Zen and the Art of Speedskating

(minimal time to write, am SLAMMED with so much to do, it’s stupid-silly)

Last march Brett Arnason (the Canadian Rep) & I realized that the momentum from master’s worlds needed to be followed up with IMSSC metric races for the newly energized North American masters community.

In April & June, I made a lot of phone calls to see if an American race was possible.

In August, at the IMSSC summer meeting in Krefeld, Germany, I proposed a new race, and everyone was supportive.

Then in October-November, I worked really hard getting the entry form together. In December, a great bunch of people helped tremendously on the organizational details of actually making a race happen (in fact, they did most of it).

This past weekend, January 5th & 6th, 33 Masters Speedskaters arrived in Milwaukee, and we all had a great time at the first Master’s International American sprint. The Masters International Canadian Open, will happen February 9th-10th in Calgary.

Here is about 75% of us in a group photo from this Past weekend.

Skaters traveled from Washington, Michigan, Maryland, Calgary, Toronto, Utah, Illinois and Minnesota for the event.

Ross Hanham was part of the Canadian contingent that traveled to compete, and he wrote a very kind post about this event on his Masters Newsblog, you can see it here.

Here are a couple of images of the racing. On the top you have Jan Zurcher, who traveled down from Seattle to put some of her sprint power to good use.

Olusegun Sijuwade was the meet registrar, or “meet head” as we affectionately dubbed him. He also skated some really nice races on Saturday. Check out how far back his weight is in this photo!

Interestingly enough, he is skating on a pair of Corey Carpenter’s old Viking blades, with a clap mech welded on

Tom Cole has worked really hard to get ready for his upcoming trip to Germany and Master’s worlds. He is not a sprinter, but has worked himself into great shape, and his form in the last 200m of a 1k looks great.

Ken Anderson, also styling his way through a 1k. Ken is a very talented runner, blogger, and is working hard on his ice technique. Like Tom, he’s riding a nice flat edge here.

Julie Hough was one of the Canadians who made the trip to Milwaulkee. She is in the cool-looking Canadian masters skinsuit.

I’ve always thought in long track metric racing, improving vs yourself is what it’s all about. So I’ve created an award that reflects this. The Most Improved Personal Best award.

Myron Yencha has improved A LOT since I first met him, and skated an excellent PB here in a 1000m. He took about a second off his previous time, and that was good enough for 2nd place in the most improved PB contest won by Bill Armstrong, who knocked 1.46 off his 500m.

There is improving vs yourself, and then there is improving the record books. Canadian Brett Arnason came to speedskating late in life, and along with about 5 other skaters, had a real shot at the sprint samalong record.

However the weather did not provide the right conditions for fast times. It was foggy, humid, warm, rainy, & high air pressure outdoors, so although the ice at the Pettit was good, the air was like skating through a soggy mitten.

I carried my peak over well from US nationals last week, felt snappy, and the times I skated were 1.6 seconds slower than my 500m sea-level PB, and 2.4 slower for my 1000. Ouch… That is some slow air…

Overall, the meet felt like a success, and the Saturday night party at Olu’s was a wonderful gathering of like-minded souls.

A few people deserve huge thank-yous for helping make this happen

Suzy Osum did incredible work getting us meet sponsors Shorewest realty, Barbara A. Smith Home Interiors & Gift and the Wisconsin Athletic Club.

Olu did an amazing job organizing the meet registrations

Carla Langethal was an excellent proofreader of my terrible spelling/grammar, a realistic sounding board, and helped me with the million little things.

Cindy Yomantas at the Pettit was awesome & encouraging in too many ways to mention (and she helped us out with cool Pettit Ice center wear as prizes!). Jeff Edwards & Jeff Brand took care of officials, volunteers, & timing.

In the last second, Jen Kraynick, Mike Anderson & Steve Desotell stepped in and helped calculate the awards and final samalong points, as our masters categores made the official computerized results unhappy.

And even though he was not here, thanks must go to Dr. Volker Serini, in Germany, for starting the IMSSC

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Filed under: RACE DAY

You can see the results for the Men’s allaround & the Women’s allaround at the new DESG website (check out their ability to track individual skaters time progressions in each distance over their career, very cool! even though it does not account for indoor/outdoor races).

A 2-time Olympian once told me:

“Look, there are a LOT of different training philosophies in use around the world. The Canadians go fast, the Koreans go fast, the Dutch & Norwegians go fast, the Japanese are amazing, all of them train in radically different ways.

So there absolutely is more than ONE way to train & be good. The important thing, really, is to believe that your way is the best way for you.

This was never proved more clearly than by the results of US LT nationals 5k, check out this list.

3 guys who train mainly on the short track, 2 inline/ice mixers, 2 who train the “conventional long track ice way”, and from what I understand, the winner Shani does a pretty even split of long & short track.

Also notable in this result is the “coonpup” Justin Stelly. His mom picked a great week to come up from Louisiana & see her son announce his arrival as a true force in US distance speedskating.

Speaking of Shani, he and Catherine Raney were absolutely dominant in the allaround. Catherine was even training through this competition, as her true focus is the world championships. She said she was tired, but certainly did not skate that way.

Many ways to go fast! in 10th place in the 5k was my friend Keith, in a huge achievement representing an astounding amount of work. If Keith skates the qualifying time (you must do both a top 10 at nationals and skate faster than a time standard), he earns Cat I next season!

Here he is, smiling, giving the “10″ sign, or maybe its just “8 V’s of victory”.

When I start in the inner lane, this is what the scoreboard reads, it’s good for a laugh on a stressful race day. I was in a pretty early pair, and after this race, Justin Stelly & I got to be on the top of the leader board for a while. A nice feeling.

National allaround team member Ron Macky & I have had a running joke this year. When he beats me in the 500m, he takes away my “sprinter card.” When I beat him, I get my “sprinter card” back. We have been within .1 or .2 of each other every weekend.

Look what happened in the final results from the allaround 500m!

What do Ron & I do? Do we both have sprinters cards now? Or do we have to split it?

Unfortunately the next day, Ron developed a serious fever, and was not allowed to finish the allaround. This was his 10th year skating US LT nationals.

Kaari Cox & Charlie Mahoney were skating their very first USA nationals, congrats to both of them in how much hard work it takes to get here!

Kaari is 44, coached by Matt Vraa & skates in Minneapolis. Charlie works with Bob Fenn in Milwaukee. Skating for Bob makes you tough (or dead tired), and Charlie skated tough.

Caleb Eaton, also in his first nationals, got the ferocious cold that was going around. Train your brains out for several years to qualify, and wake up the day of the races feeling like dogcrap. Life can sometimes suck.

He skated some tough races in his homemade green skinsuit.

There was a lot of holiday public skating going on, so the Utah oval did not shave the ice down, so times really were not fast like crazy fast ice can make them.

Kate Ortega traveled down from Alaska to the lower 48, to watch her son Liam race.

There was A WHOLE BUNCH of short track nationals skaters who raced LT nationals. Probably the most successful being Charles Leveille & Ryan Bedford.

Leveille is just so dang strong. I love the curve of his back, like a spring that puts a ton of pressure through the back part of his blade. When I bent the back 2 inches of my left blade crashing earlier this season, entering corners is when I felt it the most. Leveille is a 2006 Torino Olympian, he was 3rd overall at US short track champs, and 4th in the LT Allaround.

There is no award or term for that, but maybe there should be-

Carla Langenthal is sitting next to me as I write this, and she mentioned that she felt like at Nationals this year she ended up watching people for more the quality of their skating, rather than just watching times.

Our first Nationals was 5 years ago, and maybe Carla & I had the most fun at that one, as we were just so happy to be there. Since then, we expect RESULTS from ourselves.

It changes the game.

Erica Lanser, pure guts & glory & pain & the last lap of a 3k! She misunderstood what lap was her last one, so her finishing sprint to the line was quite a bit longer than she had planned on.

She was coughing so much the remainder of the day, her brother did not want to leave her alone at the restaurant during lunch, he was so concerned Erica would cough & choke on her food.

Some of the people I like look to for skating quality are April Medley and Maria Lamb, this is what you call a LONG PRESSURE MOMENT, these skaters just hang on their edges a physics-defying amount of time. Mia Manganello is chasing Maria here.

Rather unusually for a speedskater, Maria does a lot of training on skate skis. THAT is a wonderful sport, almost as much fun as cyclocross!

My body is fried like a burnt egg after 4 days of racing. But my brain is fine, and I’m working on the sprint entry & videos for both competitons right now, much more, very soon.

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Filed under: RACE DAY

It’s late, I need sleep, 2 days of racing down, 2 to go. I could blog for hours about what has happened so far, and I will (videos too) but I need sleep right now to be at my best tomorrow.

There is always time to write, but only a few chances to race.

You can see the full results of the US Long track championships here at the growing website Speedskatingresults.com

But results on a scoreboard are only ashes from the true fires, only part of the human stories that created these simple numbers.

There is far more to this sport than just results, robots don’t skate these times, a unqiue collection of people do, and I think maybe my place in speedskating is to do my best to capture the bits & pieces of their story.

Like Nancy Swider-Peltz Jr.’s skates, ready to blast off the line for a very strongly skated 3k.

Note the Viking logo printed backwards, I think this means they are a custom pair from their factory.

Why they do this is beyond me, but it never fails to make me grin when I see it.

Much more soon…

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Filed under: RACE DAY

Amazing finesse, incredible strength, scary crashes. Everything to love & fear about short track is right here.

My favorite bit about this is the HUGE smile Katherine Reutter gives as she steps to the starting line. It’s a tad hard to see in the video, but in person, it lit up the rink just like her skating.

She did the same thing before the women’s 1500m final.. Smiled big, skated fast.

I usually am a worried sick freak-bunny-stress-mess during nationals, but Katherine is obviously quite relaxed.

Click here for the high quality quicktime, or press play to start the Youtube below.

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Filed under: RACE DAY, Audio/Video

If you listen closely, you can hear skiers & general outdoorsy types celebrating. Utah is getting pounded by a blizzard.

But humans aren’t the only mammal who loves the snow.

Just to have the eyes open on a night like this can give a person enough to see & think about for a lifetime of blog posts.

No matter what the world of people throws at you, sometimes the outdoors is a true balm.

Short track Nationals starts this weekend. I am going to wander over & watch a bit. Short track is amazing, exciting, and I love watching the top folks whip around.

However, it can be a tiny bit dangerous-

As I was skating long track, I heard a scream and a big “BOOM” from the wall of the short track rink. Word quickly spread among the skaters that Mary Grace had broken her ankle in the final practice before nationals!!!

Crap! This sport has so many ways of breaking your heart along with your bones. I have two other friends who just have had season ending injuries, and are struggling with the emotional fallout.

Injuries are part of sports, but it’s a sucky part. The only lesson to be learned is to appreciate it when you feel good, because it can be taken away in an instant. .

The Utah oval ran some races on Thursday afternoon, one week before nationals start. So I was able to race during my lunch hour! Since I blog about a lot of other people, it’s only fair to link to Flyin Brian, as he wrote about a race we did vs each other.

This is us, about 670 meters in, just as it starts to really hurt. Brian and I train a lot together, this was fun.

Thanks to Robert Lawrence for the photo. My 500m on this day felt great, as good as I will be for this year. I was not so great for this 1000.

Before the race, Brian was in his skinsuit sitting next to the start line, on a work-realated conference call. He puts his phone down for a moment, races a 1000m, and then gets right back on the phone.

That’s workingman STYLE!

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Filed under: RACE DAY