20.5.1 Reading and Writing Timer1 in Asynchronous Counter Mode

Reading TMRxH or TMRxL while the timer is running from an external asynchronous clock will ensure a valid read (taken care of in hardware). However, reading the 16-bit timer in two 8-bit values itself poses certain problems, since the timer may overflow between the reads. For writes, it is recommended that the user simply stops the timer and writes the desired values. A write contention may occur by writing to the timer registers, while the register is incrementing. This may produce an unpredictable value in the TMRxH:TMRxL register pair.