Do you want chips with that?

As you will no doubt have seen from my previous post, this Sunday I will be running round Newcastle for 13.1 miles (21 km) trying to avoid the Newkie-Brown stains and being mugged in South Shields.

So far, I have had 32 items in the post regarding this effort, the most interesting of which recently was a plastic timer chip... Apparently the idea of this is to Velcro it round your ankle so that they can cleverly record how long you take from passing the start line to falling over the finish line, surely an ideal opportunity for me to take a look inside no?


So i carefully opened it up a crack and found a small electronic chip inside, the chip is activated when the race begins, again when you cross the start mats (this could be some 40 minutes later!) and for the final time when you pass the finish mats. It holds information about who i am (name, address) and my race number so that the details can be linked with the two times (race start to finish and my actual start to finish). The chips are then used to send text messages to all competitors about their times, and in the results publication so that I (and an embarrassing number of other people) will know exactly how long I took. What i need to do is make someone who will finish in under 1 hour forty five to run round with my chip, instead of the real story:




I had done the above picture with sunshine but apparently its meant to piss it down all day in Newcastle, yay lucky me! And no i have done no training in the rain...

There are definitely flaws in this plan though: what if you don’t finish for example? I have it on good authority (from someone who makes chips like these) that they don’t actually cost the £20 that the organisers say they do, more like 20p so basically you should just bin it. They hold very little information or memory so are no use on the recycling front either...


So this weekend i am combining sport and nerdiness - what are you up to?!