Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Trolley Square, this afternoon.

Last night an 18 year old shot 5 people dead here. We don’t even know the name of the killer yet, but the reasons that teenage white men put on trench coats & go nuts in a blaze of dysfunctional family-provided firepower often pan out the same.

Dozens of news trucks are surrounding this small mall of restaurants, clothing shops & a movie theatre. Satellite dishes and huge 50 foot antenna masts loom over news anchors streaming constant updates & commentary skyward about this nationwide “tragedy of the day” as traffic blithely hisses past.

I can see the lit entrance of Trolley Square from my bedroom window, and drive by it several times a day. The gym Jessica & I lift weights in is “Trolley Corners” right across the road.

This how the New York Times described what happened:

Witnesses told of the sounds of gunfire, screaming and crying and of a scene of havoc that lasted almost an hour during dinnertime

and here is the Salt Lake Tribune’s piece:

The bodies were found “in various parts of the mall.” Witnesses told The Tribune that three bodies were in Cabin Fever card store, one in Pottery Barn Kids and another outside of Bath and Body Works.

Horrors, absolute horrors.

When random violent death comes to “Pottery Barn Kids”, does it change how we look at this world?

I have often wished in a small way that this was a wider kind of blog, so I could write about more things that simply skating in a circle. I went to practice this morning, skated well, and forgot all about murder on my doorstep. It did not even really register emotionally when a coach told me his wife was headed to Trolley Square when this happened, and at the last minute she went to a different mall.

Then I drove by Trolley Square on my way home.

I wrote about 10 paragraphs that I just deleted, firstly about how our culture is changing because of the Iraq war, like this shocking photo in the NY times of this tragedy as it happened.

I wrote about the connection between this seemingly random horror and the 100 found dead every day in Baghdad. Many of them tortured with blowtorches & power drills before being shot.

Is there a connection? Absolutely! The connection is in what a human soul goes through, and how is it humiliated, shaped, & twisted, before being able to commit horrors like this.

And are we, as a wider society, partially to blame? Both in the emptiness & loneliness of our own society, that so often is a catalyst for the latent psychopathic element that has always been and will always be with us.

And are we to blame, as Americans, for creating a place where extremely well armed psychopaths praise god on one hand, and then create 20 Trolley Squares worth of death every single day with the other.

I almost just deleted these last 5 paragraphs, but this time, I will leave them.

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Filed under: from home

A week ago, the Wasatch speedskating club put on some low-key, fun races.

I rarely get to watch short track racing, and I had many friends competing, so I left my skate bag home, and trooped over to cheer on the fun. Short Track is such a blast to watch.

For a few skaters, this was a final tune up skate before National Championships. For others, just some fast laps with friends. For some of the younger ones, maybe it was one of their first times stepping to the starting line.

I brought my video camera, the results are not perfect, but for those unfamiliar with the daring and athleticism involved in this G-force defying activity, this is fun to watch. I have not tried to tape Short Track before, and learned a lot about catching the action, and included clips from every category. The song is “sorrow” from the Pink Floyd Album “a momentary lapse of reason”.

Click here for a high quality Quicktime, or start the YouTube below.

(this is the kind of video where you can really see the vast difference between quicktime vs flash-based)

It’s worth mentioning that in the opening sequence, a skater takes a nasty fall, Anthony was ok, even though he had his bell rung pretty nicely by hitting his head on Matt’s passing thigh.

If you are going to smack into a human being at high speed, the quadriceps of a speedskater are not the softest, most shock absorbing choice.

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Filed under: from home

These photos are from a meet this past weekend, at the Petoskey, Michigan, outdoor long track.

In this below photo, I can almost taste that sharp-midwest chill coming out of the cold deep blue sky. You can also see photographer Tom Cole’s shadow highlighted by the low-angle winter sun.

Click on each of these photos for a bigger version.

I once thought that this was a track made out of a pond. The truth is more interesting. What Michigan speedskaters do is pack the snow over a soccer field, and then flood it to create this track.

You can see a race starting in the distance, and that odd phenomena of the light-caught skate tracks in ice, a bit like curving meteors.

The European standard has always been 400m. American long tracks in the past were sometimes quite a bit shorter. I have heard Petoskey is 300m.

Here are 3 determined skaters, racing in appropriate outdoor warm gear (unlike me, a finnish blog about competitive swimming recently poked good-natured fun at my freezing in lake placid).

Thanks again, go out to Tom for these photos.

Some might scoff at a small outdoor track, built over a soccer field, comparing it to the massive indoor facilities. How much good can it do?

I think the answer is PLENTY. Every place where skaters can gather and train/race together is a good thing. It creates community, strong clubs, friendships & fun racing.

Even if all you care about is the USA medal count at the Olympics (and there are many who only measure success this way) if there are enough clubs/communities out there, then when a phenomenal athlete who has national caliber ability comes along, he/she will find existing coaches, mentors, and somewhere to train where skaters gather. If they don’t have this, then they find another sport to excel in.

The most current visible Petoskey alumnus that I know of at the National Level is Matt Hotchkiss. He races strongly in both short and long track. Here is an image of him competing at the America’s cup this past December, during the last 800m of a 5k.

Repeat his experience over and over, in tracks all over the USA, you create a strong national scene. A hot national scene is the forge that smelts ambition and talent into world-class skaters. Create enough world-class skaters, then you will find that tiny number of special individuals who become Olympic medalists.

Who then inspire the whole cycle to begin again, in places like Petoskey, Michigan.

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Filed under: from home

I watched national team member Pat Meek go whizzing by me at top speed. That was the training job for the day, top speed, and I remember thinking; “Wow, he looks good, I wonder what that lap time will be…”

He disappeared around the corner, and my mind wandered back to whatever silly thing it was stewing over…

30 seconds of self absorbed coasting later, I turn the corner, and see Pat against the wall, curled up on the ice, surrounded by frantic coaches calling for immediate medical attention…

When an NFL player is injured during a game, and it looks truly bad, both teams will often come together in the middle of the field, kneeling & holding hands, praying together that the injured athlete will be ok.

We don’t have any kind of tradition like that in speedskating, but we should.

The wheelchair came out, and slowly, carefully, they picked Pat up. His shoulders & legs had melted a shape into the ice, like a crime scene, Surrounded by swirling marks from dull coach skates.

It’s hard to tell when someone is bleeding badly when they wear a bright red skinsuit, even though the impact had torn his suit up pretty well.

As they were wheeling him away, He looked pale & shaken, but coherent. Scott Koons told me it looked like Pat cut himself pretty badly on his own blade as he mashed into the wall, might need a frankenstien of stitches, but should be ok.

As I write this, I really don’t know how badly he is hurt. Will he be able to skate US Nationals that start 5 days from today? Is it a flesh wound or a really nasty injury? I don’t know. It was a scary moment, and all of us on the ice were quite upset, to see a friend being carted away in a wheelchair.

Speedskating is a sport with some risk involved, but many of the wonderful things life has to offer contain risk. Living inside a concrete bunker wearing a suit of armor & never going outside might be safe, but it’s not a LIFE.

Here is Pat, truly living life/racing a 10k just a few weeks ago:

Heal well Pat.

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Filed under: from home

Deseret News reporter Heidi Bruce came out to the oval to watch the World University Games qualifer races this past weekend, and she did a nice story on them that quoted me a bit (if this link “rots” over time, here is a .pdf I saved of the article).

It’s very difficult to step into an intense subculture of any kind, and do it justice in a newspaper report, but I think she accurately captured what I call “the skate tribe” in its usual fine form. She saw the intensity, focus, & “mask” required for racing, and then the camaraderie off the ice.

She did miss the factual item that James Clay Warren finished second to me in the 500m, not Matt Plummer. But that’s ok, being a reporter is really hard. If you asked me to cover a basketball game, I would fail miserably at describing the subtleties & subculture of that sport, and probably miss statistics too.

The photographer at the event grabbed a FANTASTIC photo of Michael Stein-Stewart, that goes along with the article. Mike has level shoulders, hip to the inside of the push, good blade direction, and the NIKE logo is even visible to make sponsors happy. I follow him during training every time I can. If I could figure out how to build corner pressure through a turn the way he does, I’d be skating some scary fast times.

I won’t republish the shot of Mike here out of deep respect for digital copyright. But again here is the link to the article.

Hedi also wrote about Saturday’s races as well (here is the .pdf)

Thanks Heidi!

Speedskating has won more Olympic medals for the USA than all the other sports combined. We skate tribe members know that it’s a beautiful, inspiring, fascinating sport full of unique stories. It’s nice when the media shows up and agrees outside of the Olympi-gasm.

Here is my visual evidence of what I am talking about, April Medley has been really sick recently, however she desperately wanted to qualify for World University Games & her performances this weekend were not up to her usual standard. In her final chance, she threw down a technically excellent 5k, even though she was obviously tired & not her normal self.

There was a whole row of people screaming, hamming the pads, clapping, and yelling encouragement as she suffered through her last 50m. It was LOUD, and some of the loudest were other skaters who had beaten her earlier in the weekend.

April made it!!! And will be on the plane to Torino for the World University Games in late january.

You can see how happy she is, here with fellow qualifiers, from L to R, Tani Mintz, Ashlee Barnett, and April. For all 3 of these athletes, this will be their first time competing overseas. Good luck!!

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Filed under: RACE DAY, from home