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APRIL 2000 NEWSLETTER
You will recall that Jorgen Dahlie hoped to do his first Birkebeiner in Norway this season. Well he did it. And he finished the 58 km race in 6 hours, 54 minutes which gave him 24th place, out of 28, in his age class (75-79). His class was won in 4:37. Jorgen reports that it was a beautiful sunny day with clear skies -2C and fast conditions. New snow the night before and good grooming. For Jorgen it was his first Birkebeiner, but a number of competitors his age had done it as many as 40 times.
One other BC Master, Einar Field, was entered and completed the course in 4:16 for 129th out of 342 in his class. This class was won in 3:27. Overall winners were Erling Jevne in 2:41:53 and Anita Moen in 3:06. Odvar Braa, a name you will recognize, was second in his class (50-54) in 3:10. Most striking about this race are the sheer numbers; about 10,400 people competed, and the depth of competition in every age class- for example several of the age classes had near 1000 competitors- and these are 5 year age classes we are talking about. There were 1000 competitors more than 60 years old and 10 over 80! If you really want to see how you stack up and get a feel of where you sit this looks like a good race to enter.
The World Masters Association site has moved- if you have not found it yet the link is
World Masters web site
You will find complete results for the Kiruna World Masters races held in mid-March. Also there is information on next year’s world masters at Mariazell. The Kiruna races were well attended. As an example 439 competitors participated in the 30K Classic event. In this race the largest field was in the M7 class (60-64) which had 72 finishers. BC Master Helen Bourchier won her two races, the 15K free in 47:54 and the 10 K free in 31:37. She was the sole Canadian gold medalist. Congratulations Helen. The only other BC Masters were Barbara and George Vrabec. George had 47:14 for the 15K free (won in 39:44); 31:25 for the 10K Classic and 1:23:40 for the 30K free. Barbara got 58:20 in her 15K free race and 36:21 for her 10K Classic. Well done George and Barbara.
For most of us memberships in Canadian Masters expired on March 31, 2000. Therefore a membership renewal and questionnaire are included in this mailing. To check when you are paid up to please look at the date of your membership expiry on your address label. Membership runs from April 1 to March 31.
This is not a time we think about skiing, but I hope you will renew before fall. The questionnaire is an attempt to find out more about us; please help by completing it. If you want to reply anonymously simply copy and send the completed questionnaire separately from your renewal.
Just so you know $ 9 goes to Jack White National Director, for his activities in representing Canadian Masters at the World Masters Meetings. So it pays for his travel to meetings. Contributions to the club holding the National Championships are also from this source.
The remaining $6 goes into the provincial coffers and pays for the BC Nordic Masters newsletter production, printing, and mailing, including copying Jack’s newsletter which is mailed with the provincial one. Each copy of the newsletter costs more than $1 to produce and mail so the four newsletters you receive take a good $4. The remaining $2 accumulate in the provincial account. We have 120 members this year; that’s quite a bit more than in previous years. And it’s mainly because many of you joined to participate in the Canadian Championships at Silver Star last spring. I hope you stay by renewing. Incidentally donations that you make with your renewal are split 50-50 between National and Provincial. We have a balance of $2359 in the BC Nordic Masters account. This is your money. Any suggestions of what you would like to see done with this? Hold a BC Masters Championship? Sponsor prizes for BC Masters in BC Loppets? Have a party? Suggestions please.
An interesting site about Masters Training with lots of valuable content.
This contribution from Alan Ball is a follow up of the article in our January issue of BC Nordic Masters concerning Cerax Ski Polymers.
Alan Ball writes
I read the blurb in the last newsletter , rushed to my computer and checked out the web site. Cerax sounded too good to be true. This year I am the Development Coach for Biathlon BC and persuaded the Treasurer that we just had to have some Cerax for our athletes going to the World Jr. Selection Trials in Canmore (Jan. 23/24, 2000). I expected the conditions to be cold, -18/-16 range and already knew that the snow in Canmore would be predominantly artificial. We purchased Cerax Pro 2, for fine grained snow and Cerax Pro 5 for extreme cold. We used 3 sets of BC Biathlon test skis that we knew from glide testing with a light system were matched +/- 1%. On the first race day, the temperature was -18 at the start and warmed up to -12 in the air, but the snow stayed down around -16. The snow was 90% artificial, but it started snowing during the race. Relative humidity was 55% - very dry. We glide tested the Cerax 5 and 2 against Nordlite Graphite, Swix LF4 over Nordlite Graphite, Toko Fluoro Blue and Kuu, Mach II Blue. Skied 5 K on the Cerax pairs and re-tested. Mach II Blue and the two Cerax waxes were clearly superior to LF4, which was better than Toko Fluoro Blue, which was better than Nordlite Graphite. The Cerax 5 was slightly better than Mach II Blue for the heavier glide tester, reversed for me (on the same skis). Cerax 2 was almost as good (about 6-10" in a 30ft run out). Mach II is a Silcon-Oxygen polymer; Cerax is a Fluoro monolayer, something like teflon, while the Swix and Toko waxes are paraffin-fluoro mixes and the Nordlite is a paraffin wax. We gave the athletes with 2 sets of skis either Cerax 5 and Cerax 2, or Cerax 2 and Mach II Blue, depending on how well we thought they might do (Mach II Blue is cheap, Cerax is expensive). Most of the athletes chose to race on Cerax 5 or Mach II Blue (at -16). Reports after the race ranked the Cerax skis as "rockets". Athletes with Mach II were very happy too. The next day, the new snow had been tilled in and it had started to snow again by race time. The temperature was -15 at the start and rose to -8. After re-glide testing with Briko BFK Violet(low fluoro, -7 to -13) to our set we decided that Cerax 2 was a better bet under the new conditions and left the Cerax 2 skis from day 1 unchanged. We re-did some of the other pairs with Mach II Blue and some with Briko Violet. Some athletes skied on Cerax 2, some on Blue. Some Sask. Athletes skied on the Violet. Relative humidity was in the 65% range, so it was still pretty dry. Athletes with Cerax 2 reported the same "rockets". Everyone else reported fast skis from Mach II Blue and BKF Violet. Cerax 5 was slightly better than Mach II Blue at marginal race temperatures (-18), low humidity and fine grained artificial snow. Cerax 2 was better than Cerax 5 or Mach II Blue in -15 to -12 snow temperatures, but with fresh snow, sharp and fine grained by West Coast standards. Mach II Blue was a very good alternative on both days. This inexpensive Canadian wax, from KUU Sport in Toronto, really has legs in the cold. All were better than last year's cold favorite, Swix LF4. Cerax was applied over Nordlite Graphite, scraped and polished really clean. It applies with a sponge applicator - just wipe it on and dry it off with a hair dryer. Fantastic! First time I have had to wax 10 pairs of skis and had time for coffee before the race. One of the Cerax 2 racers reported that his skis "died after about 2.5 k". After-race analysis discovered that these skis had been skipped in the pre-race multi-person assembly line and had not been properly brushed out. The Cerax came off with the excess wax. Post race, we have noticed that both regular and fluoro wax is repelled by the residual Cerax. You need to wipe off the Cerax mono-layer with solvent before re-waxing. Cerax cost US$59 per 50ml bottle, plus shipping and tax of Cdn $25.00. Pretty expensive compared to Mach II Blue at about $35.00 per 100g. I estimate that 50 ml. will do at least 15 pairs of skis.