Monthly Archive
Posted on 14 Mar 11:24 am

The End (of the season)

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes…again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need…of some…stranger’s hand
In a…desperate land

Lost in a Roman…wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain.

-The Doors

I played this song over and over in 1997 as I was finishing my graduate school thesis. It came on the radio as I was driving home from the oval after my last race of the season. It’s somehow appropriate.

The insane children of the ice speedskating cult are pretty much all looking forward to some warmth. Summer rain would be nice!

Here are some of the faces & moments from the last race of my, and many other people’s season. For the Utah Olympic Oval’s Champion’s Challenge they made ice as fast as the World Cup ice and Olympic Trials ice. Here are the full results of the Men’s races, and the full results of the womens races.

This is Catherine Raney and Maria Lamb, 2 Torino Olympians, going at it in the beginning of a 3k. I had a nice chat with Catherine the day before, I had never really spoken to her, but she seems really cool, and already thinking ahead to 2010

Any skater who is trying to pursue this sport at a high level will tell you that it would be impossible without the encouragement and support of family. This is John Loquai finishing the last meters of really painful 5k, seen over the shoulder of his father cheering him on. John really went for it, and skated fantastic 30 second laps until about 4 laps to go, and then had a slow crawl through the pain cave the rest of the way.

Like myself, 15 year old Andrea Mani is an escapee from the snows of Lake Placid, she and her mom moved to Salt Lake for the coaching and superior training environment. Here she is at the last lap of a 3k, Her mom is both videoing Andrea’s race, and giving running race commentary via cel phone to someone!

Like Andrea, my good buddy Jannicke Mickkelsen is a former figure skater now pursing speedskating. Jannicke also moved to Salt Lake for the training, but from NORWAY! (I love her Norwegian fast skinsuit)

Her parents came into town to visit & cheer her on. Jannicke tried super hard in the 1500m to set a personal best. Her first 700 was quite a bit faster than she had ever skated before. But she paid in the last lap, and collapsed as soon as she crossed the finish line- sliding into the wall right where her mom was standing!

Jannicke missed her PB time, but her mom is incredibly proud of her daughter’s fighting spirit! Me too.

PB’s are nice, but it’s the spirit that creates chances to skate PB’s, not the other way around. Jannicke has what it takes in her heart, body & soul.

My coach Boris Leikin and Tony Davis had a really close 1000m, Tony skated a big PB, moving so fast here that he blurred all the pixels in my digital camera. Boris has kicked & cut himself charging off the start line several times this year, his solution debuted this weekend, a magic green Kevlar sock on his left foot.

As for yours truly, in my last race of the season, something magical happened. Or at least it is the kind of magic that comes after working your tail off and then peaking well. I took another half second off my 1000m PB, and skated a 1:12.75. According to a learned Dutch Skate Stats gnome, that time is the 4th fastest 1000m EVER skated by a skater over 35!! This includes World Cups, Olympics, & all the time trials in Salt Lake, Calgary, & everywhere else. (These Dutch stats folks keep quite different lists than the IMSSC masters records I set this winter, but that is a whole other topic).

This dutch stat list has me with some incredible skaters (I posted the list in the comments), and it does not quite compute rationally to me how I managed to hugely improve my 1000m by from last season’s 1:17.1 to this season’s 1:12.75

I look at these pictures of that race, and see many flaws, on the straight away my knee moves outside the body as it recovers, my skate is not pointed down the track, you can see my upper body twisting from the effort. On the turns, my back is flat, not curled, and because of the velocity, I got pulled off the blocks. My left leg extension was also so much less than you can see my pair, Patrick Meek, attain.

Maybe my self-criticism is a temperamental habit critical to ice speedskating, this is a sport of perfection during tremendous effort.

Flying perfectly, pushing hard, balanced on a millimeter of steel at 33+mph. If I can work my life out to make it happen, these little things are what I will work obsessively on this summer.

Gosh, what a great addiction this sport is.

3 Comments »
Filed under: RACE DAY

Posted on 10 Mar 01:39 pm

36.72 !!!!!!!!

YEAAAAH!!!! I FINALLY SMASHED THE 37 SECOND BARRIER!! WHOOO-HOO!!! IF YOU THOUGHT YOU HEARD SOME YELLING AND HOLLERING IN THE DISTANCE, AT ABOUT 10:12AM MOUNTAIN TIME, THAT WAS ME, DOING A WAR-WHOOP OF JOY!!!

The funny thing was that I felt pretty bad during warmup. I shoveled a lot of snow yesterday afternoon, and my upper body was sore & the legs felt strong but kind of blocked up. Boris talked to me about how he has researched many 500’s, and when skaters skate 2 in one day, 80% of the time, the second one is faster.

Since I was only skating one 500m race today, I went quite hard in warmup & created some fatigue. Although my body was finding the right skating position, I was out of breath with even easy efforts, and I did not feel the power & snap I usually associate with being 3 weeks into my final season peak.

Also I was terribly nervous between warm-up & the race. The ice was scary fast, and I felt in my bones today was a “put up or shut up” moment of illogically proving something to myself.

Here is Parker Vance and I at 100m, the camera can’t quite deal with the legspeed I had on this day. 250 meters into this race, I heard the announcer say my opening 100m was a 10.21, my fastest start ever!

So I roared through the second half of the race breathing a turbocharged elixir of vengeance, confidence, & good technique. I think I even yelled something crazy as I jabbed my skate at the finish line, something like “RIGHT NOW!!!”

This sport can sometimes break your heart in very cruel ways. But also, in rare moments, it lets your emotions soar as high and as far as all the hard work you put into it.

Thanks for reading…… I race a 500m and a 1000m tomorrow, and then this season is over. I will relax for 4 weeks, deliberately get out of shape for a while (one has to let the body heal) and make some hard choices about next year.

13 Comments »
Filed under: RACE DAY

Posted on 06 Mar 09:08 am

The Perfect Race

“For me it was the perfect race…. I was happy before this medal, but to be able to come here and finish it like this is pretty spectacular… Emotion, so much emotion and passion, everything was running through my body. It was crazy.”

-Apollo Anton Ohno, reflecting on his gold medal 500m race.

I love this quote, Apollo talked in several interviews about “skating the perfect race” the internal focus it requires, and how hard he trained to make this happen. This guy could live however he wants, and supposedly lives a Spartan lifestyle at the US Olympic training center in Colorado Springs.

I came as close as I ever have so far to my own “perfect race” this past Saturday. All season long I have had the goal to skate a sub 37 second 500m, to see a 36 next to my name on the scoreboard, and I am almost out of time to do it. Busting the 37 barrier is a “line in the sand” that I need to cross. Warming up for this past Saturday’s races, I felt tremendous possibility in my legs, I could tell, technically and physically, that this could be the day.

I was paired with “start-line-rocket” Parker Vance, and he inspired me to blast off the line like a freak, to my fastest start ever (10.30), I hit the first turn well, made a tiny mistake exiting the turn, and then skated the finest last 250 meters I have ever done, every step was as perfect as I am capable of. I even include evidence here of both knees coming together as I drive that last 100. Bringing the knees together properly has always has been an element of technique that has always crippled my top end speed.

Every synapse was screaming, I could feel the pressure I was getting into the ice, I KNEW that this was the moment, that it could be right now!!!

Maybe I think too much, but today it was good fuel in the fire. I jabbed my blade at the finish line as I crossed, reaching for every possible hundreth, on fire!!

I pulled up out of my skating position, looked at the clock, and see

37.00

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The howl that escaped my body was full of the joy of a personal best, joy of almost a perfect race, blended with frustration, with feeling every millimeter of distance from 36.99 to 37.00

I always believed that athletes need to focus & try as hard as they can every rep, every step in training, because that is where you earn tiny amounts of speed like this. Where did I fail? What is this supposed to teach me?

How far is .01? at my lap time of 26.70 (that is 33.5 mph/53.9kph average speed for 400m) using the socal speed calculator, that is 14.9 meters a second, so I missed that 36 by 14.9 centimeters.

Such a tiny distance to have so much of my self-esteem poured into.

14.9 centimeters… .01 of a second… How far is that? 1/3 of a blade length, half the width of the ibook I write this on. My hand, wrist to fingertip is even 19 cm.

John Loquai said to me afterwards, that after seeing my race, now he understands exactly how much .01 of a second can mean. I am swirling about in a mix of happy and sad, almost the perfect race, the best I can do, but it’s not enough.


p.s. John himself skated an amazing race worth mentioning, a 1500m paired with Ron “glidemaster” Macky. (life experience on speedskates? Macky=17 years, Loquai=1.5). There was lots of friendly betting & trash talking going on, lots of speculation on who would win. Ron & John train together all the time, and knew it would be very close. Boris & I got into the fun too, Boris picked Ron, I picked John. The actual event was fun to watch, with John’s opening 300m a bit faster, and he then increased his lead a tiny bit every lap, skating a 1:50.99 (with a last lap of 29.87!) to Ron’s 1:52.25 -these guys are true artists of pain!).

4 Comments »
Filed under: RACE DAY, from home

Posted on 05 Mar 12:34 pm

Faces & Vibe -Masters International

As I have said several times, the Masters International race this last weekend’s exemplifies the best that there is in speedskating.

I had a post that focused on the race, and now here is one that is about the faces & vibe. I should have posted this earlier this week, but better late than never!

First of all, a recording of the national anthem, as played by Olu. I think every time a race director asks him to play, they should wave his entry fee as a thank you. You can hear a hockey game going on in the background, and the buzz of the massive fluorescent lights at the Pettit. But it’s still Olu, and he can REALLY play.

Every time I hear the anthem, I think of our armed forces in the Middle East. It’s easy to forget that there is a war going on right now. Much of America has effectively closed its eyes to the men & women in uniform who are serving & sometimes dying in Iraq. It’s important to remember that for every death we hear about, there are also roughly 4-5 catastrophic injuries where the soldier lives, but loses arms/legs/eyes/hands/mobility. How many souls & families have been scarred by this war? There are people now on their 4th & 5th combat tours!! (also there are possibly 100,000 Iraqi civilian dead, mostly from US firepower).

Agree or disagree with our current foreign policies, it’s important to remember what is happening in the world right now, and to live life in context, not as a “head in the sand” Ostrich.

Ok, enough politics, back to skating (see, I too am guilty of exactly what I just complained about above).

Here are a bunch of folks, lacing up for warmup, at a scary early hour of the morning.

The inline to ice movement does not just happen at the Elite Level; Glenn Corso is a member of the NYC area Empire speed inline team, and came out from Long Island to race. He does short track ice, and has a handful of days on the long track clap blades. He was right in the mix in the toughest category, the 40-44’s, had a blast, and says next year he will bring a pile of folks from that very talented club. Fantastic! There also was a skater from the very active Team Caravan/Capitol racing group in Virginia, but I did not get a chance to chat with him.

One of the growing traditions of The Masters International is the Saturday night party at Olu’s. This year was it’s biggest and best ever. 40 of the 70+ competitors showed up for a huge dish-to-pass buffet, and Olympics watching. I wish I had a tape of the ‘hollerin during Apollo Ohno’s gold medal short track race, and shortly thereafter, the relay.

The fire was nice, also in fine form was Mary O’Donnell, The US rep to the governing body of International Masters skating, the IMSSC. Here she is, making some noise during the women’s Olympic 5k, wearing a crazy Dutch hat she bought during a world cup at Herenveen. The little spikes & bells are like a dragon tail, and hang all the way down her back. I hear Mary’s other sporting passion is rowing! Now that is quite the doubleshot of summer and wintertime lactic acid fun!

You can always tell when the Indy speedskating team has arrived at a race. Their towels, chairs, luggage, and full skinsuits are all Cheetah print!

I asked them about this, and they said at one of their earliest races as a club, they showed up to the meet with each member having 2 suits, they wore cheetah print on Saturday, and american-design motif suits on Sunday. Everyone asked them on Sunday “hey, were are your cool cheetah suits!”. Since that positive feedback, the theme has grown and taken over.

Indyspeed skates inline all summer, short and long track ice in the winter. They are excellent examples of “allskaters” who participate in every kind of speed skating there is. I strongly believe in the “allskater” concept as an individual & club philosophy. It is a path for all-skaters to follow except for a tiny number of people trying to specialize in elite ice sprinting (I really miss being an allskater).

Check out the Indy speed website, their skating technique & annual peridodization plans are quite interesting. Also I LOVE THIS PHOTO, of several of them at the start line of the world team time trial championships (cycling).

I can see why their Coach, Cindi Hart, just won US speedskating volunteer coach of the year! I want to do a ZEN 10 interview with Cindy, as the first interview I ever did was with last year’s volunteer Coach of the year, Jim Cornell. Hmmm, maybe this blog has been around long enough, I can start “traditions”!

2 Comments »
Filed under: RACE DAY, Audio/Video

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