Chip Time versus Gun Time

The thing is going in you should know that as most races (except races with wave starts) go by this so it sucks if you don't start at the front but if you think you can win jockey for position.  If the race is large enough for it to be a problem chances are most people aren't getting in the top 3 for it to be a big deal and from there all I care about is my chip time for PR purposes.

At the start of road races I place myself relative to where I expect to finish plus a little extra to account for people placing themselves incorrectly. It seems to generally work out well.

Slow runners who intentionally start up front are doing a disservice to themselves and the other racers. Placing yourself between the finish line and a whole bunch of runners who are faster than you just isn't a good idea for all kinds of reasons.

Your experience is vastly different from mine as I have never seen a road race where the overall or AG places were based on chip time and not gun time. Perhaps you're confusing wave-start triathlons with road races? In the former, chip time is the same as gun time, with each wave having a different starting time. Also in a time-trial start, winners are determined by chip time from their staggered start. But never in road races. Not IMHExperience.

I can tell ya this for sure that the Green Bay Marathon does award AG's by chip time but the overall awards/prize money are given by gun time.  I was pretty sure this was true but I just double checked it on their website.  I also really thought this was typical but don't have any other specific examples off the top of my head.  I knew og the GB marathon since it's the one I ran participated in.

The New York Road Runners (the group that organizes the NYC Marathon, as well as dozens of smaller races throughout the year is the only group I can think of that uses chip time for age group scoring.  But many of their races have huge fields (the Bronx half marathon had over 3000 runners in February for example) in large part because of the 9 race qualifying process to get guaranteed entry in the following year's race, so things are a bit different with them.  And they are about to start seeded corrals for all of their races.

From their website:http://www.nyrr.org/races/procedures/race_scoring.asp :

Official Time

This is so true and I think there ought to be time penalties for this!  I signed up for the Disney 1/2 marathon recently and was looking at last year's finish times.  I found the race results with the 'chip time' and 'clock time' (or whatever they called the times) and it was totally obviously who lied!  People who had only a few seconds diferrence between the two times obviously started in the front of the herd yet some had times that indicated they should have been in last corral as they must have waked much of the course.  I suppose someone could have had a 'bad day' but there were way too many like this.

~Mike