You just finished running a race, but your watch disagrees with the official distance and timing. Which should you trust? While race organizers can screw up their distance or timing, they usually don't. Let's look at how races are measured and why they may disagree with your watch—which happens more often than you might realize.
How races measure your time
Chip time, also sometimes called net time, is the time from when you personally cross the start line until you personally cross the finish line. This is the time that matters for most of us.
The “chip” in the name refers to a computer chip that is usually embedded in your racing bib (the numbers you pin to your shirt). The timing system registers a data point whenever you cross a timing mat on the ground. There is a timing mat at the start and another at the end of the race. (Longer races like marathons and half-marathons may also have timing mats at a few checkpoints along the way, such as the halfway point.)
Gun time
If you are trying to actually win the race, you may need to care about gun time. Sometimes the rules specify that the person who wins the race is the person who crosses the finish line first, regardless of when they crossed the start line. If you are an elite athlete who is in the running to win a big race, you’ll generally work out arrangements with the race organizer to be at the actual start line when the race starts, so that the gun time accurately reflects how long it took you to run the race.
Watch time
Watch time is the name I’m using here for the time you see on your wristwatch, or in your running app after the fact. If you start and end the timer exactly when you cross the start and finish lines, and never pause it in between, in theory, it should be the same as the chip time. All the major brands of running watches and smartwatches do an accurate-enough job in most situations. But you shouldn't trust it too much—let me explain why.
COROS PACE 4 Ultralight Sport GPS Watch (Black Crystal, Aluminum) $279.00 at Amazon Get Deal Get Deal $279.00 at AmazonUse the chip time anytime you’re telling someone what you ran, or when you’re keeping track of your personal bests (PBs). (Only use a watch time if you ran a race with no chip time, and even then make sure to use your actual total time between the start and finish lines, no pausing. In that case, you're not trusting the watch over the chip time; you're just using it to estimate a missing chip time.)
Your watch auto-pauses. This is a convenient setting on training runs, if you often stop for a water break or to wait to cross a street. Your watch will pause your run when you stop, and resume recording when you move again. But during a race, stops aren’t free! If you stop to spend two minutes in a porta-potty, that’s still part of your race time.
On Strava, you can make your elapsed time show up first by selecting Edit Activity and then changing Type of Run to Race. If I do that on my shoe-tying run, the elapsed time with the extra 26 seconds shows up on that Strava activity.
One time, I was running a 2K race (1.2 miles) and was expecting a finish time somewhere between nine and 10 minutes. My watch registered a number in that range, but I knew it was probably off by a few seconds. When I checked the official results shortly after crossing the finish line, I had a time of 12:29, about three minutes longer than I was expecting! And in this case, I had started near the start line (it was a small, local race), so I couldn’t blame a gun/chip time difference. Turns out the timing service had accidentally added three minutes to everyone’s times. They noticed the error pretty quickly, though, and my official time was soon updated to 9:29. (I got an age group medal that day, and wrote my time on the back, which is why I remember it all these years later.)
How races measure distance
There’s one other consideration here: not just the time on your watch, but the distance. You may find that your watch’s time was within a few seconds of your chip time, but the distance seems wrong—usually too long. Or if you upload your run to Strava, you may find that the notorious "Strava tax" has been applied, appearing to shave off a bit of distance. (My best 5K in the last few years was recorded on Strava as 4.99 kilometers and thus didn't update my 5K PR. Am I mad? OK, yes.)
You can read the USATF course certification guidelines here. Of particular interest is this part: "A race course is defined by the shortest possible route that a runner could take and not be disqualified. A given runner might not follow the shortest possible route…[t]he actual path of any given runner is irrelevant. The shortest possible route is a reasonably well-defined and unambiguous route that ensures all runners will run at least the stated race distance." (Emphasis theirs.)
The only time your smartwatch’s distance should make you doubt the course measurement is if your watch thinks you covered a significantly shorter distance than the advertised length of the race. In that case, check your map to see if the GPS route looks like the route you actually ran. If you had poor GPS accuracy, your watch (or phone) might draw a line that cuts a corner that you did not actually cut.
What counts as my PB?
Your PB, or personal best, can be whatever you want it to be in your heart. But if you want to brag about your times or compare them with other runners, you'll want to talk about chip time.
This is why we distinguish race PBs from training PBs. The race course's timing is more accurate, and its certified distance is more accurate than your GPS even though the actual route that you personally run may be a bit longer than the certified distance. People tend to hit PBs at races because that's when you're the best prepared for a big effort and you have a crowd cheering you on. But the distance being potentially longer than advertised means that it is more of an accomplishment to run a "5K" race in a certain time than to run exactly five kilometers in that time.
So when another runner asks for your 5K time, they mean a race. You can proudly and accurately cite your chip time—in our example, 30:03. But you could also add: "My best training PB for that distance is 28:59, so I know I'm going to break 30 minutes officially soon." You will. I believe in you.
Hence then, the article about which should you believe after a race your official distance or your watch was published today ( ) and is available on Live Hacker ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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