2005 National Masters Championships Twin Cities

Hi Everbody,

This message will fall under the "shameless plug" catagory. A group of
skiers in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis & St. Paul will be your hosts
for the 2005 US National Masters XC Ski Championships. Our web site
and on-line registration is now active and is located within the
American Cross Country Skiers (AXCS) web site or can be accessed
directly at http://www.xcskiworld.com/events/NM/NM/_index.htm

A number of regular RSN posters (and a couple of lurkers, author
included) are part of the organizing group. Toby Markowitz is in
charge of Registration, Ilene Carpenter has Host Hotel, Sponsor Expo
and Banquet responsibility, Greg Fangel is a key member of the
Stadium/Course team, Bill Stuber has Transportation and Brent Oja and
myself are co-race directors. I intend to get Ken Salzburg involved if
I can ever find him and will continue to work on Jay Tegeder, who up
to this point has succesfully avoided any committment. A little
newsgroup peer pressure on Jay T. would be most helpfull :-))

Our philosophy (I refuse to call it a Mission Statement) will be to
try to create the best possible race experience for the racers. This
is the National Championships for "the rest of us" and we intend to
make it a special and memorable event. In general terms that means
state of the art timing and results process provided by Finish Line
Sports, timing company for the Birkie this year. We will present
challeging but skiable race courses at Battle Creek Regional Park
where Ramsey County is investing significant resources in order to
make the trails a bit more "Masters Friendly". To insure high quality
grooming we will be supplimenting the fine work that the County does
with equipment, technical support and groomng skills from Tidd Tech.
For racer comfort we will have access to the Battle Creek Rec Center
for warming, concessions and quick awards presentations right after
each race. The 4 races have been designed to emulate some of the
conditions that the top skiers experience at Olympic and World Cup
events. All relevent details can be found on our web site but here is
the short version.

Saturday Jan 29 - Registration, packet and bib pickup, sponsor and
industry expo and skiing related technical presentations.

Sunday Jan 30 - 30K/20K/15K (depending on age & gender) classic race
at Battle Creek. Age goup wave starts using the chevron starting
format popularized during the World Cup for mass start races. Top
skiers seeded at the front of the chevron based on result from last
years US and World Masters races.

Tuesday Feb 1 - 10K freestyle in the evening under the lights at
Battle Creek. Individual interval starts (:20 second gap)

Thursday Feb 3 - 13K same day pursuit at Battle Creek. 6K classic with
age group wave starts, chevron format with top seeding based on
Sundays 30K classic. After a break (estimated between 60-90 minutes) a
7K freestyle race with pursuit starts by gender. The leader from the
morning goes first and then rest of us start after based upon our time
back from the leader.

Thursday night - Social, banquet, naming of the National Team and
guest speaker.

Saturday Feb 5 - Sprint Relays at Theodore Wirth Park. Teams of 3
skiers each skiing 3 laps of 750 meters. This will be held right after
and on the same course where the US Ski team will be running the
preliminary rounds for the Olympic sprint team qualifying. The finals
for the US Sprints will be that evening under the lights on a snowed
in street in the Minneapolis Uptown area.

The Saturday events are all part of the City of Lakes Loppet(COLL)
weekend. In only its third year this race, which will be held Sunday
Feb 6, is expecting up to 2200 particpants. This is a 35K classic or
freestyle race that winds through Parklands and Lakes in the City of
Minneapolis before finishing on street in Uptown. We are hoping that
many of the Masters skiers will join us in capping off the week by
particpating in the City of Lakes Loppet.

The dates that we have chosen (Jan 30-Feb 6) is historically the week
of the winter that has the most snow on the ground. On the rare chance
that Mother Nature does not cooperate we have a backup plan at an area
with great snowmaking and grooming capabilities.

Eric Brooks of Seattle wrote last year about the fun of sking with and
meeting your peers from across the country at the NM 2004 in
Marquette. We are hoping that many of you will consider joining us
this year. We would love to see Rob Bradlee, Gary Jacobson, Ken
Roberts and the many fine Eastern Skiers come on out to "flyover land.
If Torbjorn Karlsen and John Aalberg show they would most likely be
seeded #1 at the classic, Chris Cline could travel with them from
Utah. The fact that our signature race is the 30K classic and the host
hotel has high speed internet (free) plus a Starbucks close by might
be enough to convince BT (Skinnyski)to pull Truckee Mark out of
paradise for a week and come back to the Midwest afer his third place
finish age group in the Birkie last year. I'm even optimistic that the
strong group of Michigan Masters such as The Frontrunner, Birkebeiner
Pete, Dell Todd, Jeff Potter and 32Degrees can bust through the
"Chedder Curtain" (Jeff K's quote) and make their way up to the
Northern Plains.

The Masters Skiers in Minnesota and Wisconsin invite you to join us
for a great week of skiing in the heart of a Midwestern winter.

John O'Connell
aka Nordic Norm
NM 2005

--- John O'Connell wrote:

Hi Everbody,


meeting your peers from across the country at the NM 2004 in
Marquette. We are hoping that many of you will consider joining us
this year. We would love to see Rob Bradlee, Gary Jacobson, Ken
Roberts and the many fine Eastern Skiers come on out to "flyover
land.

I attended the 2000 games in St. Paul and had a blast. I highly
recommend this event. As stated in another thread, people in the
Midwest are "wicked" nice as we say here in the Boston area. This year
I hope to be in good shape and visit again. Zach is grinding my race
skis right now...

Rob


=====
Rob Bradlee
Java, C++, Perl, XML, OOAD, Linux, and Unix Training

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004, John O'Connell wrote:

hotel has high speed internet (free) plus a Starbucks close by might

I don't know who that "Ken Salzburg" might be, but I'm working with Toby's
group on the registration stuff. Since my car has a bumper sticker that
says "Friends don't let Friends go to Starbucks" I should mention that
there are a number of local coffee houses nearby as well.

-Ken


************************************************** *********
Kenneth Salzberg
Hamline University
School of Law (651) 523-2354
1536 Hewitt Ave.
Sisu Skier - 50K Club St. Paul, MN 55104
************************************************** ****************

"Kenneth Salzberg" wrote in message
...
my car has a bumper sticker that
says "Friends don't let Friends go to Starbucks" I should mention that
there are a number of local coffee houses nearby as well.

-Ken


Where do you get these bumber stickers?

Gary Jacobson
Rosendale, NY

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004, Gary Jacobson wrote:


"Kenneth Salzberg" wrote in message
...
my car has a bumper sticker that
says "Friends don't let Friends go to Starbucks" I should mention that
there are a number of local coffee houses nearby as well.

Where do you get these bumber stickers?

I've found them at a couple of local Coffee houses in Portland OR and
Seattle WA. I have been told that Sta*B*s has threatened various such
places over the bumper stickers, but I don't know about that.

-Ken

************************************************** *********
Kenneth Salzberg
Hamline University
School of Law (651) 523-2354
1536 Hewitt Ave.
Sisu Skier - 50K Club St. Paul, MN 55104
************************************************** ****************

Sounds great and, sure, I'm interested and would love to see some rare
Metro XC Action, but what's up with the schedule?

SOP should be: drive Fri, Fri nite registration, Sat race, Sun race,
rat-race victims flee for home after the party while ski-bums stay on
to do goofy events during the week. : )

But I'm not the roadtrippin' expert anymore so what do I know.

--JP