UPDATED: Saturday, December 22nd (evening)

You are brave warriors. A huge thank you to the almost 100 racers we had join us today for the inaugural "You-Name-It" Race. You braved road conditions that were less than ideal and fought through a tough course to show us some great racing. It ended up being a great day to ski and that touch of snow saved the course for us this morning. We want to recognize GearWest and Pioneer Midwest for donating awards and door prizes for the race along with our other sponsors. Please check out our sponsor's page to see who else donated and then thank them if you are able.

We had many great performances today here are a couple highlights from the 20 km race. Taking first in the 20k was Eric Carter. He lead the field for most of the race and finished almost two minutes ahead of the pack. The other stand-out performance was from Sara Morse. She stayed with the lead pack of men and finished in 6th place overall. Congratulations to both of these skiers and to everyone who participated today. Results are posted on the webpage and have been sent to skinnyski. We don't have our photos online yet but skinnyski has over 200 pictures up and they look great! They have some great action shots from the woods and some corners. Check them out!

Again, thank you for coming out today. We, the Elk River Nordic Team(and families), had a great time and we hope that you enjoyed your experience. We will be hosting this race again next year so please put it on your schedule. We are also looking into holding another race later this season so keep your ears open for that. Since we've mentioned future races...we'd like to know what we can improve and what we did well on this year. We have a list of our own started but since you are the racers, we'd like to hear from your perspective. (Sorry, we can't get a warming shelter up for next year...) ;-) If it is something that we can take care of though, we'd like to know. Thank you for taking the time to help us make this a great event. It was our first time at this, we have a lot to learn but we hope that you enjoyed your experience. Thank you! Send us your thoughts!

Skiers and families...awesome job today! There is no chance that we could have done this with out you, Thank you!

UPDATED: Saturday, December 22nd

Race day. In just a few hours we'll have people lined up to go and then the signal will sound and off they'll race. Yes, we are a go. You won't freeze out there but you might get a little warm! Let's have some great/safe racing! Thank you for supporting the Elk River Nordic Team!

UPDATED: Thursday, December 20th

The clock is winding down to start-time. We have food arranged (a huge thank you to Myrna Krueger and to our sponsors!), bibs set-up, registrations coming in, snow predicted... Well, the snow/rain combo might not be what we ordered but we are nordic skiers and can handle anything that mother nature tosses our way. Many thanks need to go to our groomers who have done a great job with our snow. They will be out touching up the trails and setting the course Friday night/Saturday morning. We should have good trail conditioins, even with the warm-up today and tomorrow. Pass the word that we are having a race! Please, bring your kids also. We'd love to have them be a part of our first kids race and start a tradition they keep for many years to come. Nordic Skiing is a life-long sport, start them young and keep them going!

One other tidbit of information to note: The start for the races is at Woodland Trails, not at the Elementary School as has been the case in previous years for races at Woodland Trails.

UPDATED: Monday, December 17th

Things are lining up for the race on Saturday. Registrations are being dropped off and mailed in. We have food donated by many local businesses. Please check our sponsors' page and say thank you to those that have donated. The trails have a hard packed layer of snow and should survive the warm week that is projected. We are of course hoping for another inch or two to give us a clean cover but we should still have a good course and a safe event. The groomers are planning to head out Friday night or Saturday morning to till up the snow a bit and give us a nice surface. The links above are working and will be updated with additional information as the date approaches. We'll have the course maps online Tuesday morning so please check them out. Results and photos will be updated, but after the race, of course.

UPDATED: Sunday, December 9th

The Race is a go. We are going to need a lot of volunteers to pull this event off. Please feel free to contact Coach K or Coach Chris and we will set you up in a postion. We thank you in advance for all your help. The snow is here so the first major trouble point has already been solved.

Registration materials
The "You-Name-It" Race
Things are getting underway in the process of running this meet. The registration form is linked online above. We are encouraging people to pre-register so we have a better idea of the number of racers we will be working with. Everyone is pretty excited about getting this underway and really providing a great racing experience for all those involved.

We will be putting together a list of volunteer spots that will need to be filled in the next few days. As the list gets put together, we would love to have people sign up for specific positions. This is a big task that we are undertaking but we think it will be a great experience for the skiers and team as a whole if we have everyone's support in the process. We'll need help with things before, during and after so keep checking back and for an opportunity that fits your talents. Also, if you think of things that we may have missed, please let us know because the more prepared we are, the smoother this will run.

We are excited!!

Any questions so far, please don't hesitate to