PocketTimer Pro Manual

PocketTimer Pro User Manual

Racers

Introduction

In order to score your race, you need to create one or more racers (hopefully more than one!). You can add racers on the device itself, or by downloading (inputting) the information from a file (the details of the different types of ways in which you can download a file are discussed in the Input / Output chapter of the manual). Unless all your entries are on race day, or you have a very small race, entering the data from a file will almost certainly be your primary method, but you'll still need to know how to add (or edit) racers manually, in case there are any race-day additions or changes.

Manually Adding Racers

Tap the + button to add a new racer. Each racer has the following information:

Bib# is one of the two pieces of mandatory information. Bib#'s must be numbers. If you add racers manually, the software will search and automatically fill in the first available number, but of course you can change it if that's not what you want.

Age is used mainly just for output, but is also used if you will be scoring a "Masters" category in addition to your regular categories (see the Scoring chapter) for more details.

M or F is used to be able to provide results by gender (in addition to the categories). If the racers you are timing aren't human and don't have a gender (perhaps they're sailboats with mixed-gender crews), you can simply leave the value as M.

Last Name and First Name are self-explanatory. Names may include any characters, such as accented characters like é or even be in non-Latin alphabets like 史蒂夫.

City (,State) is only for use on the output, to help identify racers when someone is reading the results. "State" is in parentheses because in most races, most of the entrants are from the same state, so it is common only to list the State when it is different from the State where the race is held. However, this is entirely up to you. You can even use this field for something else, for example, a Team name. Again, this entry is not actually used by the software except when displaying results.

Handicap is for individual handicaps. This entry supercedes any handicap that is entered for the category, and is totally unnecessary if the racer starts at the same time as the rest of the racers in their category. It should only be used for two purposes: when a racer starts early ("Early starts" are common in many ultramarathons for slower runners), and for time-trial type races where every racer starts at a different time (perhaps a minute apart).

Race# is the race (1-6) in which the racer is participating.

Category is the other mandatory information for a racer (in addition to the Bib#). As you select the Race# for the racer, the list of categories in the pop-up menu will reflect the categories you have created for that race. You must choose one.

After entering the information, tap Save to save the new racer. The information you have entered is cleared, the Bib# incremented, and you're ready to enter another racer. When you finished, tap Done.

To edit a racer's info, on the main racer screen tap once to highlight the racer and then a second time to display the Edit Racer screen. Modify the information as desired, and tap Update.

To delete a racer, on the main racer screen tap once to highlight the racer and the tap the garbage can icon to delete the racer. To clear the entire list of racers, just tap on the garbage can icon when no racer is highlighted. In both cases, you'll be given a chance to confirm that's what you reallly want.

Downloading a Racers File

Create a simple text file (as with the various options for input, some subtle details of creating the file are discussed in the Input / Output chapter of the manual) containing one racer per line, with multiple pieces of information per line, separated by tabs or commas, as you prefer. If information isn't available or isn't relevant to your race, just leave it blank, but the comma or tab can't be omitted, except at the end (that is, you can leave off the final comma or tab and the Handicap if there is no individual handicap for that racer), and, if there is only a single race, you can also omit the race # and the comma or tab preceding it (i.e., stop at Category).

Bbi#
Last Name
First Name
City (, State)
Sex (M or F)
Age
Category
Race#
Handicap

Here's an example of what such a file might look like, where -> represents the tab character, and only one of the racers, racer #4, has an individual handicap (-30 which means they are starting 30 minutes before the main pack), and for two of the entrants (3 and 5), we don't know what city they're from:

1->Smith->Sandy->Sunnyvale->F->25->F20-29->1
2->Jones, Jr.->Fred->Palo Alto->M->35->M30-39->2
3->O'Brian->James->->M->25->M20-29->1
4->O'Brian->Mary->Santa Clara->F->26->F20-29->2->30
5->Pratt->Betty->->F->25->F20-29->1
6->Sykes->Brian->Cupertino->M->21->M20-29->2

Remember that the rules for comma-separated files (CSV) require that, if the information itself contains a comma, you must surround it with quotation marks. So if you were using commas instead of tabs for entry, the racer #2 would have to appear in the file like this:

2,"Jones, Jr.",Fred,Palo Alto,M,35,M30-39,2

Once you have created this file, you can input it into the software by tapping the Input icon on the lower left of the screen. You can also access the Input functionality from the Options menu.

Read the other sections of the manual: