this otherwise well-oiled machine, however, and chances are that some will answer, "It takes too long for me to get my race result."

While the vast majority of runners and walkers at the Kennett Run spend their post-race experience at Anson B. Nixon Park socializing with friends and the community, a small portion of serious competitors converge around the finish line, anxious to get thier race results. The task of providing finshing times for men and women in 5- and 10-K races in as many as 16 different age groups is a daunting one for any timer, but in recent years, competitors have complained that they were waiting too long for results, or simply, waiting for results that never came.

With this in mind, the Kennett Run Charities, Inc. officers and board directors have named Run the Day Race Management as the official timer for the 2015 Kennett Run. Based in Aston, Pa., Run the Day coordinates the timing for more than 230 races a year in Chester, Montgomery, Bucks and Philadelphia counties, as well as in southern New Jersey and Delaware.

At this year's event, competitors will be linked into the ChronoTrack system, the leading chip system in the country and one that is used at 95 percent of the biggest races in the United States, including the New York City Marathon.

Competitors will wear a ChronoTrack Systems B-Tag, which is affixed to the back of the race bib. At the start and finish of the race, runners will trample over special timing mats that contain antennas that receive the signal from each individual runner's tag. This allows the system to track hundreds, or even thousands, of competing runners and their individual tags.

"It's by far the best equipment, and we achieve over 99 percent effective reads," said Tim Kreuger of Run the Day. "These are the most technologically advanced chips in the world."

Kreuger said that the system will allow Run the Day to print results more quickly.

"We start printing results every fifty runners in, so the time between the race finishes for a runner and the time they'll get their results will be mere minutes," he said. "Soon after you arrive at the finish line, your time will be printed and ready to read. It will also be on the Kennett Run website by noon that day, and competitors will be able to get downloadable finishes from it."

To learn more about this year's Kennett Run, visit www.kennettrun.net.

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, e-mail [email protected].