2020 PNTF Cross Country Championships – CONFIRMED

11/22/2020

USATF Pacific Northwest Open & Masters Cross Country Championships

Sunday, November 22, 2020

9:00am-12:15pm starts

Woodland Park, Seattle WA

The PNTF board has determined that the circumstances of the pandemic call for some modifications to the usual program of the PNTF Cross Country Championships. Current state COVID-19 safety guidance does not permit large mass-starts, so this year’s race will be run in small wave starts. Because head-to-head racing will not be possible among enough of the field, and because of uncertainty about the ability of some athletes to attend on short notice, there will be no individual championship titles or prize money this year.

The following team championship competitions will be contested:

Masters Women (6k): All women runners aged 40 and over, with no limit on team size
Masters Men (6k): All men runners aged 40 and over, with no limit on team size
Open Women (6k): Women runners aged 18 and over, with no limit on team size
Open Men (10k): Men runners aged 18 and over, with no limit on team size

For all team competitions: The top five runners on a team will score, and the top seven runners on each team will displace.

A current USATF membership is required to run in the championship races. If you’re unsure of your membership status, you can check it here.

The championship races will be followed by a 4k Community Race that is open to all ages and does not require USATF membership.

Results
Start Times
Registration
COVID-19 Safety Measures
Start Protocol
Schedule
Course
Directions & Parking

Results

Results & Open Women’s race phone photos

Team Results:

Masters Women: No team had five runners. If three runners are scored, then Seattle Running Club has 9 points, and Club Northwest has 12 points.

Masters Men: No team had five runners. If three are scored, then only Club Northwest had a full team and thus prevailed with their four runners who were all over 60. In a normal year, three runners score, so they would still have had a viable team and won.

Open Women: No team had five runners. If three runners are scored (which is outside both the normal and announced rules for this competition), then Seattle Running Club is the only team meeting that threshold with their four runners.

Kudos to Alyssa Becker for her strong run in the 4k Community Race.

Start Times

Start wave time list

Registration

Registration and participation in the Masters (40+) and Open (18+) races:

is restricted to athletes with a current USATF membership in the Pacific Northwest Association, and you will be asked for your membership number when you enter
is open to adults 18+ (Open races) or 40+ (Masters races) only
will be by pre-entry only through ~~Thursday, November 19~~ Friday, November 20
requires you to enter an estimated current 5k time for start list seeding
requires you to list your club/team affiliation, if you are representing a club/team

The Community 4k Race is open to all, regardless of age or membership, and registration will be available online through Thursday, or onsite by exact change or credit card only.

Entry fees are $20 for adults 18+ and $10 for youth 17 & under.

COVID-19 Safety Measures

Regarding the tightening of restrictions on certain activities recently announced by the Governor: We have been informed by the Governor’s office that the new measures do not affect the state guidance on running races that was published on October 6. We are following that guidance in the organization of this race.

Part of our duty as event organizers is to plan carefully for safety. We take this responsibility seriously, and we appreciate the trust you place in us by coming to our events. The COVID-19 pandemic meant a pause for our events that ended only at the end of July, but it has also meant a lot of extra work over the intervening months adapting our events to mitigate the new risks of the pandemic.

Because confusing and often conflicting or politicized information has created doubt and uncertainty about safety and relative risk, we want to briefly address the basic safety of running cross country and other outdoor races: The consensus opinion of the infectious disease experts is that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is far less likely to transmit from person to person outdoors, primarily due to the movement of air dispersing virus-bearing droplets to a low concentration that is unlikely to result in infection. Outdoor transmission is still possible, but studies of the origin of cases seem to suggest that it is roughly 100 times less likely that any given case will have resulted from outdoor transmission.

It is also the case that brief contact with a contagious person is far less likely to result in viral transmission than sustained close proximity. Taken together with the relative safety of being outdoors, this means that if you briefly come close to an infected person on the course, there is only a vanishingly small chance of you catching the virus from them and getting infected. Of course we still want to take precautions to mitigate small risks, but with reasonable modifications, we believe that running events can be one of the safest and most health-promoting things you can do during the pandemic.

Our staff has been looking toward expert guidance—including from health and labor departments at the State of Washington (via the guidance from the Governor’s office) and numerous email bulletins and web resources from the Centers for Disease Control—as we implement extensive safety protocols to eliminate unnecessary risks. The list of steps we are taking is long and growing in detail, so we won’t include it here, but the general areas we are emphasizing are physical distancing, PPE/masks/hygiene, sanitizing, screening, staffing for safety, communications & training.

You have an important role to play in facilitating a safe event, and we ask that you follow #RecreateResponsibly guidelines and adhere to the guidelines below to help us keep you and our broader community safe:

Maintain Physical Distancing

Avoid gathering around others, and keep at least a six-foot interpersonal distance from anyone not in your household whenever possible
Travel to and from the event only with people in your household. Normally we encourage carpooling, but this is not the time for it.
Plan ahead so that you don’t need to make any extra stops on your way to or from the event. This is to eliminate unnecessary contact with others.
Arrive at the event site no earlier than you need to in order to comfortably check in, warm-up, and prepare to start. If you arrive with extra time, please stay in your car or take a walk or jog away from the event area in order to facilitate distancing for yourself and others.
Depart the event site promptly after you finish and complete your post-exercise routine
Unless you are passing, please maintain at least a 20-foot distance or position yourself to the side rather than directly behind when following other runners going a similar speed on the course.

Wear a Mask & Practice Good Hygiene

Wear a mask or face covering at the event, only uncovering your face when you are about to start or are eating or drinking. You may want to bring a small plastic bag for your mask, so that you can put it in an easily accessible pocket when you aren’t wearing it. Please wear your mask or face covering when you are racing in such a way that you can pull it up to cover your nose and mouth if you are within six feet of other runners. You do not need to cover your face while racing when you are not within six feet of others.
Wash your hands with soap for at least 20 seconds or use hand sanitizer frequently, plus immediately before and after contact with respiratory fluids or possibly contaminated objects, like portable toilet doors and other commonly-touched surfaces.
If you need to cough or sneeze please cover it with a tissue (which you should then throw away as soon as possible) or with your elbow.
Avoid touching your mouth, nose, and eyes.
When taking your bib number, drinks, snacks, or any other items, please use care to touch only the item(s) you are taking. Drinks and snacks will be served in individual portions only, and common water and snack containers are to be touched by staff only.

Stay Home if You’re Sick or Vulnerable

Do not attend the event if you have a temperature of 100.4F or greater, feel sick, or believe you may have recently been exposed to the COVID-19 virus
Consider your risk before deciding to attend the event if you are a member of a high-risk group or are in close contact with one or more people in a high-risk group (per CDC: 65+, immune compromised, having another health condition that exacerbates COVID-19).
If you begin to experience the flu-like symptoms of COVID-19 while you are at the event, please immediately notify a staff person (at a safe distance) and self-quarantine away from others until you are able to safely depart the event

We will ask you to affirmatively agree to abide by this code of conduct before you participate in the event. We also ask that we be allowed to contact you after the event if we discover that someone at the event was sick and have reason to believe you may have been exposed. If you become sick soon after attending the event, we would appreciate you letting us know, so that we can track potential risk to our staff and other participants.

Start Protocol

For the Masters and Open races

Competitors will be started in waves of up to five runners, with the faster-seeded waves starting first, followed a few minutes later by each successively slower wave in the same race.
Waves will be determined according to both seed time and club affiliation, with the goal of facilitating direct competition among runners from different clubs.
We will publish start time lists after entries close.
There is ample room to physically distance while lined up on the start line, and the park is open and the running lane mostly wide, thus affording easy opportunities to distance oneself from other runners throughout most of the course.

For the 4k Community Race

Competitors will be started in waves of up to five runners, with successive waves starting a few minutes apart.
We will assign faster runners to start in earlier waves, however some waves may not be strictly seeded, since we are accommodating event-day entries.
We will publish start time lists after entries close.
There is ample room to physically distance while lined up on the start line, and the park is open and the running lane mostly wide, thus affording easy opportunities to distance oneself from other runners throughout most of the course.

Schedule

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22

9:00 – 6k Masters Women (current USATF members 40+ only)
9:45 – 6k Masters Men (current USATF members 40+ only)
10:30 – 6k Open Women (current USATF members 18+ only)
11:15 – 10k Open Men (current USATF members 18+ only)
12:15 – 4k Community Race (All-ages, no USATF membership requirement)

Course

All courses use the same 2-km loop, which has been used for many past races at Lower Woodland Park. Note that the “Lower” is to distinguish this area of the park from the Zoo on the other side of Aurora/Hwy 99. The course is actually entirely in the upper part of Lower Woodland Park, not down around the sports fields.

Here is a link to a schematic map of the course.

The 4k race will complete the loop twice
The 6k race will complete the loop three times
The 10k race will complete the loop five times

The route is 80% on grass or dirt paths, 18% on gravel paths, and 2% on pavement (road crossings). The profile is primarily rolling hills, and spikes are recommended, since the course may be muddy.

Directions & Parking

The parking lot and the picnic loop road near the start and finish area are closed. Please find street parking to the south of the park, or pay $4 (via paybyphone.com or app) to park in the Woodland Park Zoo’s south parking lot, a few hundred meters to the west on the other side of highway 99. Here is a link for directions to the venue. The start and finish are just north of the gravel lot.