Camera delay?

[NilsRagnar]

The other day when I tried to take some pictures of a soccer game I discovered that there is a considerable delay when shooting. Set the autofocus to continuous mode, tracked a running lady and pressed the trigger. When I looked at the result the lady was gone. Had to guess the delay time, turn to manual focus and point the camera in front of the object. Got perhaps one decent picture out of ten attempts. Tried to find a discussion of this problem but couldn't. Is there some camera settings that I missed? Is there anyone who can share some knowledge in this area, or point at an existing discussion of it?
I use a Nikon D5000 and a 70-300 telephoto lens.

[kirbinster]

Your continuous setting is probably the cause of this. You probably have it set to require perfect focus to allow shutter release, there is another setting that gives a little more priority to shutter actuation than pure focus. Not the best explanation, but hopefully you get what I mean. The other issue is your lens is not the fastest in finding a good focus.

You might try trap focusing where you lock the focus on a given spot manually and then track the runner and the camera should activate the shutter when you track back to that spot.

[NilsRagnar]

Kirbinster, thanks for your answer. I'll try your ideas.