Standard formats

SITiming is designed to handle relays that have one relay leg per team member (for example, forest relays with three legs and three runners, sprint relays with four legs and four runners).  In this context, by leg we mean the unique set of controls that each team member runs in a relay.  If you plan a variation on this format (for example, where you want competitors to run multiple legs), it’s likely that you will strike problems when trying to set up the race in SITiming. SITiming might be able to accommodate different relay formats, but some tweaking could be required. 

Why does SITiming impose a one runner-one SI card limitation?

When a runner downloads, the only identifying information available to SITiming is the SICard number. If there are multiple instances of that number associated with the event, which instance is the correct one? One option would be to compare the course information (controls visited) with the courses specified for that SICard and assign the result to that SICard+course combo, but that will only work where the runner has not mispunched, requiring organiser intervention if there is no match - simple enough for small events, but an organisational headache for competitions with hundreds of teams.

Workarounds 

1 – races with multiple legs per runner (for example, four legs, two runners: runner 1 - runner 2 – runner 1 – runner 2).

• Setup the relay  as a four-person relay and assign the SICard for the two team members to legs one and two for the first use of each card – initially, the SICard number for the third and fourth legs will be unassigned. When competitors finish legs 1 or leg 2 they download as normal. After they have downloaded for the first time, SITiming will allow their SICards to be assigned to the third and fourth legs. One way of doing this quickly and accurately is to use SITiming’s Punch Registration option (Entries>>Registration>>Punch registration) using a master station in Clear mode to allocate the SICard to leg 3 (or 4) and clear it ready for a second use. This process should easily be doable while their teammates are out running. 

2 - One-person relays

• In one-person relays (“Hagaby” format) there is a mass start and runners normally complete two or more short loops before running a common final leg, which is much longer than the earlier legs. The shorter loops serve the purpose of spreading the field to minimise following in the final long leg (for example, three short loops S1, S2, and S3, followed by the long loop L1).
• In the current version of SITiming, this race format can only be set up by creating multiple courses that are simply combinations of the short and long courses – e.g. S1, S2, S3, L1; S2, S3, S1, L1 etc.

Help is on the way!

The SITiming developers inform me that a future release of SITiming will lift the one runner-one SICard restriction, but for the moment, it remains, so for any course planners out there hoping to organise a variation on the standard format:

1. Find out if SITiming supports your variation;
2. Don’t advertise the event on Eventor until you have either confirmed that SITiming supports the format or figured out a way of fitting it into SITiming’s requirements.

One more thing

Setting up relay teams in SITiming should be coordinated with the course planning in Condes:

Condes

1. Set up the teams by allocating relay classes, team numbers, and leg variations (called “gaffles” in SITiming) (Relay >>Open Team Allocations…).
2. Export course data (Export >>Export Event Data>>Export Event data (IOF XML)… (select  “Export only relay variations used by relay teams”).
3. Export teams from the “Relay Teams” tab (Export to XML …).

SITiming

1. Import the courses allocated to your relay teams from the file created in step 2 above (Courses >> Import XML Courses).
2. Import the team allocations from file created in step 3 above (Entries>>Import/Export Entries>> Import XML Gaffles). Leave the “Default Relay Class” line blank if you want to import all relay classes. At this stage the team info in SITiming is team number, optionally team name, and leg gaffles – the team member detail is added once teams are finalised.
3. Relay classes must be specifically defined in SITiming – they are not imported from the course data file generated in Condes (Courses>> Relay Classes>>Add Relay Class).

Once the relay team members have been finalised you can add actual relay member data to the teams created when you import the team gaffles. The simplest way to do this is to create a spreadsheet and import the data from a CSV file (Entries>>Import/Export Entries>Relay Teams Import). The CSV file layout is described in the “Help>>View Help” on the SITiming Relay Teams Import page.

Publishing results in Eventor

Unfortunately, there is an incompatibility between SITiming and Eventor when it comes to relays, so publishing relay results from SITiming to Eventor can only be done via the Documents and Links option:

• In SITiming: Results>>Print Relay Results (use the “Microsoft Print to PDF” option).
• In Eventor: Edit>>Documents and Links>>Add other document (upload the file produced in SITiming).