Zen and the Art of Speedskating

On the ice today I was doing a very slow speed drill & gliding along, with my left leg extended completely, sitting really deeply, and holding that position (it’s a technique thing).

When suddenly there is a flash of skates flying right by my face!!! a skater traveling very fast has leaped over my outstretched leg, passing roughly over my knee/thigh!!!

Whoa!! Even more amazing, is that all 6 foot 3 inches and 195lbs of Tyler Goff stuck the landing cleanly (he flew quite some distance before he touched down too). Tyler was embarrassed and apologized profusely. Any human being traveling that fast with machetes on their feet would cause significant damage if they hit you. But Tyler is one of the few speedskaters who makes me feel small! It would have been a horrible crash.

When we caught up with each other, he confessed he was not feeling well, and after doing a 400m tempo, he suddenly experienced some dizziness. Its good he came out of it in time to leap over me, luckily Tyler is a sprinter who CAN jump! Would a distance skater, or a shorter athlete have had the vertical leap to make it over me? Hmmmm.

One or both of our seasons could have ended right there! I am glad it’s just a story, and that I am not blogging from a hospital.

There often is no lesson but to appreciate life right here, right now. I am trying the best I can to be thankful each day, it could all go away in a second.

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Filed under: from the coffee shop

In the new Harry Potter novel, there is a potion called “Felix Felicitas”. It is basically liquid luck; and it imbues the drinker of the potion with feelings of warmth, confidence and limitless possibility, and then reality warps so that everything perfectly goes the way the drinker of this magic juice hopes. In the wizarding world, Felix Felicitas is a banned substance for athletic competition!

I have had the most incredible run of luck in the last 24 hours, I feel like someone spiked my Gatorade with Felix Felicitas. It’s been amazing -here is the list:

1. Google just debuted a new blog-searching tool, so I went there, and typed in “speedskating” to see what comes up. WOW! This blog is the #1 and #3 search result! In the WORLD!! (this changes by the hour! & if you type “speed skating” you get different results)

2. A nice check arrived in the mail for me from one of my web design clients. For more than I expected!! (I need it badly too!)

3. The 2nd place finisher in last years Russian Sprint Championships, Sergei Kornilov, has joined our team. Sergei finally got over his jet lag, & his technical skill & explosive speed is EXACTLY what I need to follow. He is scary fast, and excels at things I am bad at, especially exiting corners at top speed. During one of our sprints today, I am sure I hit a higher velocity than ever before. It had to be a high 25-second lap, absolutely wonderfully scary fast.

4. One of my sponsors from last year, Jay and the good folks at Athlete Octane, contacted me. We spoke on the phone for quite a while, and they want to sponsor me again this year! Athlete Octane is great stuff; it minimizes the damage you suffer during workouts, and creates a physiological climate for improved recovery. It’s also extremely convenient and quite tasty (and for a daily workout supplement, that matters!). Unlike most of the stuff sold at GNC, its completely legal too. I passed the drug test I took last year at US single distance championships, and I am a regular Octane user. (I wasn’t worried about passing, I compete clean, but it’s still a relief!). I mentioned one of my other sponsors, Powercranks, in my previous post. Both of these folks, independently, talked to me within 48 hours of each other & both still like me! What are the chances of that?

the good luck keeps flowing!

5. When I stepped onto the ice for my warmup, just as I was getting up to speed, Jeremy Wotherspoon, skates by, also warming up. I slotted into his draft with no extra effort, and cruised behind the winningest world cup skater ever, for some relaxed, precicse laps.

6. Several of the top US guys, fellows with medals in their pocket, said very nice things about my skating to Boris today.

7. A great old friend from high school emailed me out of the blue. Trevor Exeter is a tremendously talented musician, and has played his cello all around the world! And I am very glad he was not killed by that cement truck in London, (it turned his bicycle into “road tape”).!

8. Warming up for my final workout, I find this Norwegian Kroner on the ground! There are many Norwegians training in utah right now, but how random & lucky is that!

9. Modifying the bend in your skates usually takes lots of careful attention, time, and frequent swearing. I went to modify the bend in my right blade, and Voila! Perfectly changed in about 30 seconds! It handles more predictably at top speed now .

Felix Felicitas is of course, a fictional construct, so maybe there is another truth here, about this run of luck, I would like to believe the following quote:

“The harder I practice, the luckier I get,”

-Gary Player
who hit 18 holes in one during his PGA career.

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Filed under: sweat, from the coffee shop

Boreas: the Greek god of the north wind, is speaking:

“Force is what fits me, force! By force I drive the weeping clouds, by force I whip the sea, send gnarled oaks crashing, pack the drifts of snow, and hurl the hailstones down upon the lands. I, when I meet my brothers in the sky, the open sky, my combat field, I fight and wrestle with such force that heaven’s height resounds with our collisions and a blaze of fire struck from the hollow clouds leaps forth. I, when I’ve pierced earth’s vaulted passageways and in her deepest caverns strain and heave my angry shoulders, I put ghosts in fear, and with those tremors terrify the world … ’ With words like these or others no less high, he waves his wings and, as they beat, the whole world felt the blast and all the wide sea surged. Trailing his dusty cloak across the peaks, he swept the ground and was clothed in darkness.”

- Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.681 (this was written roughly 2,000 years ago)

Hurricane Katrina is battering the middle of the US, and last night a quick and sudden cold front swept through Utah from the north. Like wrestlers, the south wind (Notus) pushes in one place and the north wind (Boreas) pulled back in another. It was warm and still when I walked the dog at 10pm, yet at 3am the wind was roaring & gusting, the windows shuddering and the trees skittering like a crowd of worried people, a distinct cold in the air, waking jess and I. This morning it was chilly, brezzy unsettled air, a dim white haze to the sky burning off like tissue paper in blue sky fire.

High temp at 5pm yesterday, 100 degress, today, 72!

We are masters of so much due to our technological wonders, but we are still at the mercy of nature. We are not that far from the polytheistic wonderings of the Greeks and Romans, otherwise why do we name hurricanes? Why do so many watch the weather channel as if it’s a sport? It’s human habit to give a name to aspects of fate beyond our control.

A hundred thousand people probably have been made homeless, and hundreds killed by that soggy swirl of wind and water. There are costal communities that are simply “gone”. I think of my high school friend Jeremy Lyons, New Orleans resident, who was probably in the jaws of Katrina. This photo is a CBC photo of downtown New Orleans, remember, these bricks were moved by wind. When I visited Jeremy in New Orleans years ago, he was in walking distance of the water. I imagine he is ok, as he has too much talent & gravitas to be just washed away, no matter what gods are wrestling nearby, besides, higher powers usually like musicians. But when I hear that 30,000 people have taken refuge in the superdome, I hope he is not one of them.

Shifting gears a bit, there is no Greek myth that goes well with this: I crashed yesterday at top speed; I was doing the very last crossover step before the straightaway, and under the pressure of the turn (low 27 sec lap/33mph), my hips and shoulders were pulled out of line, so that when I put my right blade down making the transition from turning to straightaway strokes, it was not pointed in the precisely correct direction, it threw me onto the ice immediately. I slid diagonally up the straightaway for 50 meters, and gently bounced off the padded wall. It could have been really bad if I had made that mistake a few moments earlier at the apex of the turn, as I would have gone straight into the wall wearing 17.5 inch machetes (skates) on my feet.

The cause of the crash was really all the fatigue I have built up over this last training cycle, I was too tired to hold my technique together properly. But everything means something along the interconnected web we walk during our days, and this crash was a warning to not become to confidant, to appreciate everything I have this very moment, both past accomplishments & present health. It could be taken away in a second. Admittedly this crash was my fault, not like a no-fault hurricane, but where I fell was luck/fate/chance, just like where Hurricane Katrina came ashore.

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Filed under: Quotes, from the coffee shop

Racehorse trainers knew for DECADES before human coaches about the dangers of training monotony. Through timing horses in training & competition, horse trainers figured out that a wide variety of training speeds, systematically applied, is the best way to improve the speed of a mammal (reptiles are quite different). Sure, it’s important to go hard, but it’s also important to go easy & shift the training load around the various energy systems.

So, mercifully, the high 5 speedskating team had a really easy 3 hour bike ride this Sunday. Everyone rode shoulder-to-shoulder in the early morning Utah sun (meaning: not hot yet) and chatted. It’s often psychologically easier to hammer than it is to go slow & introduce the physiological training variety that is essential for improvement.

The mood of the group was goofy at times-

The riding was tabletop nice, and the scenery quite a bit different than the rolling green verticality of upstate N.Y. The Kennecott Smokestack on the left is HUGE! 380 metres/1215 feet high! On the far right you can faintly see the gold domes of the Salt Air resort, here is a really cool 360 panorama of the resort & Salt lake-shore, if you have high speed, check out this 1.5mb version, & see if you can find the rotting bird embedded in the salt flat mud.

Kirk, Eric and Arnim are here, goofing at the front of the group. That is Antelope island, 50 miles away & across the salt lake, in the background. Kirk is such the qwadzilla, I threatened to hook turncables to his bicycle, and make him tow the whole group unless he went slow. Peer pressure worked, and afterwards he claimed our jocular jaunt was “the easiest ride he has ever done”. Good!

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Filed under: from the coffee shop

When you are trying to push yourself on a daily basis (and for me, that’s 3-5 hours of training most days) your limiting factors are usually NEVER what you perceive as your strong points as an athlete.

The human body is a great chain of chemical & neurological processes, co-ordination and a precise balance of water, habits & motivations. Your limiting factor is almost never something you like to think about, never something you are already good at, never the muscles that are visible upon cursory examination in the mirror.

Your limiting factor in your own astonishing chain of existence & performance is often something small and unnoticed, like weakness in part of your abs, or a hitch in your pedal stroke, a lack of strength in the small stabilizers of your legs and hips, or an imbalance in how your spine arches (this is why I have problems in the right hip-knee-ankle), or something missing in your diet that you really need. Identifying weak links is one of the things the experience of your coaches & doctors is invaluable for.

My talented slow-twitch mutant marathoner friend Carla, had most of last season completely ruined because there was not enough iron in her diet. She was quite sick before it got diagnosed, skated many PW’s (personal-worsts) and thought she was having heart trouble. That single weak link crippled everything else in her exceptional athletic chain of motion, and wiped out a season of her hard work. (note to all female athletes reading this: this is VERY common, be careful! Eat iron-rich stuff and have your ferratin levels tested occasionally)!!!

My weak link for today is that I “salted out” yesterday. When training many hours in hot weather, I sweat a LOT, I can creates puddles on the floor under a squat rack when working hard. When “salted-out” I can start to feel dizzy, weak, and suffer constant head rushes, even when relaxing around the house. For me, sometimes rest cures this, but through trial, error, & gastronomic whimsy I found it can ALWAYS be cured by a large bag of Sea Salt & Vinegar Kettle Chips.

Near the end of yesterday’s 3 hour ride (on my Powercranks, no less) I started cramping up, I was properly hydrated (2 tall bottles & a Gatorade), and as I was struggling up the final grades of the Avenues towards home, I was getting those dizzy disconnected feelings telling me its time for an infusion of salt. Gatorade has never prevented this, I can feel crummy eating potassium rich bananas by the bunch & still feel this way, I really need a bag of super salty chips.

Fixing weak links is a difficult job, but someone has to do it… hmmm, let me look at this bag of sea salt and vinegar nirvana, it has 5 servings, I am eating it all, so I am gobbling up 900 mg of sodium, and 2,455mg of potassium! Wow…

Oh, everyone send excellent surgery karma to John Dimon, frequent commenter on this blog, and friend to every skater who has ever loved this sport. He is going in for surgery on a torn meniscus in a few days. This “weak link” has bugged him for years, he is as good a soul as has ever been minted, and I wish him a speedy recovery.

Find your weak links, fix them, feel better, & always forge onward!

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Filed under: sweat, from the coffee shop