CHIPS

 According to my last 2 road races ( and MY garmin started at the start and finished at the finish). I have got two PB's but according to the chips i've been wearing i've lost 7-10 secs, each time

anyone else had this experience or am i just getting paranoid???

Good.

Especially Rustics.

Yeah, I thought you meant the fried potato variety too !  I once came back from a cross country 10km with a chips craving like you wouldn't believe !  I made my husband drop me off at the chip shop so I could go in and get some whilst he parked the car, I was that desperate !

Personally i'm not a fan of timing chips. My stopwatch does the job without adding extra moola onto the race entry fee. My stopwatch gets the same time as my chip.

If it's different courses that it's happened on then it would seem that the problem lies with your garmin. Don't have one myself so can't comment on the different setting but it might be worth checking the manual. Have you spoken to anyone else who did the same race who also used the garmin?