Zen and the Art of Speedskating

I am finally home, and trying to organize the vast amount of material I have from nationals.

I finished the video from the sprint completion very early this morning, and will be processing/posting it later today. It rocks like an avalanche, so keep your eyes open for a steady stream of good stuff–

Thanks to Sarah Beetham, Charlie Mahoney’s fianceé, for this image of me zipping along during a 500m. It’s like I am headed right at the camera at a weird angle to the track, but I do have proper nose-knee-toe alignment.

That skinsuit makes me look fat. I am pushing 205 right now, & that is a lot of Love to accelerate from a standing start, but I digress…

Did I have goals at nationals this year? How could I have a goal? I work full time, I have a lovely daughter, and between her amazing birth and a back injury that sidelined me at a critical training period, it’s been a challenge.

That said, I am intensely competitive, and have learned the hard way that to go really fast on skates requires an intricate blend of factors; it’s a physical and psychological puzzle, and this year I am missing most of the pieces. I do remember where the pieces go, but that only counts for so much.

But I would not be happy without goals, so I did have two:

I wanted to enjoy the experience of racing nationals like I did the very first time I qualified in December of 2003. That year I was like a creative kid during his first visit to LegoLand. It was a huge emotional high.

In 2004, 2005 & 2006 I had sacrificed & trained freakishly hard, and had expectations of results. I did race well, but did not have what I would call an “enjoyable” time, even though in 06 I did earn cat I. Last year nationals in 07 was more fun, but I was in a lot of pain from a chronic injury, and was still stressing out of habit.

So fun was goal #1 this year, but also I wanted to be faster than I was back in 2003. That first year I skated 38.8 & 39.0 in the 500, and 1:20-ish 1000m races.

I did accomplish both of my goals.

For the body I am wearing right now, I got about 95% of what it was capable of. My 500’s were 38.31 & 38.41, and my 1000’s were both in the mid 1:19’s.

All these times were light years slower than my sea-level PB’s from 2006 (37.1 & a low 1:16), but this year’s races felt “good” to skate.

I made connections with so many people who matter deeply to me; I had so many conversations that reminded me of the unique, warm people who are drawn to this sport, and so I am at peace, goal accomplished.

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Filed under: RACE DAY, on the road

There are so many stories happening at races all across the world. But I am just one camera & keyboard, and here is the story I saw at the races on Saturday.

I’ve written a few times about Tony Sargent, a really nice guy who moved to Utah from Oklahoma to try and qualify for Olympic trials. Tony inline speedskated as a kid, and has competed at the elite levels in Golf. Here is a story his local paper ran.

Tony skated a qualifying time late last year for US championships, but this year they lowered the qualification times significantly. These new times were faster than he has ever skated, and although he has improved, his times were not enough to qualify him for nationals or Olympic Trials under the new times.

So his coach changed his training, and peaked him for this weekend. This race was his last chance to qualify for his first trip to nationals, & he needed to skate a sub 39 second 500m.

Coming around the last turn, his long legs and torso churning, he must have known he was on a great race, and how close it was going to be.

38.93 !!!

The eruption of cheers from his teammates, friends & coaches echoed through the whole oval.

In one moment he had qualified for both US national championships this year, and Olympic trials next year.

I speak often of how this sport can break your heart, but when it’s good, when you skate that PB on the day it counts, it’s a feeling like….

Well, Tony, how do you feel?

I’ve called my whole family up, and I pretty much broke down in the locker room, it’s just a huge weight off my shoulders. Huge.

A kid from Oklahoma skating Olympic trials! It’s a good thing! On the Ice! Not something we have much of there.

This is right up there with my best golf days, it feels like I just won a tournament, even though I will be dead last at US championships.

Before I hit a golf ball in a big tournament, I tell myself that I am the best golfer out here, and I know I am going to hit a good shot and I do.

So, before my race today, I told myself that I am the best one out here, and even though I did not skate the best time out here today (note: 13th of the 20 skaters)

I skated my best time, better than I have ever been before. The best Tony that I have ever been.

Congrats Tony! I looked at some of your earliest times, and that kind of improvement is truly remarkable.

From a 47.24 second 500m to a 38.93 in two years takes a stunning amount of hard work!

You would have beaten your first race, head-to head, by over 80 meters.

(check out the cool graph on this German website, DESG, and in english, all of Tony races)

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Filed under: RACE DAY

For speedskating around in the sweet mud of the Grass-roots, YouTube is awesome!

I raced a 1000m this weekend, and by the time I was home, Don Nelson had emailed me a link to a youtube of my race! real time & slow-mo, whooo!

(I am still working on my own long video from the last two weekends of racing)

I like what Don calls his YouTube account, speedskatinganalyst.

This was my first 1000m of the year, & since I’ve been bike racing a ton and only skating once a week, this was a race to make mistakes in, and refine physical & psychological execution.

Here is my analysis of what I see, it was a typical early season messy race.

Start: good off the line, snappy for my lack of snap-work. I make a serious mistake not holding the turn on the blocks & sitting back deeper. It costs me time. There is no room to lose time in a sprint! 17.99 opening 200m. It “felt” faster than that time.

First lap: Felt fast, knees together (I skate like a bowlegged old cowboy when I don’t work on this daily), and I get a good draft from my pair, world cup skater Roger Schnieder of Switzerland. My hips are not as strong as I would like them to be in the turns. 27.35 lap, a fast lap for an 18 opener. So I developed more speed in the first 200m than my time suggested.

Last Lap: Ouch! I completely blow up, , and skate position goes to pieces in the final turn, 30.97 lap time. It’s embarrassing to slow down this much & look this bad. The last turn is painful to watch, and painful to do as well.

I have trained so many different ways, over so many years, to fix the last lap blow-up, but I am what I am, and a 3.6 second fade is average for the body I was born with. Many pure sprinters are like this.

Short track does seem to help my fade more than anything else, even more than a whole summer of marathon inline racing. Probably because it helps hip strength to hold the position in the turns.

(info for non speedskaters, anything over a 2 second lap fade in a 1000m is bad, I did load the training pretty hard this week too.)

Overall I am happy though, I skated a 38.12 in my 500m earlier in the day, and this race was a 1:16.3, and those are excellent early season times for me. Usually my first race of the season is a high 38 & a low 1:17. So this is an optimistic weekend.

Both of these races qualified me for Olympic trials in October 2009. 54 weeks from now.. Hmmmm…

I joked with my pair Roger before the race that people always skate PB’s when paired with me.

At masters worlds & US nationals last year, 75% of the races for my pair were PB’s. And sure enough, Roger skates a PB in this 1000m race! His splits were more like a true allarounder. 18.16 / 27.40 / 28.04

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Filed under: RACE DAY, Audio/Video

Day 1 of the 3 day Champions Challenge, the final race of the year in Salt Lake, and something absolutely amazing happens.

Check out this scoreboard after the 1500m races-

Since when did Great Britain ever become a long track power?

Phil Brojaka is skating absolutely incredibly right now, he topped this list of Americans including an inline world champion, and a pile of US national sprint & allaround team members.

It’s easy to complain, as an American, how small & neglected a sport speedskating is compared to others. But think of the road Phil has to walk!

Phil will never skate in a British Long track national championships, there are no mentors or local coaches with Olympic Long Track experience.

Along with his countryman Matt Lindsay, Phil trains in Milwaukee, far from home, with the “unsinkable” Bob Fenn.

Dear British Olympic selection committee. Send Phil to the world cups & the Olympic games!! He is at that level. Grant his teammate Matt Lindsay the appropriate Visas to keep training in the USA.

Both men work astonishingly hard on Bob’s training program, and if I must lapse into the UK vernacular, they are BLOODY GOOD representatives of your country, both personally and athletically.

Besides, that Brit flag skinsuit is just wild.

Here is a link to the page with full results from all the racing.

In other news, there was a terrifying moment during warm-ups. I was relaxing in the warmup lane, in the corner, and Charlie Mahoney zips by me at 30+mph doing a full power accel.

A normal thing to do during warm-ups.

Some other skaters, 50 feet past me, were filling the warmup lane in his path, Charlie had no choice but to veer off into the empty race track, again, this happens in warmups.

But Todd Porter was standing right there in the race lane in his shoes, getting the track ready for racing.

It was a horrific impact. Both men were down on the ice for some time. Everyone in the rink had a sick feeling as coaches & staff rushed over.

Todd was ok, Charlie was deeply bruised, and in a good deal of pain the rest of the weekend, but luckily was still able to skate, and set 3 personal bests on fast Salt Lake ice.

It could have been so much worse.

Is there some karmic reason that Charlie’s nickname is “The Crash”?

Evidently the security cameras caught the whole thing on tape. I don’t ever want to see it, once was enough.

Matt Plummer went sub-36 in his 500m for the first time, 35.96. He was very happy. Here he is in blue, driving off the line with another “guy in red” Matt Shanahan.

What you can’t see in this photo is some serious crazy tempo, but you can see excellent knee drive directly down the track. That’s hard to do when legspeed is a blur.

I will finish this day with a report on the happiest note I can find. Mia Manganello skated an excellent 1500m PB, in a time that beat many of the guys.

I’ve known Mia for several years now; everyone at the oval can see her talent, drive, and how solidly her family is behind her (no pressure Mia, Really!).

But yaknow, when it’s race time, no matter the talent or the support, it’s still just Mia, alone in that lane, and when that last lap of the 1500 is crushing both body and soul (as in this photo), facing it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever known..

Efforts like Mia put out today that are why I find long track such an inspiring sport.

Day 2, Champions Challenge

Tyler Goff is a fascinating skater to watch, both from a technical & psychological standpoint. His long legs create tremendous pressure into the ice, and the angles his body takes during skating remind me of Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek.

But Tyler will be the first to admit that he finds it hard to motivate himself to race at his best week-in and week-out. Tyler’s saving grace is that he always skates exceptionally well when the pressure is on.

However, this year he worked harder than ever in the off-season, has skated consistently, and this particular weekend his long-distance girlfriend Katie was out for a visit to Salt Lake.

With added motivation rinkside, Tyler was absolutely on fire, winning the overall 500m & 1000m, breaking his 1500m personal best and tying his 1000m PB. He was so fast, my camera just would not focus correctly on him at all.

Katie, you will be out here to cheer him on at nationals, right? Olympic trials too?

Mark Yanigahara came out from Saratoga Saratoga springs, N.Y., for some fast ice, and also lopped off huge chunks from his former personal best times. He can really get it going off the start line.

Mark was a US national champion at Greco-roman wrestling in his weight class, but fell in love with speedskating, and has never found anything so wonderful & frustrating at the same time. I met him years ago, during one of my first weekends ever on a long track, it’s been a wild journey for both of us.

Eli Ochowicz, a sprinter taking on the 3k! yeah! For those of us in the “fast-twitch-fraternity” distance races are very difficult. I don’t know if I have ever seen her skate with both arms on her back, but she was very smooth.

Justin Stelly simply crushed everyone in the 5k. I’ve shot a lot of video of Justin over time, so I know his style well. He looks so different now than he did last year, I have a hard time recognizing him through the camera viewfinder.

I used to just look for the flailing limbs, he is quite smooth now, and that’s an essential reason why he skated well at the world cup this year.

In this series, from early in his 5k, look at the patch of red on his hood in relation to the pads behind him, to see how he sinks into each push, and then rises out of it. For many distance skaters like Stelly, this up & down motion, during every push, minimizes the very tiring static phase of distance skating.

The key is to “sink into the push”, not the opposite.

Day 3

The final day of the Champions Challenge. A test for the sprinters in the 1,000m, the women had a 5,000m, and then there was the 10,000m for the very fit/insane, or according to Ron Macky “the real men”.

When I’m tired, & worn out, those little voices in my head start echoing: “you are getting old, WTF are you thinking doing something like this?!?!”

It’s absolutely true that something changed physiologically, in me, about two years ago. That is just a fact, and no amount of positive thinking will change it.

However, this whole weekend, I’ve felt young, springy, solid, every part of my skating & recovery was the best I can be. When the young guns were complaining about being tired, I was still smiling.

I PB’ed in the 5,000m & 10,000m during the Champions Challenge, but I am most proud of my 1,000. It was the fastest time I have skated in 2 years, and physically, it felt like one of the best 1,000’s I have ever done. I can only identify a few small missteps in the first turn; the rest of it was about as solid as I can be.

The last race of the year is not just about results, it’s also about hope, and finishing the year on a great race leaves a taste that makes the transition to summer training much easier.

In these photos, the fellow in black is the WHIP program’s Alex Mark. This junior national team inliner was my pair for both the 1,500 and 1,000m.

For some reason, people paired with me skate PB’s, and both of his races were big PB’s for him. It was a lot of fun racing Alex. Even though he beat me both times, it was close, intense, fun stuff.

I did skate the 10k, and won’t talk much about it except to say that after the huge effort I put in during the 1k my legs were garbage. I finished the 10k without throwing up on myself, and that was enough.

I had fun skating the 10k last year, but this year it was uniquely horrid. I’m not sure I EVER want to do that again.

Here is a link to the page with full results from all the racing.

Patrick Meek had a lot riding on this weekend, as the selection for the US National allaround team next year is still up in the air. He responded to the pressure with strong PB’s in the 1500m and the 10,000m. Pat, I know I’m not on the selection committee, but you have my vote.

It’s good the season is over, it’s been long, and I am not the only one who thinks so, as here is Jessica’s tongue-in-cheek sentiment-

Her happiness emphasizes the fact that this sport is SO HARD, it’s almost impossible to do without the encouragement of those you love.

Thanks Jess…

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Filed under: RACE DAY

Any day is a good day when you are at an indoor oval, and chatting with fellas like Ragnvald Naess. He is as warm as his smile indicates.

Click on this image of him to see a larger version, & so you can see all the detail of the amazing patches on his jacket. He has skated all over the world, and has patches on this jacket from everywhere.

He wants a patch from the USA, does anyone have one? Do we even make jacket patches anymore?

Rangvald is 54 years old, and has skated over 50 10k’s. He wants to skate 100 10k’s Yeah, there are a lot of extraordinary folks here, from all over the world.

But to the races.

I skate a solid 1500m, good for 2nd in my group, and gave me some more cushion on the pile of quality distance skaters right on my heels. It hurt, but in a good way.

It’s easy to say you are a true sportsman, but do you really mean it? Jan Duif of the Netherlands lost his fast skinsuit. He is the main competition of my friend Marty Haire.

So I loaned him my backup fast suit. This is what this event is about. It was wild to see my suit whipping around the track, but without me in it.

Jan skated a huge PB in the 1500, and jokingly did not want to give my suit back. Marty was 2nd again, also skating a massive PB, both skaters going in the 1:57’s, and Jan increased his lead slightly in the overall.

Tom “cosmopolitan” Cole PB’ed in both his 1500, and 3k today, and moved up strongly to 10th overall, in the 45-50’s. Go TOM!!!

He joked that the track in Petoskey, Michigan, should host Masters Worlds someday.

My turn for the 3k, I skated what I’ve found is the best strategy for me, skate 4 very fast laps, and then struggle to the finish like a flaming lactic meatball. This was the crucial distance in this meet for me. I could not lose too much time. I started with several 32’s, and faded horribly to a 39.

I will not post pictures of the “flaming lactic meatball” moments. It was ugly.

My pair, the superstrong Dutchman Piet Hjoksma, obliterated me, and the rest of the field, and Danny Fredericks’ 3k masters Calgary world record in one shot.

It was expected, but still awesome from my front row-seat to watch him motor.

I finished almost last, but I did not lose huge gobs of time to everyone other than Piet, I’m still in second place.. Every pair I have had during these masters games, they have skated personal bests against me.

Jim Cornell, he is skating solidly in 7th place. Jim broke his collarbone earlier this year, and that hugely impacted his preseason preparation. To see him still skating in the top 10 masters, in such an intense age category, is inspiring.

Norwegian Marja Haartsen, at the start, driving hard off the line, then 400m later at her top speed.

Ivar watching from home in Norway, you are missed by all of us! (Especially me, I want to race you in a 500m someday!)

Canadian Genevieve Provencher, also at the start and then ripping along at top speed. These are some smart, fast, awesome skaters here. Everyone tries to bring their “A+ GAME” to worlds. Most succeed.

So Marty lines up for the 3k directly with his main Dutch rival, and the one that many Europeans expect to win this weekend.

Jan Duif had an incredible battle with Brian Boudreau last year in Calgary during the 3k, it was one of the best races I have ever seen.

Jan beat Brian that day, but was 2nd overall to Canadian Benoit Lamarche in the overall. Now Jan has another North American on his hands. They are 1-2 in the standings

Jan goes our hard, and opens up a solid lead on Marty.

Marty smoothly chases him down, no panicking-

and skating repeated 32 second laps, Marty PASSES JAN AND WINS!!

It was an amazing skate! Canadian Brett Arnason stated out our sentiments most clearly when he hollered to an exhausted Marty.

There are not enough O’s in the word “SMOOTH” to describe that skate!!!

We did not realize it until later in the Evening, that Marty’s time of 4:05 was a NEW MASTERS WORLD RECORD!!

(world record? It’s a difficult question, as Masters speedskaters are denied the right by the ISU to call our fastest times “masters world records”. We are denied what swimmers, cyclists & track & field masters have. But Marty beat Jon Arthur Olafson’s amazing race from from Calgary last year, so yeah, it’s a world record in the hearts of everyone here).

Here are the men’s 45-50 standings so far.

Tomorrow, the 5,000m!

Jan & Marty are separated by a “Haire” in the 5k. If Marty wins the race by a little over a second, he is Masters champ.

Jim & Tom & myself also qualified to skate the final distance (only the top half of the ranking skates the longest race in a meet like this). This is good.

I’m still in second in my age category, but have strong Finnish skater Vesa Isoviita chasing me during my worst event, and his best, the 5,000m.

First place is far out of reach, but I do have a lead on Vesa & a Russian. If I just execute & “suffer well” I should be able to hang onto second place, but as Kenny Rodgers sings:

You never count your money, when you’re sitting at the table, there will be time enough for counting, when the dealing’s done!

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Filed under: RACE DAY, on the road