Tuesday, March 23, 2010

2010 Longsjo Registration Opens


Hello Longsjo racers and fans. After much anticipation and hard work, registration for the 2010 Longsjo is now officially open! We’ve been working with our local city and town officials to make sure that the 2010 Longsjo is a continuation of the amazing success we had in 2009 for our 50th edition.

We’re changing up the order of the stages a bit to not only to liven up the racing, but to also ease the financial burden of running a race stage on the fourth of July. (Anyone want to guess what our police budget is for the road race?)

This will be our stage order in 2010:

Friday July 2nd - Fitchburg State College Circuit Race
Saturday July 3rd - Wachusett Mountain Road Race
Sunday July 4th - Courtyard by Marriott South Street Time Trial (same course as 2009)
Monday July 5th - Workers’ Credit Union Downtown Criterium

This reordering of the stages is very exciting because it places much more importance on the time trial. A moderately bad day at the road race no longer means that your GC fight is over.

We are also very pleased to announce that for the first time ever, the Women Pro 1/2 and the Men Pro/1 will have a full rolling enclosure during the road race. We’ve been trying for years to make this happen, and thanks to the amazing efforts of our race operations staff, we’ve been successful.

One of the negative aspects of this development is that we need more space on the road race course. To ensure the safety and sufficient spacing between fields during the afternoon, we have been forced to eliminate the Women 3/4 category from the first two days of racing.

This was an agonizing decision for us, and is one of the reasons that we’re opening registration a bit later than we had hoped. We looked at expanded road race courses, stage order, timing of the fields, lap times for the last several years, and many other options to try and make room for four fields in the afternoon. We couldn’t figure out a way to do it, while at the same time give the pros the room they need to race.

The Longsjo is, and will continue to be one of the only races in the country where amateurs from nearly every category can come and race on the very same courses as their professional counterparts. We will continue to try and figure out a way for our usual eight categories to participate fully in the Longsjo, but for this year the Women 3/4 racers will be limited to the final two days of racing. The entry fees and prize lists has been adjusted accordingly.

One other adjustment to our categories is modification of the age classification for the Masters category. We received a number of comments last year regarding this issue, and we have decided to change the Masters category from 35+ to 40+. Had this change been in effect in 2009, only 10 riders would have been affected.

We look forward to seeing all of you in July, and wish you a safe and successful 2010.

Best Regards,

The Longsjo Staff


As in 2009, we’ll be offering a free iPod Nano for one of the first 100 registered entrants, so don’t delay, register today!

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