With Amazon’s recent announcement that it plans to use drone helicopters to make purchase order deliveries directly to customers’ homes as early as 2015, we’ve been thinking—how can we take that same creativity and inspiration and use it to revolutionize race timing?
We work hard to make sure that our services use current technology. That’s why we have created a Competitive Timing mobile app that is available at most races we time. Our mobile app allows users to download, search and view race results instantaneously from anywhere. We also allow users to post results to Facebook or receive test messages. For those of you who frequent our races, you know our results kiosks allow you to print race results right after crossing the finish line and new for 2014, we will have touch displays at the results area for easier viewing.
All these apps, platforms and kiosks are great… but it’s not exactly a drone helicopter delivering your online purchase to your door within hours. We are working on improvements for the next season, but they don’t include drone helicopters yet. So readers, please tell us, what do you consider to be the future of race timing? Send us your wildest ideas. Is it a virtual pacer in the form of a robot that runs the pace of your previous course PRs? Is it Google glasses that send you your predicted course time if you continue at the same pace? Or is it the virtual wild dogs that threaten to eat your leg to keep you motivated through the last three miles of a marathon?
Send us your ideas. The top ones will be put into R&D immediately!