When Timing Is Everything Bloomsday’S Biggest Race Starts At The Finish Line

For a million dollars, answer this question: Timing hundreds of runners per minute during Bloomsday is like:

(A) Choreographing a ballet.

(B) Unclogging a drain.

(C) Herding cattle.

(D) All of the above.

If you guessed D, that’s correct. If you think you’ll get $1 million, well, that’s incorrect.

In any case, keeping track of the moment every runner crosses the Bloomsday finish line is no easy task.

Since 1979, Bloomsday organizers have employed a multiple-chute system that relies heavily on volunteers. At the finish line, runners are guided into parallel chutes, past a series of volunteers who track times and issue tags to runners.

In 1978, Bloomsday’s second year, the field grew to 5,000, almost fivefold from its inaugural year. That presented a problem as irritated runners waited in line on the old course to navigate a narrow path to the finish.

“It was like pulling the plug in the bathtub and watching stuff not go down,” said race founder Don Kardong. “We had to come up with an idea on how to try to effectively time everyone.”

So the chute system was implemented for one of the world’s largest timed road races.

“The idea was not more than a couple of years old at the time,” Kardong said. “But over the years, our volunteers developed a system that is unique. I don’t know of any other race that uses this. Most just put up a big clock at the finish line and they let people see their time as they cross.”

Jerry O’Neal, a member of Bloomsday’s board of directors and a native Montanan, said the chute system is like herding cattle.

“You’ve got to herd them into the right chute at the right time,” O’Neal said.

There’s practically no way in a race featuring such a crush of humanity to time every participant without the chute system. More than 300 volunteers are needed to ensure accuracy, Kardong said.

The chute system does not apply to the elite runners, top 100 men and top 50 women or competitive wheelchair racers. Those racers are timed individually.

For the rest, as participants cross the finish line, they make their way to a runners chute. The number of finishers coming in determines the number of chutes open at any one time. As many as 12 chutes can be open at once.

At the peak of the race, 600 to 700 runners cross the finish line per minute.

At each chute, a supervisor keeps an eye on a time clock. The timer notifies a “time-frame dispenser” each time 30 seconds elapses.

The dispenser has a variety of markers with times at 30-second intervals. As the runners cross, the dispenser pulls a tag with their time grouping: 1 hour, 1:00:30, 1:01:00, for examples.

The runner then hands the dispenser a tag distributed at registration with his or her name, age, sex and address on it. There also is a bar code on the tag, which later will be scanned by a computer.

After that, the dispenser hands the markers and tags to the “time-frame runner.” That person hustles the markers to the end of the 275-foot-long, 3-foot-wide chute for processing.

From there, the “tag-collection team” gathers the tickets and places them on a spindle. Each ticket has the runner’s name and a bar code to verify identity.

The tickets then are taken to the Crescent Court so the bar codes and times can be scanned into computers. Finally, the times are sent electronically to The Spokesman-Review for publication.

Amazingly, in the 23 years the race has been run, race organizers never have experienced a major catastrophe regarding times.

And former Bloomsday race director Sylvia Quinn says she knows why.

“The volunteers make that race,” Quinn said. “Without them, it couldn’t happen.”

There is a method of timing races that may render the chute system obsolete. Many races around the country now outfit runners with a computer chip they tie into their shoelaces to keep track of their times.

But Kardong doesn’t see that in Bloomsday’s future any time soon.

“One, the system we have works,” Kardong said. “It’s unnerving to shift to a different system.”

“Two, to implement that we would have to add $3 per runner to the cost of the existing $10 race fee.

“And three, you have to retrieve those chips later. Most races that use them don’t have 50,000 people bent over untying their laces at the end.”