In Conclusion - A City of Lakes Loppet Fix to the Short Cut Fiasco

In my last blog post about the City of Lakes- Columbia Sportswear skate marathon I talked about some skiers accidentally taking a short cut at 20.5km into the race.  The Loppet staff made a time adjustment for those skiers that reported taking the shortcut, including myself and the team-mate I alluded to.  Here is the message I received from Piotr Bednarski:

Dear ______ (I removed names here for privacy)

As you probably know, a number of people missed a key turn in the Bog during the Skate Loppet on Sunday, and took the shorter (and flatter) route to the sound wall on 394.   Though the intersection was marked correctly, its a tricky  intersection to navigate because you are moving quickly.  We do not believe anyone did this intentionally, but we wish to make this fair to those that skied the correct (and longer) course, so we will do a time adjustment.

All of you have spoken to me about this, so thanks for your being up front about it.   I just wanted to give you the full scoop.   There were 11 skiers that took the shorter route, 3 of which did not finish.  We will be doing a time adjustment of  6min, that is we will be adding 6 minutes to your time.  .  This is based on our skiing both routes at race pace and subtracting the difference.  Jon Miller skied an extra lap of Calhoun as his penance :) so we won't be adding any time to his result.

Thanks for racing the Loppet!

regards,

Piotr Bednarski

Chief of Course

I thanked Piotr for taking the time to sort through this and make an adjustment.  Now I can sleep a little better knowing a correction has been made.  Way to go Loppet Foundation!