Alice Schneider, Road Race Industry Pioneer

Alice Schneider, one of the first full-time employees of New York Road Runners and a pioneer in computerized road race registration, timing, and scoring, passed away on 24 de septiembre de 2016. Schneider was the wife of former NYRR president and New York City Marathon race director Allan Steinfeld. NYRR expresses heartfelt condolences to Steinfeld and to Schneider’s family.

Born in Kalamazoo, MI, Schneider was a pioneer in the road racing industry, specifically registration, timing, and scoring. When Steinfeld began working with NYRR’s fledgling operations team in the mid-1970s, he brought along Schneider, then his girlfriend, who had experience as a compositor on phototypesetting equipment. She started working for NYRR as a volunteer, doing data entry on a small IBM computer that was on loan to the organization. Over time, Schneider taught herself computer programming and developed the software and systems that allowed NYRR to register, time, and score thousands of runners in the New York City Marathon and other events.

“She helped perfect the chute systems, which allowed very large races to be scored before transponder technology came into play,” says David Monti, the founder of Race Results Weekly and a longtime NYRR consultant. “This was one of the main obstacles for creating mega-races—everyone had to be hand-scored using a pull-tag system.”

Legendary NYRR leader Fred Lebow described Schneider as “quietly pleasant, intelligent and dedicated, one of the most popular people in the entire organization.” Others remember her sense of humor, her patience and compassion for all runners, and her generous sharing of her knowledge and experience.

“Before the internet, I would go to NYRR events in the park, visit her in the timing trailer, and she would make reports for me,” recalls Monti. “She was always very kind.”

“Alice was a mentor to me, inspiring me to strive for excellence and to always have a backup plan,” says Tom Kelley, NYRR’s director of race scoring. “The computer systems she built for NYRR were in use for almost 35 years. Every time a runner checks their results at our website, they are touching her legacy.”

“Alice was truly a pioneer and one of the main reasons for the success of the New York City Marathon and other NYRR events,” says longtime course measurer David Katz. “Much of what we take for granted in the world of race timing can be traced back to Alice’s work.”

“Alice was the quiet half of a partnership that helped make the modern mass-participation race possible,” says Philip Greenwald, a longtime NYRR volunteer. "At [races], while Allan was outside overseeing a complicated systems of ropes and volunteers to produce the raw information, Alice was a few feet away, insider her scoring trailer, overseeing the scanning of bar codes and the running of the computer programs to produce the results. Both were leaders in the field.”