Last Sunday kid one and I ran the 24th Annual Minnesota State Fair Milk Run 5K in Falcon Heights. This was our second straight year and we ran this one four minutes faster than 2007.

This event is so much fun–you get a T-shirt, admission to the fair and a coupon for a free malt afterward. The 3.1-mile course starts and finishes near Heritage Square in the northwest corner of the fairgrounds and runs back and forth through the St. Anthony Park neighborhood and the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus.

Here are the top three men’s finishers:

• 1, Daniel Murray, 21, Blue Earth, MN, 16:33 (5:19 pace)
• 2, Thomas Tisell, 41, St. Paul, MN, 16:46 (5:24)
• 3, Michael Nawrocki, 36, Minneapolis, MN, 16:56 (5:27)

Here are the top three women’s finishers:

• 1, Kim Magee, 25, Mounds View, MN, 18:06 (5:49)
• 2, Angie Voight, 31, Minneapolis, MN, 19:07 (6:09)
• 3, Becca Nichols, 17, Lakeville, MN, 19:24 (6:14)

Full Results: Men | Women

7MM 2008 Milk Run Photo Gallery

Federated Insurance Company of Owatonna, Minnesota, hosted their annual Federated Challenge fundraiser Monday at Interlachen Country Club in Edina. The event raises funds for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Minnesota and the Annexstad Family Foundation and a large check was presented in the clubhouse ballroom for $2.3 million.

The event was supported by many well-known organizations, including presenting sponsor Wells Fargo, the Timberwolves, Tiffany and Co., Allina, Coca-Cola, Rolex and TCF Bank. Participants on each par three hole also had a chance to win a Mercedes from sponsor Feldmann Imports with a hole-in-one.

Interlachen absolutely shined during the day: host professional Jock Olson graciously hit tee shots for each team over the course of the afternoon, the grounds crew did an incredible job to remove all traces of the major event held there just two months ago and George Carroll’s catering staff served excellent food and refreshments before and after the tournament.

The weather was perfect for the double shotgun event (one was held at 7:30 AM and a second group started at 1:30 PM). Each foursome also had the services of a forecaddie during their round to help negotiate the intricacies of the famed Interlachen fairways and greens.

Special thanks to Jeff and his wife Debbie for the invitation to this great event and congratulations on raising so much money for a great cause.

7MM Interlachen Photo Gallery

Almost ten years to the day of my last round there, our Saturday group visited Bunker Hills Golf Course in Coon Rapids today. Our afternoon tee time had us on the West-North nines at the 27 hole facility (36 holes if you count the nine hole short course). The walking weekend rate was $40.

Bunker Hills hosts many tournaments each year, including the Minnesota State Open and the Minnesota State High School League Class AAA boys and girls golf championships. It hosted a Champions Tour event from 1993 to 2000 and is home to the Minnesota Section of the PGA. There is a great display of Minnesota golf memorabilia in the clubhouse (including a photo of player of the year Don Berry provided by Golfing in Minnesota).

While the condition of the course was nice, today was overshadowed by a golf issue we haven’t experienced much lately: slow play. The area around the clubhouse was full of people when we first arrived and tee times were running late. Our first nine holes took three hours and a staffer made an effort to improve things when we notified them. Unfortunately, the round still took almost five and a half hours to complete.

There is really no need for slow play on this course–balls are easy to find, there isn’t much trouble and most of the holes aren’t that tight. The long par-three eighth hole on the west nine is my favorite hole at Bunker Hills, but it does create a back-up.

7MM Bunker Hills Photo Gallery

This morning I had the opportunity to interview Bob Parise, president and founder of ForeTees, an online tee time reservation system designed by golf professionals exclusively for private country clubs.

In use by 24 of the top 100 clubs in the nation (300+ clubs overall), the system has processed more than 8 million tee times since the March 2002 launch. Top Minnesota clubs using the system include Interlachen, Hazeltine National and Northland.

Parise was a member at Dellwood Hills and owned a technology consulting firm, RDP Consulting. In the spring of 2001, Dellwood assistant professional Travis Galleberg and head professional Jay Norman led the charge to bring an online system for tee times to their members. Finding nothing to their liking in the market, Parise stepped in and the initial ForeTees system was born.

Five additional clubs joined by the end of the first year and Galleberg left Dellwood to join the company. Current director of technology Paul Sindelar was also involved from the start and the company now employs nine people in their new office, located just down the road from North Oaks.

System features have expanded over time to meet the custom needs of each club. For example, tee time lotteries are popular with Florida clubs, so that feature was added in 2005. Other new features include event sign-up, handicap integration with GHIN and expanded reporting capabilities for club managers.

With sensitive member rosters and information, security and backup systems are vital. ForeTees hosts their servers in a Minneapolis data center and have multiple procedures in place for contingencies (such as when a club loses its internet connection).

Techies will be interested to know that Macs play a big part in the ForeTees operation, while Linux is used on the back-end servers. The development platform is Java-based, with MySQL databases used to store system data.

ForeTees is a true Minnesota golf success story. Parise said they’d like to improve the look and feel of the product in the future and are managing through the difficult economy. They also continue to partner and integrate with existing club systems and web sites.

Everyone I’ve talked to at a private club that has ForeTees loves it. After visiting the operation, it’s easy to see why. Kudos!

It’s been ten years since my first (and only) fantasy football league, but the neighbors asked us to fill an opening in their league this year. We plan to set it and forget it for the most part, but here is the starting lineup (courtesy of fanball.com).

Tonight we attended the first annual Wild season ticket holder BBQ on Raspberry Island in downtown St. Paul. Two trolleys ferried people from the River Centre parking ramp on Kellogg down to the entrance where we found:

• Coupons for a free brat or burger, chips, drink and Kemps IttiBitz ice cream
• A tent selling discounted Wild merchandise
• New owner Craig Leopold flipping burgers
• Tables with swag from channel 45 and the Pioneer Press
• Two caricature artists doing free drawings
• Lots of tables and chairs to sit and eat
• A stage for a live Hockey Unplugged with Kevin Falness, Dan Terhaar, Mike Greenlay and Craig Leopold
• A screen set up for the movie Miracle

I chatted briefly with Mike Greenlay (who plays in the Tapemark Charity Pro-Am) and asked him about the new owner. He said he worked with him before in Nashville and he thinks that Bob Naegele found a great successor in Mr. Leopold.

It was fun listening to Hockey Unplugged again, although a few of the questions asked weren’t the greatest (glad I don’t have to come up with answers for those).

The only disappointment of the night was the one caricature artist who said he had to quit at 8PM – right as my daughter got to the front of the line after waiting an hour. By itself that wouldn’t be so awful, but the guy did one more drawing after we left for a couple who offered him $10 to do a “free” drawing. Jerk.