Coaches & Silly Putty
Eva Rodansky and I were talking in Salt Lake last week; I was peppering her with questions about Boris’ training program, about intensities, weight training methods, length of taper, all of the details of training.
Ultimately, we both looked at each other and just agreed that one simply has to trust in a coach, and that as athletes, our job is to be “putty in their hands” and allow the coach to physically and technically shape us. As athletes, we are inseparable from the internal fires and stubborn drives that make us mentally tough, and because we are inseparable from those drives, we are frequently unable to have clear perspective to guide our own training. Also, because of our youth, we don’t have the wisdom that comes from 20+ years of competition.
Of course, I am not just putty, I am silly putty!! Picking up physical & emotional impressions wherever I can! And this is true of many skaters. Skating is such a technical sport, and since there are so many ways to explain & teach the “feel & practice” of skating, skaters who work with the same coach will start to resemble each other in their technical habits. In fact when I first worked with my current coaches, Rex Abertson and Boris Leikin, upon observing my style, Rex said to me “I bet that your first coach was Canadian!” he was right, Patrick Kelly, 2 time Canadian Olympic team member, was the first coach to ever spend time working with me.
I have a lot more to say about this, but I lifted weights this morning and now I have to go out and ride my bike easy for an hour or two, and time is short today… but I will say this, Boris believes I can make great gains in my performance from better flexibility, I was skeptical at first, but last week he showed me exactly how to do certain skate position specific stretches, and gosh! Like the hard trying ball of silly putty that I am, I have been doing them every day, and in the last 2 days, whoooosh!!! Its like my hamstrings are suddenly an inch longer, and I can extend my leg completely in the skate position!!
Go figure…. Coaches! Hah!!!!
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Filed under: sweat, from home
So these extra furry guys were at a race and staying in a cabin next door to a cabin containing a bunch of French Canadian racers. During the night a rat got into the Canadian’s cabin, and after running around and scaring the bejesus out of the Canadians, it climbed into a bag of potato chips someone had left on the floor and started munching away. Awakened by all the racket, a bleary eyed John Dimon appeared at the door of the Canadian’s cabin in his underwear. Figuring out what the source of all the noise was, and being only half awake, he took a flying leap through the air and landed with both feet directly on the potato chip bag! Without a word he chucked the bag containing the now rat flavored potato chips out the door, and stalked off without a word back to bed. The Canadians were speechless, This american was crazy! They liked him right away.
My father is a photographer, and as a kid, I always had a camera in my hands. Starting out with plasticy 110mm cheapos, evolving to a chunky East German made SLR, then finally now one of the highly evolved canon digital elphs, my father has given me every camera I own, and now, looking at a lifetime of photos. I feel completely wealthy with memory!! Thanks Dad!! On the right is my first time ever on a geared bike (look, I’m already reaching for a bigger gear!! I must be 8ish in that photo, hey dad, do you remember??)
The mystical MRI magnets swept across my knee on Monday, today the experienced eyes of Dr. Anderson made sense of the pictures, and gave me the best possible news. There is no visible damage at all to my ligaments, ACL, or my meniscus!!!! There is some inflammation in the kneecap, indicating overuse & that there is trauma, but nothing really abnormal in the essential structures. 
Well, here is an opportunity to take that metaphor one step further, as here is an image from my MRI this morning! The bones of my thigh and shin are clearly visible, as well as my ACL in the center. This is a cross section, somewhere behind the kneecap. The Doctor suspects an injury to either the Pleica or the Meniscus, both are soft tissues that cushion and guide the bones, and the Meniscus is clearly visible here as the separation between the bones.
My friend Carla described the sound of an MRI machine as like “giant ladybugs walking across the earth”. The MRI I spent the better part of an hour underneath sounded to me like the yammering of WWI era machine guns, firing at each other across an echoing valley (weird associations, as these are both things neither Carla or I have ever experienced). The very nice MRI tech said that one patient described an an MRI as sounding like “an antique John Deere tractor”. That works too.
MRIs use extremely powerful magnets to work their visual magic, magnets that evidently can do things like pull pins out of repaired bones, metal slivers from skin, or destroy pacemakers. I had to remove all the metal from my body before I squiggled myself under this MRI (belts/zippers/keys). But I did forget to take off my titanium wedding ring, and although I did not feel it actually move, my ring finger tingled in the same way as the tissues of my knee. The kneecap looks so empty here, fragile like its filled with crepe paper, not like the meaty head of my calf muscle crawling upward from the right. Or the toughened X of my ACL linking the bones.
Till answers come, my coach wants me riding my bike to keep the fitness gains I have made (cycling is ok & does not hurt). Great! So I dug around my box of jerseys, and pulled out one of my father’s early 1980’s wool jerseys. It is very clearly “not of this decade” in a wonderful way. I wore it for a reason, because I want to dwell in the positive! I have to. This knee problem could be merely a delay, or it could be bad, so wearing this reminded me to be very thankful for what I can do. With almost 20,000 miles in his legs, My Dad has really not been able to ride since his heart attack in 1993, more than a decade of blood thinners & subsequent pacemaker instillation has gotten in the way since. My dad has “software” that controls his heartbeat, how’s that for a thought! Wearing one of his old jerseys reminded me to keep perspective.
It was 70 degrees today and with a blustering wind. In the spirit of thankfulness, I wanted some serious punishment to crumble my worries into dust, so I did a bunch of 5-minute intervals into the wind and big ringing it up the hills in my 
I thought at first he was joking, but the hungry glint in his eyes at the mention of this California based burger franchise, and his following detail of how he only likes the smell of sushi, not the taste, convinced me of his sincerity. He also went on at length about how he loves the iron chef, “Those chefs are really good, the best, but the show is all about entertainment, not about their skills.” He then proceeded to artfully slice up an Orange, and drizzle plum wine across the slices, as a freebee desert for us! Wow….. Jess and I were speechless, and quite full by the time we waddled out of there.
Feeling phenomenal in the gym today, like the plates & bar were made of Styrofoam, I was tossing around weight with ease and snap, my body has absorbed all my recent hard work, and then doing a front squat with 185lbs on the bar (and I do this all the time, this weight is not even close to my max) at rep 8 of a 10 rep set, I felt a bad twinge behind the right knee, I put the bar back immediately, walked around, stretched, shook the leg cautiously, it felt fine, no problem at all… I took the bar off the rack in back squat position (easier for me, I am far stronger in that range of motion) and the same bad twinge announced itself on the second rep, like an electric shock of pain right behind the right kneecap…
Its spring, and for each sunrise and sunset
And what of the Chris and Varya story?
But if you asked me,
