San Diego to Host 2011 USA XC Natl Champs, by Thom Hunt, Note by Larry Eder

Dathan Ritzenhein winning 2010 USA XC Champs, photo by PhotoRun.net.

Face it, cross country is the beginning of most high school distance runner’s love affairs with our sport. It is the first time they charged up a hill in a race, and ran out of control down one. It is the first time they put on racing flats, ran to exhaustion, puked and then talked about the race for the next hour. Cross country, is, as Joe Henderson so eloquently put it, decades ago, the meeting place of the miler and the marathoner.
And it is, just plain, fun! Well, Thom Hunt and his friends in the San Diego USATF Association are hosting the 2011 USA Cross Country Championships on February 5, 2011. It will be on the 2008 course at Mission Bay, California! It will be tough, it will be fun, and then it will be fun to watch the elite men and women duke it out for the World Cross Country Champs in March 2011!
(Oh yes, it is that Thom Hunt. The guy who ran on the best US World Cross Country Junior teams, who cranked a 4:02.7 mile in high school and who ran with Ralph Serna, Eric Hulst, Andy Clifford and all of the golden boys of California prep track and cross country! He continues to support the sport he loves).

Read on, cross country geeks!

San Diego to Host USA Cross Country National Championships

The
San Diego/Imperial Association of USATF willagain play host to the USA
Cross Country National Championships. The championships will be held on
February 5, 2011 on the same Mission Bay course where the 2008
championships were held. The 2008 meet was a huge success with large crowds cheering on the victories by Dathan Ritzenhein and Shalane Flanagan.

Six
national championships will be contested on a grand day for cross
country fans and participants. In addition, the day will start off with
the Road Runner Sports Community Race over the same course as the
championships.

The schedule will be:
9:00 a.m. Road Runner Sports Community 4km
9:45 a.m. Master’s Women’s 8km
10:45 a.m. Master’s Men’s 8km
11:45 a.m. Junior Women’s 6km
12:30 p.m. Junior Men’s 8km
1:15 p.m. Open Women’s 8km
2:00 p.m. Open Men’s 12km

The
course is located in Mission Bay Park at the very south end of East
Mission Bay Drive, adjacent to the Hilton San Diego Resort and Spa. If
you are driving, the course can be reached by taking Interstate 5, exit
at Sea World Drive and go west, turn right on East Mission Bay Drive and
drive approximately 1/3 mile to park.

The races will be run over
a spectatorâ€friendly, Europeanâ€style 2,000 meter grass loop running
along East Mission Bay Park. The terrain during the first 1,000 meters
of the loop is primarily flat and very fast. During the second 1,000
meters of the loop the course includes a series of five small hills. The
average width of the course is 15 meters and there are a few sections
where the course narrows to about 5 meters in width. This is the same course used for the 2008 USA Cross Country National Championships.

A map of the course can be found at www.sdusatf.org

The
meet hotel is the Hilton San Diego Resort and Spa – Mission Bay. The
hotel is located at 1775 East Mission Bay Drive, San Diego, CA, 92109.
The hotel is adjacent to the cross country course. For reservations at a
special rate of $119 per night you must call the reservation line at
1â€800â€445â€8667.

To receive this special rate, refer to the USATF
Cross Country Championships when making your reservation. Be advised
that after Tuesday, January 11th the room block will be released. After
this date, rooms under the special rate will be based upon availability.

The
top six open men and women, as well as the top six junior men and women
will be selected to represent the USA in the IAAF World Cross Country
Championships to be held in Punta Umbria, Spain on March 20, 2011. In
addition, the meet will also select the national teams for the NACAC
Cross Country Championships to be held in Trinidad and Tobago in late
February.

There will be over $38,000 in prize money and stipends
distributed at this event. The prize purse will be announced soon. To
enter any of the national championship races visit the national web site
at http://www.usatf.org/events/2011/USAXCChampionships/

Runblogrun & the RunningNetwork encourages all cross country geeks to support this amazing event!

Author

Larry Eder
Larry Eder has had a 52-year involvement in the sport of athletics. Larry has experienced the sport as an athlete, coach, magazine publisher, and now, journalist and blogger. His first article, on Don Bowden, America's first sub-4 minute miler, was published in RW in 1983. Larry has published several magazines on athletics, from American Athletics to the U.S. version of Spikes magazine. He currently manages the content and marketing development of the RunningNetwork, The Shoe Addicts, and RunBlogRun. Of RunBlogRun, his daily pilgrimage with the sport, Larry says: "I have to admit, I love traveling to far away meets, writing about the sport I love, and the athletes I respect, for my readers at runblogrun.com, the most of anything I have ever done, except, maybe running itself." Also does some updates for BBC Sports at key events, which he truly enjoys. Theme song: Greg Allman, " I'm no Angel."
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