In Racesignup, the Start Lanes and Start Lane Slots are usually used to collect start times on the basis of preferred minute or preferred time slot. But they can be used to collect preference on any basis. Some orienteering events require that entrants select their start time preference on the basis of early, middle or late start time. This article describes how to do that.

Create a new Start Lane:

The values you use for “Starts from” and “Starts to” are not important but they do need to be in a valid time format of hh:mm:ss. By making them one minute apart just one Start Lane Slot will be created. Setting the “Starts per interval” to 9999 will allow any number of entrants to select a Start Lane Slot.

When you Save this Start Lane, one Start Lane Slot will be created. The next step is to change that Start Lane Slot to be suitable for collecting the earliest start block:

Here you change the Label from a time to a block, in this case “1 – Very Early”.  Save the Start Lane Slot, then duplicate it and change the Label:

Continue like this until you have created all the Start Lane Slots you need. This may include having an “Any” option for people to select if they have no preference.

Assign all Courses to the Start Lane:

This is how it looks on the entry form: