Race Report - The Wild Dart Swim

Timing back to back events whilst having a day job is a bad idea. Timing back to back events whilst having a day job and very little sleep is an even worse idea. This became very apparent last Saturday morning, at about 3am as I was attempting to turn around my car on a farm track I never should have gone down. It's probably fair to say my prayer life had a significant boost that morning as the smoke rose from the clutch.

It was a lesson in realising a) whilst my Skoda Octavia is good, it's no mach for a Land Rover on rough ground b) I cannot do it all by myself and c) there are going to be times when I have to trust others to put out timing checkpoints.

The event had two water exits / finish lines, two transition checkpoints, and one aquathlon finish line at the end of the run. I was using two remote timing setups (phone plus speaker plus two bluetooth NFC scanners) and four bluetooth NFC scanners connected to the tablet at the finish. I was also using the finish tablet to time the start waves, of which there were many.

Generally it went well, however there were a few of timing lessons-

1. The bluetooth connection issue reared it's head again - despite multiple test in the week saying all was fine
2. On the remote timing points do not click finish before collecting splits to the main device
3. Result editing on the webscorer app is really good
4. The speakers on the remote points need to built into the housings
5. Test, test and test again...