Run for the barn owl houses. Run for rodent eradication. And run for a your best time—captured digitally for the first time—thanks to a new timing system that the Los Altos Hills Pathways Run is rolling out this year.

The 12th Annual Pathways Run is a benefit to raise money to buy "owl houses," in a bid to use a more environmentally sensitive method of control rodents at Westwind barn and in other town owned parks and facilities, said race organizer Scott Vanderlip. Barn owls are predators of small rodents, and unlike poison, safe to be around other animals and children, he said. If they install them, he said, they will come. At least that's the plan.

"Hopefully the owls will find them and take up residency in them and raise families there in the spring each year," Vanderlip said. The specially designed owl houses have openings are just large enough for barn owls and not other owls. The houses come from the Hungry Owl Project, located in Marin, which started in 2001 to promote natural predators as a way to control unwanted rodents, Vanderlip wrote on the 2013 Pathways Run website.

This is the first time the race has been used to raise money for the barn and other city properties.

Another big change this year is Los Altos Hills is also going to be a bit of a Silicon Valley beta test for a timing start-up company, Lapio.

For the first time, through its partnership with Lapio, there will be live race results, said Sarah Gualtieri, the town's Community Service Coordinator. Participants will see their race results on their iPhone or Android device immediately after crossing the finish line—along with stepping on the mat that transmits the runner's time. It's accomplished with a special tag that can be threaded through the laces on the runner's shoe, or pinned to the race bib.