Message from Manx Timing Solutions
We would like to apologise to competitors in the 100 mile and Starlight Stroll Walk. As you know, we experienced severe delays in real-time results display from around 9pm. This resulted in a lack of information to competitors as to the number of laps completed.
The reason for this lay in the way the system recalculates ALL lap times for a competitor as each new lap is recorded. Once the number of laps reached around 80, the system simply could not keep up with the load and went into arrears.
Once we realised the nature of the problem, we made strenuous efforts overnight to find ways of clearing the backlog. However, as you will appreciate, it is difficult/dangerous to modify the logic in a complex computer program mid-event. At around 3am, we worked out a way to divert the backlog to another machine, which helped us get back to real-time. We also worked very hard throughout the night to take individual snapshots for each active competitor so that up to date lap info could be passed on to them in the meantime. This was not easy to do and was extremely stressful for us.
Please be assured that, throughout the event, the system continued to collect lap data flawlessly. Please check on http://www.manxtimingsolutions.com/Results/EventResults.aspx where you will see a full record of all 13,526 laps recorded.
Also you may be assured that we will be making changes to avoid any similar problem in the future. I would add that, in the 6 years that we have been operating, this is the first time that this problem has appeared and was due to the very high number of laps associated with the event.
Following discussion with the judges, it has been agreed that, for the handful of 20-mile walkers who stopped after 38/39 laps, when they believed they had completed the full course, we have manually added additional laps to make them up to the full 40. These have been calculated based on their average lap times over the event.
Best Regards,
Graham (Manx Timing Solutions).