Wave Starts by age groups

Wave Starts by age groups:

We did this for the US masters Nationl champs 30k skate race and
the Duathlon, and I liked it very much. I'm used to interval starts,
and the occasional mass start. This felt more like racing, as opposed
to skiing fast alone. It was easy to always know where I stood in my
race. I could know for instance, that to get into 3rd place I would
need to pass that guy that was 3 seconds in front of me. Sometimes
in an interval start race, my attention might wander a bit, as others
have also reported - I might think about the fact that my stomach is
beginning to growl, for instance. In these wave starts, it was hard
NOT to stay focused!

For these waves to be effective requires a certain critical mass.
At these races, waves contained about 10 to 15 skiers. For the middle
age groups, everyone in a wave was in the same age group. For the
more sparsely filled groups at both ends, age groups were combined
into a wave. We were given paper racing bibs, and they hand lettered
a single letter in front of each number. The letter identified your
start wave. Waves started 3 minutes apart. IF you caught up to
someone and saw they had the same letter as you, you'd try to pass
them. IF they had a different letter, they'd started in an earlier
wave and you already had 3 or more minutes on them.

Erik Brooks, Seattle, from Marquette, MI