New safety rules

I help run a lake swim in the summer on a Tuesday night. We have anything up to 80 people in the water at once. We agreed with the council that every person who wanted to swim would register. This involves a disclaimer that they are fit to swim and any medical conditions are listed,as well as contact details etc. Every member is then filed and a number is given for the season which is written on each swimmers hand. This is written on each swimmers hand during registration every week.
We have a simple chart that has numbers 1-200 (we had 180 registrations this year) with two boxes to the side of each number. As people pay every week,we tick their own personal number.....as they come out the water we then put a tick in the second box to confirm they are all in and out safely.
Im guessing this is the type of system that the coroner has in mind. It really is pretty straight forward and I cant see how all Race organisers can't take this on board.

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Originally Posted by JontheVron

I help run a lake swim in the summer on a Tuesday night. We have anything up to 80 people in the water at once. We agreed with the council that every person who wanted to swim would register. This involves a disclaimer that they are fit to swim and any medical conditions are listed,as well as contact details etc. Every member is then filed and a number is given for the season which is written on each swimmers hand. This is written on each swimmers hand during registration every week.
We have a simple chart that has numbers 1-200 (we had 180 registrations this year) with two boxes to the side of each number. As people pay every week,we tick their own personal number.....as they come out the water we then put a tick in the second box to confirm they are all in and out safely.
Im guessing this is the type of system that the coroner has in mind. It really is pretty straight forward and I cant see how all Race organisers can't take this on board.

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Jon - I can see how that works well for the swim and how it would at the finish of a race (eg handing in your last tag at the Jura finish) but I think a large part of the difficulty is that marshals who have set off on to the hill sometimes long before registration closes and who dont have reliable comms back to base (and with all preceding CPs, either direct or via base) dont know how many runners to expect and have no way of knowing if someone is overdue. I think the FRA have to publicly accept that this is likely to occur in some races and make it clear that we are making an informed decision that this is acceptable on some occasions.

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Originally Posted by Mark G

Jon - I can see how that works well for the swim and how it would at the finish of a race (eg handing in your last tag at the Jura finish) but I think a large part of the difficulty is that marshals who have set off on to the hill sometimes long before registration closes and who dont have reliable comms back to base (and with all preceding CPs, either direct or via base) dont know how many runners to expect and have no way of knowing if someone is overdue. I think the FRA have to publicly accept that this is likely to occur in some races and make it clear that we are making an informed decision that this is acceptable on some occasions.

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I agree but im not so sure if that is the point they are making. They want each person to be ticked off as they finish. If they are missing say no. 46. They can then ask each marshal who is taking numbers to see if they've had no.46 go passed. If he was running up to say CP4 but didn't make cp5. It makes the search a little easier. The individual CP's don't need to do anything but tick off numbers as they go passed.
They also want to have a list of numbers out on the hills,and not just physically how many people are out running.

Clearly "all 101 runners are back" is not good enough, as small errors that cancel each other out are all too easy to make. Each individual number/runner needs to be accounted for. There will surely be times in most races when at least some of the marshals will be unaware of which runners they should be expecting - unless all the marshals and the start/finish can communicate with each other constantly it is bound to happen. But as long as they meet up and compare notes when appropriate for the race/conditions disaster should be avoided.

Good to see Peejay adopted the Bofra format of counting all the runners through the funnel at the start and then registering each runner at the summit numbers and counting back in again.

A very safe format that is easy and works.

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Originally Posted by JontheVron

The individual CP's don't need to do anything but tick off numbers as they go passed.

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You're ignoring the point that Mark G has already made that very often the CP marshals do not know how many runners have entered nor their numbers so they will not have a nice little list on which to tick off numbers as the runners go past.

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Originally Posted by Mark G

Jon - I can see how that works well for the swim and how it would at the finish of a race (eg handing in your last tag at the Jura finish) but I think a large part of the difficulty is that marshals who have set off on to the hill sometimes long before registration closes and who dont have reliable comms back to base (and with all preceding CPs, either direct or via base) dont know how many runners to expect and have no way of knowing if someone is overdue. I think the FRA have to publicly accept that this is likely to occur in some races and make it clear that we are making an informed decision that this is acceptable on some occasions.

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we used to use some thing similar for racing dinghies at big venues, you would sign in for the race and take a numbered elastic band when you returned to shore you put the band back on it's numbered peg. if it wasn't returned to the peg within 20 minutes of coming ashore you got disq.

On marshalling I always take a number(even if not asked to) and write a time they pass in 5-10 minutes blocks. if asked if I've seen no 63 not only can I say yes but give an approximate time.

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Originally Posted by IanDarkpeak

we used to use some thing similar for racing dinghies at big venues, you would sign in for the race and take a numbered elastic band when you returned to shore you put the band back on it's numbered peg. if it was returned to the peg within 20 minutes of coming ashore you got disq.

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Pit rules Ian, you took a cheque when you went down and handed back when you came up.
Perfect every time.
Maybe one to follow?

That is effectively what the RO at Langdale did when he collected numbers in at the end.

I can't see how marshals can tick numbers off a checklist when they could be on an exposed summit, possibly in bad weather and at the early checkpoints during a popular race when the runners are coming through thick and fast.

What would be useful at the finish, would be numbers with a tear off strip that can be pulled off on the finish line, as well as recording the number as happens now.