Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Posted on 09 Nov 12:06 pm

Records!!

I am about to walk out the door of my house, to go watch/photograph the Salt Lake City world cup races. But 2 things first-

I bid a warm welcome to the massive avalanche of web-traffic coming to this blog from several websites that follow the career of Apolo Ohno (thanks Noelle & Ohnozone for the link & kind words).

I never thought I would experience more intense force in the web-skating-universe than devoted Dutch speedskating fans, but there is one; Apolo fans!!!

Whoa!! There are a LOT of you out there. You folks are setting some serious daily visitor records for this website!

Its great! Although I think this amount of crazy-traffic will run me out of bandwidth again, but what a wonderful problem to have!

Speaking of records, although the speedskating world will be looking at the Salt Lake oval today for world records, the Pettit National Ice center just re-did their wall of rink record-banners (thanks Rob Multerer of the Pettit for these pictures).

First of all, here are the Men’s records, it’s worth mentioning the new Men’s 3k, held by Zen-10 interviewee Trevor Marsicano.

There are some pretty heavy-duty names on that list!

And here is the new banner of women’s records-

If you look at the bottom of this list at the 10,000m women’s rink record, you will see one of my closest friends in the sport has finally gotten the recognition she deserves for her tremendous distance skating ability.

Although some might not take the 100m, or the men’s 3,000 & women’s 10,000 records that seriously, try and go faster if you can!

Congratulations Carla “last-lap” Langenthal on the women’s 10,000m Pettit National Ice center rink record! I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!!!

8 Comments »
Filed under: from home

Apolo on Long Track

The US national short track team now trains at the Utah Olympic oval, and I have never bugged Apolo Ohno, or even turned my camera in his direction (well, once I briefly did, it’s in my “king of pain” video from the fall world cup qualifier).

I figure that Apolo has everyone & their brother wanting to say hello 24/7, so I leave him be; and simply watch that whole short track team train outrageously hard (really, they do very intense high volume “Korean training”! it hurts to watch their brutal dryland workouts.)

But with the world cup starting a week from today, the hockey rink has been dismantled so Dutch TV cameras have a clear field of view; & so the whole short track team was out skating the big ice!!

Apolo on the long track?!?!? Welcome to my world! and I will take pictures of that!!

He was obviously having an absolute blast too.

Here is Apolo & Kip Carpenter, chilling & chatting:

I asked Kip if he knew Apolo from his own years of short track, Kip said:

Know him? I used to drive him to high school in the morning! I trained with Apolo 96-97-98. We were just kids then. Now we are “old guys”, and it’s been several years since we really have seen each other. It was nice to catch up.

I did give Kip some good-natured crap about the “old guys” comment, but they were teenagers then, and there is a world of difference between that and your late 20’s

Here is Chad Hedrick leading a whole pack of short trackers at speed.

They looked more comfortable in the turns than the straights, but that is to be expected.

These are members of the women’s team, also having a great time. I think they had just stepped on the ice a few moments before I took this, and these very talented athletes are experiencing a giant “whoa!!”

Clear your imagination for a moment, and picture this as the last lap of a long track 1500m

of course Apolo, or any of the short track national team members, could probably skate very fast at any of the middle distances, but why would he do that? It’s a nice fantasy to think about though.

In addition to Apolo, the Dutch, Russian, Norwegian, Finnish, and other national teams were all on the ice preparing for the world cup. Here are two dutch skaters from the DSB pro team (translation for Americans, DSB=The New England Patriots), hips right on their push and making huge turn pressure.

This is Norwegian distance specialist Oystein Grodum, This is one BIG DUDE. He is at least 6’6”, people immediately notice his odd looking arm swing, as it barely moves from what you see here, just a little directly forward & back. But if you have problems with your arm swing pulling your hips out of line (I do), adopting elements of this actually works really well.

Ivan Skobrev leads a train of Russians past US national team skater Ron Macky. Members of the Dutch TVM pro team sit in the background and watch closely. (Translation for Americans, TVM=Indianapolis Colts)

I think this is TVM skater Jan Smeekens, saying, I’m going that way! And he was, quite quickly.

And this is my buddy Brian Boudreau, an American master chasing some crazy fast Norwegians; they are ripping out several 25 second laps in a row here… that is over half a mile at an average speed of 36mph! absolutely scary fast!

Brian has also recently caught the blogging bug, you can see his writing over at Flyin Brian, I sent him some images I took from today, and he has his own interesting take on this morning’s very busy session on the long track.

17 Comments »
Filed under: from home

Posted on 25 Oct 01:19 pm

Tomorrow…

This is inline world champ Jessica Smith, flying through the morning sunlight, during an easy race prep workout….

In the background is one of the oval staff, messing with the electronic timing system.

Tomorrow, and for the rest of the weekend, that system will see a lot of use, as the world cup qualifier & America’s cup I begins.

I often talk about “doing your best, & being at peace with it”, and even though that is absolutely true; in the coming races, there will be definite winners & losers. And for those who spend the majority of their waking hours trying to become the best, it’s an awful feeling to be on the losing side.

Although Jessica Smith is a skating rockstar, and should have no problem making the team, there are an unusually large number of skaters this year who are truly in contention for only a few slots.

Last year I missed the team by .1 of a second, and it’s something I will take to my grave as a failure (after great starts, my turns were awful, failure is the right word).

This year, I’m not in realistic contention. In fact I will only be able to race on Friday, then am driving right from the rink to the airport & going to a wedding in NYC.

Although much will be made of those who make the team, the strength of any team is often directly proportional to the depth of the competition required to make it. That implies there will be many who are phenomenal, dedicated, try hard, and don’t make it.

Many skate fans remember Dan Jansen & what he went through. I think an equally interesting story is his brother, whom from what I understand, trained every step that Dan did for 12 years on the national team, and although he was a world cup quality skater, he never made the Olympic games.

So here’s to Mike, and everyone who steps to that start line, and throws down their best, even if it’s not “good” enough.

7 Comments »
Filed under: from home

Speedskaters International –Sweden

My grandfather is a short wave radio enthusiast. As a kid, I remember sitting on the floor of his radio room, as he spoke to people all over the world.

My generation does the same thing, even though our technology is slightly different. It’s still a ton of fun, especially when you connect with good people who share your interests.

A Swedish natural ice skater, Erik Rosengren, emailed me with an equipment question. I happened to be on email at that moment, and we struck up a lively discussion about a number of topics.

Erik directed me to some online photo albums of his work, exellent information about skating in sweden, and YouTube-ery of some incredible natural ice conditions.

It’s absolutely breathtaking!

With his permission, I am republishing a few of his pictures, words, and videos here.

My main interest is longdistance ice-skating on natural ice. The area around Stockholm is ideal for this type of skating,and from november to april, thousands of skaters are out every weekend on lakes and the Baltic Sea.

a bit of Global Warming?

That’s me in the water. Falling through the ice is a bit shocking the first time, but after that it’s nothing major.

For me, it happens once or twice each season. On this occasion I was actually looking into the LCD-display of my camera, trying to change some settings and did not notice that the edge that I was skating on made a sharp turn. If you look closely you can actually see me holding the camera in my right hand. I learn something every time I skate on natural ice.

I’m learning just by looking at these pictures! for example, humans are not the only mammal who can have fun zipping along natural ice! You can see more of Erik’s work here.

Links for information in English about skating on natural ice are:
The Stockholm Ice Skate Sailing and Touring Club
Linköpings Långfärdsskridsko Klubb

Other good pages are
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/getaways/54676_swedenskate17.shtml

http://naturetravels.wordpress.com/2007/02/

http://www.s3.kth.se/~giese/iskunskap/

http://www.valley.net/~ice/viking/index.html

There is a well known competition in Sweden called Vikingarännet, with skaters from Sweden, Finland, The Netherlands and a few other countries.

There is a company based here in Stockholm which specializes in skate tours for Dutch skaters. Here are links to pages with information from these trips
http://www.snabelslash.com/bo/?m=2&date=2006-02-17
http://www.snabelslash.com/bo/?m=2&date=2007-02-23

This is a pretty popular dutch site
http://www.nordicskatingcenter.nl/

I can go on and on forever about this long distance iceskating, but I’ll sum it up by providing some links to movie clips:

and here are some others
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-Xl-d6yjGXE
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_H6Tx4D7380
http://youtube.com/watch?v=36vtWSHkdgQ
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xMOJTSC2P6o

Thanks Erik!! And thanks for the kind mention of this blog on the Stockholm Speedskaters club website

also on the web, this website was mentioned on the facinating potpourri that is the Readers and Writers Blog.

here is what they said:

Zen and the Art of Speedskating, which is strangely appealing, despite a lot of content about, yes, speedskating.

If I must be something in this world, I don’t mind if it is “strangely appealing“.. kind of like natural ice skating in Sweden!

4 Comments »
Filed under: from home

Posted on 10 Oct 06:57 pm

USA SUIT & Hubris

Last year I finally cracked the top 10 at US national championships.

This means the world to me, and given the fact that I started long track at 31 (I’ll be 37 in January) it’s honestly as much as I can realistically achieve. This also earned me “Category I” status, and in the “unwritten ethic” among long track athletes, I now had earned the right to wear a skinsuit with the USA on it.

So since nationals I’ve been skating in an old, worn out USA suit previously owned by Marc Pelchat. If you have ever seen Marc & how he rips off the start line, it’s karmically appropriate.

But today, I got MY OFFICIAL USA CAT I SKINSUIT!

It’s bright red! Fast! and fits me like freckles, strong coffee & rock-n-roll.

Putting it on I was like an excited kid on Xmas morning. But was my giddiness unusual? Or do others feel the same way the first time they put on that USA that has taken such an incredible amount of work to earn?

So I asked around:

My first US skin was a long time ago, I got to the rink in Milwaukee for practice and Ryan had this big plastic bag of Cat I Nike stuff…

I was trying to be all old & mature about it, just all “whatever” but I wanted to put it on so bad, Ryan said “you really should go try it on, make sure it fits!”

So I ran downstairs to the bathrooms and put it on. I was probably 14.

I still have that skinsuit & I won’t give it up. It’s in my dresser at home.

-Tucker Fredricks

I was in Herenveen, in 1987, I got the whole National suit, and then I had to sign autographs immediately. No one knew me, but I had on the National team suit.

-Bart Veldkamp

It was a really long time ago, and I was very young, 13 or 14, but what I remember more than the skinsuit is that in June my father had made a bet with me that if I made category I at Junior trials in February he would buy me a whole package of Oreos!

After I made Cat I, I got home from school one day, and sitting at my place at the kitchen table was that package of Oreos.

I do still have that skin they gave me, it’s the old Mizuno one, and I will never throw it away. I have 2 of them, and skated in them for years.

-Ron Macky

The first time I got one was at a Short Track world team trials, and I put it on for that, and then I made the World team at that race, and got 2 more that weekend!

Wearing it, I did feel more elite.

-Mike Kooreman

I first put on a USA skin, it was at the Viking races in Holland, they let us borrow one, so I was all pumped, but then I found out I had to give it back. So that was disappointing.

Stepping to the line felt super cool though. Especially for me, because I did not have a team or team skin, so it was the first time I felt unified with something other than myself.

-Robert Lawrence

I remember I was so excited, but when the box came, it was a SHORT TRACK SKIN, they gave me the wrong one! They gave me a long track one eventually, I got 3 that year; it was a good year.

My dad probably has fonder memories of it than I do, because everything in the box arrived in his size, I was less than 100 pounds when I first made Cat I, and everything was a men’s large. So he got to try it all on & wear the US speedskating collared shirts & T-Shirts.

-April Medley

I remember when Mia got hers! she wore her stuff everyday, and I mean everyday! It did not matter, she wore it to school! She has a good story.

I was probably 13 or 14 years old, I went to Australia for junior world championships in Inline, and they had only selected 2 juniors for the whole country.

Me and my friend Brant Jagel from Florida, we grew up together & we were the team + 2 girls too. I was 13-14 and suddenly going across the world, it was pretty cool.

I still have that skin from that Junior team, my mom still has everything that I have used. I sure could dig up some fun stuff out of the woodwork.

-Chad Hedrick

First of all I couldn’t get it quick enough! They took forever to give them out, I remember when I saw the boxes right by the door and I saw my name on one of the boxes. And I couldn’t get into it quick enough, so we got them finally, I cut open the box and threw everything on right there!

I got yelled at & made fun of for wearing all the gear the first day I got it, but I didn’t care, because it was so awesome!

-Mia Manganello

I remember Olympic trials in 2005, and they let everyone wear a fast USA suit so everyone would have the same suit. I remember how excited I was, I could have been given $1,000 and I would not have been more excited.

I was running into the bathroom and trying it on, and thinking wow.. wow!! I remember that specifically, and even now, still, whenever I get these packages in the mail, it’s like Christmas, like Christmas has come early.

Anna Ringsred

These stories need to end with another story-

So I am out there on the ice this morning, in my new blazing red suit, skating super solid & feeling quite studly.

Of course it’s in moments like this when the hubris hammer appears to remind you, DON’T LET IT GO TO YOUR HEAD.

I have been doing a LOT of short track, and it’s changed my corner mechanics significantly. So today when I try to go really fast, two steps into the corner I lean so deeply my boot touches the ice (it’s called “booting out) & my blade loses contact-

Suddenly I’m falling-spinning-sliding at the pads, I’ve got about 2 seconds to freak out & holler at a whole crowd of National allaround team members lined up like pins

and I’m the massive red bowling ball of season-ending doom!!!!

I see a pair of legs, flashing scrambling gold maple blades that seem to jump just as I impact.

WHAM!!!!

I missed Pat Meek by a hair, it felt like he almost jumped over me!

From Pat’s viewpoint-

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of red, I looked back and you were coming right at me, and I have never moved so fast on clap skates in my life!!

I had looked down right before the crash, and my HR was at 140, about 3 seconds after the crash, someone said “hey, check your HR” and it was at 175. You definitely scared the crap out of me!

-Pat Meek

Sorry Pat….. No one knew you could jump so fast, you could be a good sprinter!

I hit the wall hard, but the pads did their job and I’m totally fine, the suit is ok too, however my left Viking blade is pretty messed up!

I got this messy bend out, but the blade itself, although straight, is now corkscrew twisted one way in the front and another in the back. Hmmm….

Oh well, blades can be replaced, but the important thing is that no one got hurt, the fact that it’s a good story, and got me asking others for their stories, is gravy…

26 Comments »
Filed under: from home

Hammertime Crunch

To Hammer, Hammering, Hammertime-
Definition: informal. To keep at something continuously: hammered away at the problem.

“Hammering” is a wonderful phrase, and in the athletic usage, really signifies an internal psychological state manifesting itself in external, usually quite noticeable action.

Jessica must have eaten a bowl of Hammertime Crunchy O’s for breakfast, because we went out for an “easy spin” together, and she went into big-ring-determined-hammer-into-headwind mode.

The distortion from my el-cheapo camera phone makes it seem as if she is simply ripping spokes right out of the wheel! Go jess!

I never imagined the woman I married would get into cycling & enjoy “hammering” like that, but life works in strange & wonderful ways. Goofing around near the end of the ride, you can see the first leaves of fall skittering along the road. The highest of the Wasatch have already gotten snow, it was a nice day, but winter is not far away.

As per my usual habit of defining what I am bad at, and hammering relentlessly on that, after some recent disappointing racing- I’ve decided I need some “speedskating boot camp” to improve my turns.

That can only mean one thing: Short Track!

It’s been 3 years since I’ve crunched my way ’round the small, padded circle- but wow, where I used to be terrified, now I am having so much fun!

Here are 3 of the kids from the Wasatch Club, flying.

This is me, a model of powerful & total inefficiency, leading Michael Drews, the blond blur taking pictures between us is Teri Willingham, her awesome photo website is here, including excellent photos of this practice & last weeks LT time trials. She blogs too.

Every technical flaw I have is magnified in those unforgiving, high G-force turns.

Watching those with refined, compact power is awesome. Here are Chris Dahl and Jonathan Valdivia followed by Guy Thibault, the High Performance director of US speedskating (he was an Olympian in ‘88 & ‘92, has a PHD, and can still really go!) .

Note the distance between their legs in this push as compared to mine… I’m reaching too far, and because my knee is not compressed when it touches the ice, it doesn’t create pressure immediately. Long track is no different in this respect. My shoulders are too high as well.

The US national short track team trains at the Utah Oval too, and I’ve occasionally meandered over to watch Apollo & company blaze along, the sounds of their blades ripping through turns can fill the oval like revving motorcycles.

They are absolutely, outrageously, inspiringly, FAST!!!

7 Comments »
Filed under: from home

September Determination

Waiting to go on the ice are the skates of the national team sprinters, allarounders, a Japanese University Team, & the oval’s F.A.S.T. team.

This picture was shot during a mid-session resurface. I think many are unconsciously holding their skates this way because their legs hurt, and straightening them fully helps.

Late September is the hardest training time of the year; it’s when speed meets volume for elite athletes, and it’s a make or break month for some. I love it and dread it.

The sprinters especially had a horridly hard day-

Here is Tyler Goff, Nick Pearson, and Mike Stein. You can see something in how far back their hips are & the curl of their back in this photo that I have a very hard time doing properly.

Extention & form! even when it’s the end of the day, your legs are a burning mass of jello, and what keeps you upright is determination + years of hard-earned fitness, as shown here by Kreg Greer, Matt Plummer, and Mike Blumel.

When it’s a world cup race, or national championship time in December, this is when the efforts of September will bear fruit.

10 Comments »
Filed under: from home

The “Book of Meaghan”

Meaghan Buisson is an elite Canadian inline speedskater & the women’s solo marathon world record holder. She has won marathons racing in Europe, and like many talented inliners, is now is focusing her considerable mental and physical horsepower towards the goal of Vancouver 2010.

I also happen to think that she is possibly the best skater/writer I have ever come across. Her control of language simply blows me away.

I write like a determined carpenter, Meaghan is more like a concert violinist, & you can feel her soul playing out during the concert.

Due to its often intensely personal nature of her style & some of the demons she wrestles with she does not publish her work on her website, or even beyond a small circle of people.

But I urge her to someday make a novel out of it (I jokingly call it “The Book of Meaghan”), as that fits her style better than the daily carpentry of a blog.

Or she could find a Canadian news outlet that is interested in paying athletes who have skills far beyond merely skating freakishly fast in a circle. What does it feel like to be a Canadian Olympic hopeful? She tells the story amazingly well.

Meagan will be really easy to recognize during races in Calgary this season, even if you don’t remember her face from these pictures;

Just look for the skater with the huge ankle brace built right into her boot. She is skating with several ligaments missing. THAT is determination.

This is something she wrote back in July:

We started back on ice last week. Or, rather, my group started back on ice last week.

My skates are currently in Montréal, where Mathieu Turcotte (ApexRacingSkates.com) is making me a carbon fiber ankle – integrated into my actual boot, so I can go around corners with my current (and permanently) wobbly ankle. There is some question as to whether or not this venture will be successfully. As Mathieu said when we met a few weeks ago to go over the options, “They didn’t teach me THIS in school!”

In light of limited alternatives, I’m willing to take the risk…

But until my boots arrive I can’t skate.

So while my teammates are slowly building up distance, working on drills, and gliding around with the Oval with contented smiles on their faces, I’m passing hours of mind-numbing cadence gliding back and forth across a slideboard.

Two minutes on… Two minutes off… Two minutes on… Two minutes off…

I’m still smiling though.

At some point this season, two minutes will be a thoroughly decent 1500 m race!

Top Blade

Every July, the Olympic Oval is over-run by the future.

In a weeklong series of skating camps, a couple hundred kids ranging in age from five through thirteen+ years old converge in mass upon Calgary and promptly turn the predictable rhythms of Oval life completely upside down.

During these weeks, many Oval athletes (and coaches) tend to become somewhat bitter, hiding from the masses, doing programs away from the Oval or muttering to themselves when forced to train indoors as children disrupt programs by jumping across training mats, slideboards, and cables in a never-ending game of tag.

As one of the Oval coaches finally exclaimed in exasperation during imitations last week when about ten impish children tried to mimic his skaters, “Don’t talk to them! You’ll only encourage them to stay!”

Ummm… isn’t the point?

Training at the Olympic Oval during Top Blade is like being overrun by a litter of puppies – you have to watch where you step, but even when they’re causing trouble underfoot, they’re just so darn cute it’s hard to stay mad!

I personally love training through Top Blade.

It’s so easy to become jaded and cynical out here – training hard every day without thinking about life beyond the tightly controlled and artificial world of long track ice. The Olympic Oval places long track speed skating on par with the gods. For the most part of the year, skaters are revered based on numbers, in a sport defined by words such as “serious… competitive… genteel… tradition…” There is a definitive *way* things are done at the Oval, as steeped in tradition as any rational logic, and very little seems to sway that path.

But Top Blade kids don’t know that. And thus wreaking havoc while descending upon the Olympic Oval in one collectively screaming bundle of hyperactive energy, they promptly knock the Olympic Oval right off its pedestal, trampling all sense of humourless propriety wildly into the ground.

There are few times in my life when I actually like chaos. Top Blade is one of them.

Throughout my athletic career, I’ve raced everything from grassroots competition right up to major international multi-sport games. I love watching really good athletes perform their sport, and stand in awe at some of the feats of athleticism I am privileged to now see each day.

But for everything for which I’ve been blessed through sport, there is nothing little more motivating or wonderful to watch than little kids simply having fun on skates.

Happiness is a group of eight-year-olds scampering around the Oval, eager to skate, excited to learn, and celebrating movement every day. Motivation is watching the littlest kid at the camp – an impish five-year-old - skating wobble-kneed about the Oval for the first time, fall down, stand up, then keep going with a huge grin across his face. Wonder is seeing a group of teenagers stop dead upon walking to the Olympic Oval for the first time, look about in incredulous delight, then exclaim, “This is, like, SO cool!”

Because they’re right – it is pretty cool.

And having them around to remind us of that fact, if only for one week each year, brings as much to us as anything the Oval can possibly provide to them.

Skate like a child. Love what you do. Play.