Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Under the watchful eyes of a worldwide smorgasbord of super-fans-

The world single distance championships began today, with the women’s 1500m and the Men’s 5k.

Oddly enough, somewhat cloudy conditions, high pressure & humid air moved in with a new weather system, and times were slower than expected.

Really it’s not the fastest ice in the world, it’s the fastest air in the world, & today was not a “fast air” day.

The Dutch have something of a “youth revolution” going on, 20 year old Ireen Wust won the 1500m, and 21 year old Sven Kramer won the 5k.

Here is Wust about 100 meters into her race, and then 1350 meters in, note the changes in body position as the burning evils of the 1500m race takes its toll on her.

Here is Catherine Raney, initiating corner pressure most of us can only dream about (and she is just getting the bell for the final lap at this moment).

Kristina Groves of Canada was good for 3rd place on the day. Her skating technique is beautiful, however is the Canadian team skinsuit beautiful or ugly? Inquiring minds want to know!

For the Men’s 5k, there was not much wondering about who would win, the question was, would Sven Kramer set a world record or not?

And he did not, here is Kramer skating, then crossing the finish line, to the deafening silence of the crowd. Weird.

It’s amazing when sports fans make predictions of something like that, when they are not the folks who have to skate 12.5 freakishly fast laps faster than any human ever has before. Then they have the nerve to act all disappointed when it does not happen exactly the way they want.

And these are laps at altitude! Even though skating in the thin air is faster, it can hurt a lot for lowland-dwellers. This Dutch Skater has brought some hometown air with her.

Carl Verheijen in his final 100m, he threw everything into his race. It was good enough for third overall in the 5k, and he threw up shortly after crossing the finish line.

and I missed it!

However here is something I did not miss. Chad Hedrick had some bad luck, he stepped on a cone exiting a turn about halfway through his race (you can see the tail of his right blade catching it here), and crashed. But he got up & kept going. He is a fighter!!

His right knee has been very painful this week. Crashing did not help.

Italian Enrico Fabris gutted out a second place finish in the 5k. Now that Casey Fitzrandolph has retired, Fabris gets my completely subjective vote for the “smoothest skating human being on the planet”.

Casey used to just give me the chills when I would see him really fly, he is far from Utah now, and is a new Dad!!

I leave you with a side view of the Canadian suit (modeled here, at roughly 28mph, by Arne Dankers, on his way to an excellent 4th place).

I just don’t know what to say, I am attracted & repulsed all at once.

(and it goes without saying that I have huge respect for the men & women INSIDE these suits!)

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Filed under: RACE DAY

A conversation between Norwegian Sprinter Ivar Njos and myself, before today’s 5k.

Andrew: So Ivar, when was the last 5k you skated?
Ivar: Oh, about 4 years ago. It was very cold, slow outdoor ice. –23 Celsius, I skated an 8:45. How about you?
Andrew: Hmmm, 4 years ago as well, in Lake Placid, during a screaming blizzard, I did a 9:05.
Ivar: Well, at least we both will set PB’s today!

Sprinters can have a complicated relationship with distance races. The feeling falls somewhere between fear, respect, proving your man/womanhood, and the fact that we need to do them every once in a while to improve our 1000m finish and to keep allarounders from calling us wimps.

Oddly enough, my 5k went VERY well, I skated flat 37’s almost the whole way, felt in control, skated a 7:41 and was quite pleased I did not puke up the 20oz coffee I had before the start, (more from pre-race nerves than anything else). I only lost 2 places in the overall samalong, and ended up 5th.

Ivar was a bit faster in the beginning & slower at the end for his 5k, and he did a 7:43! They really made the ice cold & fast in Calgary for these races, just outstanding.

Here is Ivar, skating and finishing his 5k today.

Connecticut-based Vinnie Gagliano decided to be Italian for this competition, and since he actually speaks the language, that is ok with me. Besides, the Italian team has skinsuits, warm-ups, jackets, and knows how to party.

However he needed to use some particularly American skills in his 3k today. Near the finish, he was supposed to cross over from the inner to the outer lane, and forgot until the last possible second.

He took a big sideways step, and did a crazy short track pivot around the cone and into the outer lane. All the European coaches & the Calgary judges thought it was a marvelous bit of skating.

Stephen Gunther is one very smart fellow, after watching a Norwegian in one of the upper age groups skate a freaky fast 3k, he copied the smoothness & extension for his own race. Stephen is another example of how one can mainly train short track, and still skate well on the long track!

A Norwegian lady and a 1500m race, here is some serious focus.

The German fans were out in force, they were doing the wave every time a favorite skater wizzed by. I love the hats and the German flag colored ‘leis.

GO UKRAINE!! I tried to come up with a good metaphor to describe the color combinations & patterns of this skinsuit, the best I could do was the Ocean meets the Volcano scene from Disney’s Fantasia

Ready! Set! Go!! Kaari Cox and a very fast Dutch skater start a 1500. She effectively applied the “Skate-to-die” approach to the 1500, skate freaky fast for 700m, and then just suffer to the finish.

Steve Desotell had a wild see-saw battle with a Dutch skater in his 5k. It came down to a shoulder-to-shoulder struggle over the last 100m.

If you have ever watched Steve race packstyle, he always seems to find a crafty way to win if he makes it to the final 100m near the front. However this win was just pure willpower & a lifetime of laps in the legs.

Here he is racing, and then giving his daughter/laptime provider a smooch afterwards as his friends applaud from the stands.

Speedskating is truly one of he best examples of a multi-generational sport I can think of!

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Filed under: RACE DAY, on the road

Hello, my name is Olaf, what are your Personal Best times?

-a greeting by one of the Norwegians, to several of the Americans, it made us laugh, actually we discovered some of the Euro’s had researched their American competitors online, and knew all of our times!!

Memories of yesterday’s amazing racing swirl through my mind’s eye like the view through a flamethrower powered kaleidoscope. Today will be no different, so let me get as much down as I can before today’s flamethrower memory machine sparks into life.

Bruce Connor came to this meet a man on a mission, and broke the 500m masters world record for the 50-55 year old age group. How good does that feel? This good!

(are these world records? fairly deep in this old post from last year, here is my take on this, all the euro’s informally call these world records).

Jim Cornell is skating in the deep and strong 32 member field of the 40-45 age group. His Parents came to Calgary to cheer him on, as they have not seen him race in 10 years. It was a good day to catch up. He was 9th in the 500 and 7th in the 3k. As I write these words, a Dutch reporter from Schaatssport is interviewing him because of his ice marathoning success (a Dutch team needs to hire him!!!)

Pat Kelly set another masters world record with a very strong 37.75 500m. He was as smooth as a greased cruise missile on a bobsled run. His face is so relaxed here, 10 meters and 420 meters into his race.

I wish I had captured on film the wonderful ovation the Europeans all gave him, and everyone who set a record. They are true fans, as well as athletes.

Dimon Sports Athlete Jeff Bakal, flying like a reddish Canadian meteor.

Ivar Njos skated several 37 second 500m races at sea level in Hamar this year, and was my odd’s on favorite to pop out a 36 second 500 here in Calgary. He opened his 500m with a very strong 10.14, but slipped on the backstretch & ended up with a 38.3.

Speedskating requires a blend of propreceptive technique and a fit body to apply it. Ivar Njos has both, and like many of the Euros, has no inhibitions about changing right in front of everyone.

It does not bug me, but I still do a repressed American double take when I see it, especially when women do it (and I did ask Ivar for permission to publish this shot).

Steve Desotell suffered possibly the worst announcer mispronunciation of a name I have ever heard, but he ignored the distraction to skate very well in both his races. Canadian Ross Hanham’s newsblog has been instrumental in developing North American Masters speedskating. Both are good men I respect tremendously, and its fun to watch friends skate hard.

On the left Greg Oly shows some awesome born in the USA sprint technique, on the right he skated a huge 3k PB, and was grinning ear to ear through the lactic haze of accomplishment.

As for how I raced, I lowered my own master’s record in the 500m from a 37.47 to a 37.40, but the race itself was an awful start (10.5) & a very fast finish, maybe the best final corner I have ever skated, but it should have been much better…. I am much happier & more proud of my 5 second PB in the 3k (a 4:24), even though it was 8th place of the 17 men in my category. Overall I am in 3rd, but will probably fall a spot or two in today’s 1500m and many, many spots in the 5,000m.

This is sooo much fun…

In an earlier post, I showed the skates of Norwegian John Arthur Olafson as he was training in Salt Lake. Here is the man, at top speed. He skated PB’s in the 500m and 3k, and is solidly in the lead of the 30 competitors in the Men’s 45-59.

Brian Boudreau had some terrible luck in the 500m, he false started twice and was DQ-ed. He has trained incredibly hard for this event, and was devastated. But he is a champion in soul, and some odd mechanism of fate paired him with the best Dutch Skater, Jan Duif, for the 3k.

What resulted was one of the most incredible races I have ever personally witnessed. Both men started suicidally fast & attacked every turn all out. The lead changed hands every lap & the lap times were crazy fast; whoever was going to win this race would be the new masters record holder.

Brian is the one who told me about the “Pain Cave”, and he was incredibly deep in it today.

At the bell for the last lap, both men cracked & it was pure guts & glory all the way to the finish, Jan just had a little more than Brian in the final turn. They both skated over 9 seconds faster than the previous 3k masters world record, and for Brian, it was huge 10 second personal best, Jan went 4:03.19 and Brian 4:05.10 (!!!!!)

Incredible!!! and two men who did not know each other before today are now friends. This is Masters racing.

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Filed under: RACE DAY, on the road

My morning coffee usually creates encouraging vibes, however check out what the napkin I picked up with my coffee on the way to Sunday’s races said:

The napkin was correct, it was brutally cold & windy too, so cold that blades felt “sticky” on the ice. You can see results from this meet at http://www.midwayspeedskating.org (here is the direct link to the .pdf file of the results)

Nationals age-class championships are a wild ride. Packstyle has a completely different & gut-wrenching immediacy compared to the stopwatch driven purity of a metric meet.

Tactics, close racing, and split second decisions combine to make racing intense, fun, and like a short track meet but with less chance of serious injury (just kidding).

Many of the categories, including the one I raced in, were undecided until the final meters of the final race (and the masters 40-49 was a dead-heat photo finish, no one knew who was national champ until they called out Matt Trimble’s name at the medal ceremony an hour after the race).

I’ve done some really intense competitions over the past two months, and I came into this meet about 50% sick, ho-hum emotionally, and with Mr. Stopwatch telling me I am not skating up to par. However I knew most of the “usual suspects” who were registered in the 30-39 age group, I went to the start line of my first race thinking I should win the meet handily.

I was in for a big serving of Hubris Pie, as inliner Mike Anderson beat me convincingly in the 1500m. I had a real battle on my hands after that. It became a VERY intense meet. Luckily Mike “played chess” in the final deciding 3k, instead of using his tremendous fitness & simply trying to rip my legs off by going hard from the gun (usually the best tactics for dealing with a strong sprinter).

I am very lucky to have won my 2nd US masters 30-39 National Championship.

Here are the pictures of the age group Champions, ages 6 to 70+ (I’m the one in the ugly furry hat, with my mouth open because I am joking about the wall of digital cameras facing us.)

I am not a superstitious person, but I sometimes take fortune cookies seriously just because it’s fun. Pacing the hallways and getting myself psyched up for that crucial 3k, I found this half torn, crumpled fortune on the ground. It was not a statement, it was a question:

It made me stop and think of all the things that have “richness” in my life; my wife, family, friends, health, luck, & whatever irrational part of my soul drives me to do something so crazy and rewarding as repeatedly skating around in a frozen circle.

I thought of the “rich” experience that a meet like this is, no matter the outcome.

The good folks that I chatted with, and even the strength of my competition, made me focus to be the best I am, win or lose. Sure, winning is great, but I had amazing experiences the first 2 times I raced masters nationals & lost to Brian Boudreau. Losing made me a better skater in the end too, as I came back more determined & prepared each time.

Just before the 3k, in anticipation of the pain we both would be facing as we raced, Steve Miller joked with me by saying “just go to your special place”. My immediate response was “but I am already there, with all of my special friends”.

Skaters… Skating… Ha! What a wonderful, challenging, rewarding, rich, heartbreaking, breathtaking sport…

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Filed under: RACE DAY, from the coffee shop

Here are the results from the final and 4th day of the US national long track championships.

I am running to catch a plane, so I will sort throught the videos to grab pictures tomorrow!!

Women’s 500m

1. Elli Ochowicz 39.34
2. Christine Witty 40.12
3. Jessica Smith 40.93
4. Maria Lamb 41.00
5. Lana Gehring 41.28
6. Rebekah Bradford 41.35
7. Catherine Raney 41.69
8. Mia Manganello 42.06
9. Becky Lang 42.29
10. Ashlee Barnett 42.40
11. Leah Lambert 42.82
12. Netanya Mintz 43.49
13. April Medley 44.04
14. Anne Bruckner 44.30

Men’s 500m

1. Tucker Fredricks 35.31
2. Kip Carpenter 35.66
3. Christopher Needham 36.35
4. Shani Davis 36.38
5. Michael Blumel 36.83
6. Tyler Goff 36.98
7. Anthony Lobello 37.01
8. Brent Aussprung 37.13
9. Andrew Love. 37.47
9. Matthew Plummer 37.47
11. James (Clay) Cholewinski 37.48
12. Matthew Shanahan 37.61
13. Mitchell Whitmore 37.99
14. Ronald Macky 38.39
15. Nathaniel DeFranco 38.40
16. Matthew Hickson 38.59
17. Michael Stein-Stewart 38.68
18. Miles Ringsred 38.74
19. Daniel Beck 38.95
20. Daniel Frederick 39.20
21. Alex Ochowicz 39.33
22. Joseph Parrella 39.34

Women’s 1000m

1. Elli Ochowicz 1:19.34
2. Christine Witty 1:19.59
3. Mia Manganello 1:21.08
4. Catherine Raney 1:21.71
5. Maria Lamb 1:21.77
6. Jessica Smith 1:22.12
7. Lana Gehring 1:23.23
8. Ashlee Barnett 1:23.59
8. Rebekah Bradford 1:23.97
10. Becky Lang 1:24.63
11. Leah Lambert 1:24.74
12. Netanya Mintz 1:25.58
13. April Medley 1:27.04
14. Anne Bruckner 1:29.79

Men’s 1000m

1. Shani Davis 1:09.91
2. Kip Carpenter 1:10.31
3. Tucker Fredricks 1:10.88
4. Christopher Needham 1:11.76
5. Michael Blumel 1:13.40
6. Anthony Lobello, Jr. 1:13.43
7. Brent Aussprung 1:13.57
8. Ronald Macky 1:13.77
9. Tyler Goff 1:13.80
10. Matthew Plummer 1:13.83
11. James (Clay) Cholewinski 1:14.54
12. Michael Stein-Stewart 1:15.07
13. Nathaniel DeFranco. 1:15.25
14. Liam Ortega 1:15.63
15. Mitchell Whitmore 1:15.64
16. Miles Ringsred 1:16.08
17. Andrew Love 1:16.51
18. Matthew Shanahan 1:16.53
19. Daniel Beck 1:16.71
20. Daniel Frederick 1:16.72
21. Matthew Hickson 1:17.42
22. Alex Ochowicz 1:17.52
23. Joseph Parrella 1:18.07
25. Charles Leveille 1:28.76

oh yeah, one more thing, a picture of me in my T-SHIRT!!!! WHOOOO!!!!! I AM CAT I NOW!!!

combining the times of the 2-500m races together, I just nosed into 10th place by .03!!! it’s a crazy story, and I will have time to write it on the plane.

With me in this photo is my good buddy Kip Carpenter, who also had a pretty good weekend, winning the overall US sprint championship.

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Filed under: RACE DAY, on the road