Hello! This is Susan Pappalardo with a HUGE THANK YOU to all who showed up to either race, volunteer or watch this past Saturday’s ESR Invitational by Everyday Athlete. Your support was fabulous and team ESR looked incredible in so many ways.  First, we had a HUGE showing of ESR XC and ESR athletes.  
  • We had 20 ESR women and 37 ESR men.
  • There were 78 Women and 113 Men finishers overall.
  • The entire field (191) was a little smaller than last year (225).
 Thank you for coming out and supporting ESR XC’s program. Second, our club has the best volunteers east of the lake. I don’t know many clubs that can get volunteers to fill nearly 40 volunteer positions. All of you who volunteered on Friday or Saturday, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. You made us look great and helped us deal with a race morning course change that is every event’s worst nightmare. I want to call out a huge thank you to John Swenson for picking up the lead on Friday’s course setup and for saving the day. He refigured the course with less than an hour and a half to go to the Women’s start. He did it all with his trademark cool and he was superb on the fly dealing with a park ranger who just told him he has to cut a significant portion of our premeasured and set course due to a wedding that was being held under the rotunda. For those who are curious, our course was a little shy of 3.1 miles and came in at 2.9 miles. We have adjusted the mile splits in the results to reflect the course distance. And a big thank you to those who raked the course on Friday (Bob Wismer, Lauren Cannon, Lynn Frosch, Lance Logan, Carol Swindaman, Carol’s friend (Pascal), Larissa Uchiyama and Osamu Yamomoto). I hope your neck, back and shoulder’s have recovered! Lastly, it was just amazing to see all of the local XC crowd mingling about and enjoying the post race amenities. We had some great sponsors this year and having the race registration, sponsor booths and finish in the same area made for a great atmosphere. The sunny day didn’t hurt either! Everyday Athlete was our title sponsor for a second straight year and they provided fantastic support. Please remember to support them throughout the year! Who wouldn’t want to be a part of ESR after seeing how well the club handled and supported the event on Saturday???! I know of one new recruit as a result of Saturday. The Men’s 60+ team was quick on their feet after the awards and snatched up the categories’ 3rd place finisher, Garth Decoq, who turns out to be the area’s top triathlete in his age group. So, how did ESR do? The official results are now posted on our website and on BuDu Racing’s website. You can see them here: http://www.eastsiderunners.com/page/2009-ESR-Invitational-Results.aspx  For team’s…
  • ESR Women’s Open Team placed 2nd to CNW. That said, Team SRC (Seattle Running Co.) was very competitive, but was shy one runner making their team incomplete. They would have bumped us out to 3rd place.
  • The Master’s 40-49 competition was hot with four teams. Due to a tie for 2nd place between CNW and Oiselle, ESR placed 3rd.
  • ESR Open Men took 3rd place behind CNW and SRC. The field was packed with many of the area’s top runners.
  • ESR Men’s Master’s 40-49 snagged 3nd by 7 points. Job well done! It was a tough category.
  • And the tenacious and youthful Master’s Men’s 60+ team was all aglow with their 1st place finish albeit with no competition around.
 I am still letting the dust settle before announcing proceeds, but we will turn a profit. If you are interested in volunteering to help with next year’s event in any way, please contact me. It is a large effort to put on the event and we’d love to have more help during the run up to the event next year. I want to call out those who put in considerable effort to help us look so good on Saturday: 
  • Julie Taylor – Our registration lead who setup Active.com, managed pre-registration and day of race registrants. She also secured the Lake Sammamish State park location and managed our communication with them. And we did communicate our course to the park ranger in advance!
  • John Swenson – John is responsible for securing BuDu Racing as our event timer and bringing us into the modern age of electronic timing and FAST results. John also was the lead on Friday’s course setup and day of race course setup.
  • Erica Pitman – Erica is our tireless volunteer who steps up to take just about anything that is needed. She filled in so many potholes that needed patching that I don’t know where to start!
  • Renee Hawkes – If you ever need help recruiting someone to ESR, have them talk to Renee. She’ll not only convince you to join ESR, but also to pull out your checkbook and write a large check to ESR. She helped bring in several large sponsors this year (UBS, Berntson Porter, Shawn Casey/Results Fitness, Core Pilates and Little Hotties).
  • Markus Van Achte – Markus once again was our course setup head honcho who prefers two wheeled transportation even when setting an XC course. He helped us define the course and premeasure it. He also ensured we had all the supplies we needed to mark the course.
  • Spencer Riley – handled every ESR Invitational web page and update that I sent him! He is indispensable!
  • Joelle Riley – recruited all of our Friday and Saturday ESR volunteers. This is the glue that makes the event actually go off!
 I hope you all enjoyed your race and the event!!! Tell all your friends and those who missed it to come out next year! We will be sending out a short survey, so watch for it in the next few weeks! Enjoy your running! Susan PappalardoRace Director p.s. We had some confusion at the event with our event shirts. We are missing 19 shirts (valued at $380). We believe there was confusion at the table where all the free event goodies and coupons were located. The shirts were close to that table and at some point after the men’s start and the awards, 19 of them were taken. If you know of anyone, please encourage them to send ESR a check for $20 to cover the cost of the shirt. I will be sending out mail to all race participants. While I don’t expect many people to send in money, it would help if a few did.

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