It’s the London Marathon this weekend, which will see over 30,000 people run or struggle through the heat for 26.2 miles. Good luck to them all. One part where technology will help them is in the timing systems which rely on RFID. Virgin, which sponsors the London Marathon has just got a new timing ship supplier, and all marathon runners will be wearing one of these on their trainers.

So when the runners go through the start a timing pad will pick up the fact that they have passed that point and will record their times. There will be pads positioned throughout the course that will give the runners their split times – i.e. how fast they have gone through each checkpoint – and at the finish. As well as offering vital information to the runner in their post race analysis, the chips also allow organisers to eliminate cheating as anyone who doesn’t have a chip spilt time has not gone over the pad and may have taken a short cut. Of course for runners whose chip breaks or gets lost, it is rather unfortunate as they will probably be disqualified and won’t get an official time.

All this info from the chips can also be used for real-time information as well. I ran the Paris Marathon two weeks ago and my split times were sent automatically by SMS to my supporters’ mobile phones, so that they could keep track of where I was during the race – and when I finished.