The first time I ran the Boston Marathon the athlete tracking was so bad my nephew decided I had dropped out and he and his family went home instead of seeing me come by. That was 2006.
The past weekend I sat in my living room watching the New York City Marathon live on TV while tracking five friends running the event on a slick app on the race website. Not only did we get close to real time updates of peoples times at various points, there was also a map withe each of them represented by a different icon on a Google Map. One of my friends watching with me had bought the mobile app and was getting updates just about the same time as I got them on the computer (my app was free to use). Our first runner accross, in a substantial personal record was at 3:02. Go Sanjay!
The only glitch seemed to be with one of our slower runners - it took her a long time to show up as even on the course and she disappeared a few times, leading (again) some to believe she'd dropped out. That was not the case.
These systems, even at these huge races, which huge numbers of people tracking multiple athletes, have come a long way. Another, who works at Akamai, suggested that company may have something to do with the system staying up.
