Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Earlier today, I posted a picture of the snow-covered ice of Lake Mendota. This evening I recieve an email and pair of amazing pictures from Alice Hagen.

Here is the first pic, her description of this day, and then a second picture. Clicking on both pics gets you larger & differently cropped versions:

I first joined the skate tribe as a member of the Madison clan! Skating on Lake Mendota is hard to come by. Most of outdoor skating in Madison is done on the lagoons at Vilas Park which are groomed as the weather allows. Skating on Lake Mendota takes the right combination of a hard freeze, low wind, and no snow to make for decent skating.

On January 1, 1999, I was fortunate to experience such an event with fellow skate tribe members Amy Fuelleman and Dave Evans. The lake froze solid pretty much in one night. We braved sub-zero temps to get out on the ice, and it was worth it - it was pretty much glass.

The ice was about 5 inches thick and crystal clear. The craziest part about the whole thing was that as you were skating, you could see the lake bottom about 10 feet below - this caused some vertigo while skating - especially when a fish would swim by!!!!

-Alice Hagen

Thanks Alice!! Many times, I have seen beautiful pictures of Europeans on natural ice that simply makes me sooo jealous! Thanks for helping show that we have great black ice here too!

A Dutch sports scientist once said “A winter of natural ice skating is worth more than all the scientific papers & physiological analysis of speedskating ever written!” Looking at pics like this, one can see why!

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Filed under: on the road, from the coffee shop

In the center of the speedskating Galaxy, the Olympics are going on, and its tremendous gravitational pull is felt even in the outlying planets.

Even so, racing goes on all over the universe, even if all eyes are turned to Torino. This past weekend was the combined Junior National Sprint Championships/America’s cup final in Milwaukee. You can see the results here on the WASSC results pages (scroll down a bit, look for the ADT Long Track America Cup final).

I really like Milwaukee, and the good folks of the Milwaukee Skate tribe. Here are a few more faces & moments from this past weekend’s races:

This is the view down the straightaway at the Pettit, lots of people in attendance. I like the hanging snowflakes. Click on the image for a larger picture.

Here is one of the good folks of the skate tribe; Olusegun Sijuwade is possibly the physically strongest man ever to lace up skates. Really… He is a world champion powerlifter and can do things like squat 675, bench 410, and deadlift over 700+… That is scary strong. Here he is sharpening before his race.

Olu is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, and a talented musician who is often asked to play the national anthem before meets. I lived in his house for several months last winter, and now call peanut butter & jelly sandwiches “Olu Powerbars” (nutritionally, a PB & J is very close to a Powerbar, and easier to eat after a workout).

His feet are big, he does wear a size 44 skate/12 shoe, but not as big as this particular camera angle suggests.

Eleanor Poore came in from the snows of lake placid, skated huge PB’s in her first race on indoor ice. 1.5 seconds in the 500, and a whopping 5 seconds in the 1000. I have known her since she was very young, and it’s wonderful to see someone you care about develop tremendously as an athlete and a person. El, you rock!

Tiffany Wilson, a Canadian going to school in Milwaukee, took second overall in the Senior Women allaround. She is John Dimon’s step-daughter, was coached by Pat Kelly for several years, and somehow managed to fit her new dreadlocks under that hood. Her technique looks pretty good for being 1200m into the 1500m. You can really see that hip pushing into the turn, she is getting nice extension and has a controlled arm swing. Tiffany finished 2nd overall in the Allaround women.

Like myself, Steve Desotell is one of those masters who just races and races and races cause he simply loves this crazy sport. Here he is in the red & blue, 200m into his 1000, with Andrew Hodor of Saratoga springs. Steve was kidding several of the hotshot juniors saying “respect your elders”, since they were roughly 1/3 his age. Then he went out and matched the young guns step for step in every race! Here are the results for their category.

A junior national team skater, I am not quite sure who it is. But I like the lights & impressionistic flavor of the picture. This is an image grab from a video of a 1000m race, and he was haulin! p.s. thanks to Alice in the comments, this is Brent Aussprung.

Carla “last-lap” Langenthal driving for the finish. The finish line timing box is just coming into the picture on the right. Carla won the 3k in the All-around women by .07 seconds from Hedi Shockley. At racing speeds, how far is that? Head to head, over 3,000 meters, at their final lap velocity they would have been separated at the finish line by about 2 feet. (.72 meter, to be exact). I figured this out by tossing numbers through the So-Cal club’s “how fast can you really skate” speed calculator

Some might think I exaggerate when I talk about pain. Here I am 600 meters into the 1000, and then here is my face a few seconds after the finish as I am reaching to take my hood off. As 1000’s go, this one did not feel too bad. Here are the results from the Sprint Men.

Another inliner making the switch to ice, Hedi Shockley, waits for the 1500m start in typical inline down-start mode. She used a nice brew of power, fitness, and emotional intensity to win the overall of the women’s allaround. She actually slipped during this start, and then just flew the rest of the race.

Many thanks for these pictures goes to Marcia Focht, who took many of them, and to Alice Hagen, who loaned me the correct camera cable so I could download them to my computer!

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Filed under: from the coffee shop

I once read a nasty remark by a female track and field sprinter, she said that simply making an Olympic final in track and field sprinting is as hard as winning a gold medal in swimming. In some ultimate sense, she has a point. Track and field is a massive & truly global sport compared to swimming (what nation doesn’t run?).

But in the moral sense, her attitude demeans the blood, sweat, & tears of other athletes, and ultimately devalues her own accomplishments, since there are always nasty and small-minded scales to weigh things where even her own achievements will be lacking.

Is a women’s gold medal harder to earn than a men’s gold medal, for instance? After all, a lot more men participate in sports worldwide. Is a sprinting medal worth less than a marathon? After all, sprinters often get several shots at medals per games, a marathoner only one.

How do you weigh individual accomplishments vs team sports? Is being the MVP of the Superbowl or World Series harder than winning a gold medal in the Olympic games? How about winning the Tour de France?

This is dangerous ground to start treading upon, and ultimately leads to arguments & ruffled feathers, as the “lines in the sand” are different to different people.

What really matters is not the cheers of any crowd, it’s how that medal rests within the althlete themselves, & the sacrifices they made. I did not live the life of that track and field sprinter, or of a swimmer. I have lived and loved and tried and failed & succeeded in my own life. I did not touch a long track till I was 31, and in the bar I set for myself, this race has mattered.

Yesterday I won both the packstyle 500m and 3,000m, clinching the overall category. That lets me call myself a US Speedskating “National Champion”. This was my third trip to Masters Pack Nationals, and my third time trying to reach this goal. The 3,000 was fantastic, they combined my category with the 40-49 guys, and we had a fast, tactical, no-holds barred race. Afterwards, the head ref said to us “now that is how to race a 3k! great job guys!”

I was quite surprised how emotional I got, how deep the warmth of satisfaction when this heavy piece of metal on a red-white-and blue ribbon was hung around my neck. Tom Cole took this picture of me as I stepped off the podium, thanks Tom! It’s a cool looking medal, but to me, the smile is worth more than the medal. Of course this is not an Olympic gold medal, but it feels…. hmmmm…

Many could chuckle, national champion in a tiny sport! Go ahead! over 4 races and 6,000m of racing, I was the fastest guy between age 30-39 who showed up at our National Championships. If you are in my age group and laugh, then you should have been on the start line & tried to go faster than I did (other ages & the entire female gender can laugh freely). This hurdle is sweeter to have finally cleared because twice before I tried hard and failed. Every time I came back to this challenge stronger, more focused, and more prepared.

The whole plane flight home I dozed in and out of an exhausted, happy, incoherent, gauzy sleep. A sleep like sharing a bottle of wine with Jessica and falling asleep curled up with her on the couch. National Champion? me? an intoxicating thought….

I finally woke up as the plane began banking down across the Wasatch Mountains, and the lights of home.

Actually, Those were the lights of Ogden, just north of Salt Lake. This is Salt Lake, looking west towards the Oquirrh Mountains, as the plane was about to touch down. Home! home again! I am so happy to be back.

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Filed under: from the coffee shop

Another amazing, exhausting day of racing, I swear my adrenalin glands were fried from just watching.

I am mentally out of words, and busy, I leave for Calgary tomorrow to race in the Can-Am, and I have a STUPID amount of stuff to get done, so here are a few more images.

Because of his 5k world record, Dutch Skater Sven Kramer got to hang his name on the wall of fame, this is one happy man.

Was I overstating my thoughts in an earlier post? About how huge some of the Chinese women sprinters are? Well, I will let you decide based on this picture. US skater Elli Ochowicz is not the tallest person, but still…..

And here is a German and Chinese sprinter lining up vs each other… This is what one calls start line focus! Oddly enough, the best Chinese sprinter, Mani Wang, is not that big.

There were so many world records, but also a lot of great competition between friends. This is Eric Kraan and Arnim Ruleas, after a very intense 1000m race. Arnim led every step up until the final meters in a classic duel of fast starter vs fast finisher. Eric has battled a nasty back injury recently, and was more stoked about his own race than most of the guys who finished in the top 10.

Here is one of the finest athletes to ever strap steel to his feet, Canadian Jeremy Wootherspoon, 150 meters into his 1000m, flying like a rocket ship blasting out of earth orbit. Shani Davis is chasing, and ultimately will pass him with 100 meters to go, setting a new world record, and beating the whole field by almost a second! Salt Lake is the fastest ice in the world, but by the time Jeremy & Shani took their blazing turn on it, it looked like a hockey game had come through. I wonder how Jeremy felt after this, as this was the second time someone has chased him down & shot through his draft to a world record (Shimizu did it in the 500m in 2001).

P.S. I did the first VIDEO zen 10 interview, with longtime Milwaukee speedskating coach Bob Fenn, I will post that in a few days…
P.P.S my friend Jannicke also took some nice “behind the scenes photos” at the salt lake races.

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Filed under: from the coffee shop

As I write/photoshop this, I am discussing with a couple of folks in my favorite wi-fi coffee shop, about how Salt Lake can seem like a paradise or a hell, depending on where you live, and how you plug into the social strata (and it is extremely divided). Everyone agrees the place itself is beautiful… I think Jessica and I have had such a positive experience here in Salt Lake because I am part of the intense speedskating community, and she has made quite a few friends from work, so we have not been loney.

I took all these pics walking to the coffee shop, rest day today, I need it too, the training load is increasing again….

Ok, enough fun, I gotta get to some client work now…. so here are some rainy day, fall in Salt Lake, pictures…

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Filed under: from the coffee shop