Zen and the Art of Speedskating

At the beginning of the amazingly (insert your own descriptive here) movie “Conan The Barbarian” there is a moment at the start of the film that sticks in the minds of many who have seen it. A gaggle of war-captured children are shackled to a massive wheel, the “Wheel of Pain” (a grain grinder, actually). They pass through puberty pushing this monstrosity, wearing grooves into the ground with their feet. One by one, they die from the effort, till finally, only one of them is left, turning this massive wheel. And now he is adult with biceps like cannonballs, legs like howitzers, and very thirsty for revenge, its Conan!

This cinematic image came into my mind during dryland earlier this week. We were doing repeated skate position jumps, with running/minimal recovery between the jumps (that’s me & Eric Krann doing them on the right). We are finishing up a hard training cycle, and the fatigue has really built up in me. 2 hours into the 3 hour workout (and I did 5 hard hours the day before), after hitting my maximum heart rate over and over, after endless efforts at 100%, my brain shut off completely. I had no idea what set we were on, what rep, I could not count, speak, think, I completely had submerged into suffering and effort. There was no moment but now, nothing but the mechanical motions and trying to make each jump big and technically correct. Kirk was worried about me, I was working so hard, I was COMPLETELY SILENT & GRIM for most of the workout…. Imagine that! Andrew quiet!

Weirdly enough, I was still able to fly pretty far each jump. During a brief break, as I was vacantly staring at the ground, with my heart thudding along like a jackhammer, Boris put his arm around my shoulders and said “Yes, its hard, I know, but your muscles are strong enough to do this, they are strong enough to do anything, keep the mind focused, and it will be ok, it’s the mind.” Some spark ignited in the flammable debris of my brain, and I think my last set was even better than my first, as I began to relax into bigger and bigger jumps (max HR for the last set was waaay over 200+ in case you care). This is when that memory from the Conan movie occurred to me.

Lest Mom worry (and she reads this blog) dear Mom, let me clarify that what I am experiencing is common, and actually is probably an essential part of breaking into another level of fitness. Masters cycling world champion Glenn Swan once said “Yeah, you can get to about 90% of your potential with 2 years of hard work, its that last 10% you just have to break your heart to get”. I think he was talking about the wheel of pain, that last 10%. Glenn has been there.

Football players talk in awe and horror about their fall 2-a-day practices, Cadel Evans, during a recent Tour De France breakaway, said he had a moment when he simply could not recall his middle name, no matter how hard he tried, Sprinter Robert Förster even said that he simply blacked out the last 100k of a tough mountain stage, had no memory of it whatsoever. It’s all that last 10%

Everyone builds their own wheel, their own chains of sacrifice, and that is the crucial difference between myself, football players, Tour de France bicycle racers and the mythical Conan (who had no choice). Modern athletes create ourselves anew -wearing grooves into ground of our own choosing; how hard we work combined with that careful equipment choice of picking our parents right (I did! genetically and otherwise) creates who we are. If reaching that last 10% of your ability was not so hard, it would not be worth so much, or be as fulfilling as when you feel that whoosh of sweet velocity & move faster than you have ever gone before.

Of course, this is all just Friday afternoon philosophizing; I exhausted because of this 10% obsession that I have, and I think I will turn my computer off now, and go sleep for most of next week (a rest week!! yay!). oh, wait, I need to go lift weights tonight! and I am already fried from 3 hours today! soooooo…. back to the wheel!!

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A new face showed up today at practice, and suddenly the goofyness level of the high 5 speedskating team increased dramatically. Nate DiPalma and I just fed off of each others energy, and were chattering and goofing through much of the workout today. We were serious when it was time to work, but making all sorts of noise the rest of the time. How well do I know Nate? Actually not that well, just a half dozen conversations over the last year, but sometimes you meet someone who truly marches to the beat of their own drummer, and you enjoy the music of said drummer quite a bit.

He was not tired in these pics, just goofing about after throwing down some good turncable technique. Nate has been training in Italy recently, as he has dual citizenship, and seems to have a really solid base to add skate fitness on top of. I think he is going to take a shot at Olympic trials in both countries. I look forward to chasing him this year, I need fast people to skate with, and it’s a bonus when they come with a good sense of humor attached.

I mentioned in an earlier previous post Salted out in Salt Lake that John Dimon is having knee surgery, he went under the knife today at 11am east coast time. He says he has gotten many calls from readers of this blog wishing him fast healing (thanks folks!). John joked with me over email that he was looking forward to anesthesia, because he really needs to catch up on his sleep!

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The Utah sun is blazing with that strange radiant heat that feels like someone is pressing a hot frying pan against your exposed skin. The mercury is in the upper 90’s, So of course, with as unnatural a sport as 400m long track speedskating is, today is the PERFECT day to have our first on ice practice!!

Out of the fires and into the freezer! It was such a pleasant moment to step from the blast furnace into the 40-degree air of the Utah Olympic oval facility. The whole speedskating team was bouncy and happy, like kids and Christmas. As skaters, we do a lot of lifting and dryland training, and most view them as necessary evils. I find Cycling fun, but I used to race bikes, many skaters are less than enthusiastic about a 3 hour ride up a mountain.

But today, we get to finally do what we truly love to do! Skate! Of course the first 20 minutes or so was pretty weird, but after that, the whole team settled down into a nice rhythm. Here Eva and Kirk are doing some endurance laps, smooth as buttah (yeah Kirk, I know you don’t FEEL like buttah, maybe more like crusty gray gravy, but the impression is definitely at least margarine).

It was a fun day, and I got to see how fundamentally Boris and Rex have changed how I skate through 4 months of intensive body crushing/muscle remolding dryland work. I was overjoyed at the differences in my straightaway stroke. In fact, I was getting so much power out of my straightaways, when I was in the correct rhythm I pretty much found it impossible to skate in the paceline (since its my first day on ice, I had very little control over “feathering” my speed), I would pull out of the flailing line and skate in the outer lanes on my own. Not chasing the velocity, but relaxing and letting it come to me. Zoooom! I think I have the best of two worlds, one coach leaning up against the pads, the other following directly behind me, step by step. Both were happy with my progress (and the progress of the group in general), both say there still is a way to go. Here are Boris and I.

It’s funny, but when I look at this picture, in the past all I would have seen is the good things going on technically (and there are some good things here), but now all I can see are flaws, there are about 2 or 3 quite fundamental ones here that are robbing me of power. But I won’t spoil this otherwise nice shot by describing them. You can see my clap blade opening quite nicely on my right foot too.

After 2 hours of icey playtime, I re-emerged from the freezer back to the fires. It’s much harder going from cold to hot. Locals are in flip-flops and stick to the shade, every car is a sealed aluminum-glass envelope & has the air conditioner running full blast.

Living in Utah will be a contrast of fire and ice, a rotating sign on a bank says 99 degrees, ugh, and I hear Utah gets MUCH hotter than it is today. I can’t wait to get back to the freezer again.

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Armies of snails inhabit our neighborhood, and as I walk the dog in 7am morning sun, they are out in their slimy battalions everywhere. They leave a calligraphy of silver tracks sparkling along sidewalk, notes in an alien language? Hieroglyphics? My fortune written out by creatures I crush underfoot in brief moments of daydreaming inattention?

My heart was pounding with tiredness, my right knee is stinging (not the old injury, this is new abuse) How the hell am I going to complete my job/workout today? We are riding straight up some insane Wasatch mountain climb for… ummmm, a long long way…

I ride to the meeting place for the group, even the slightest rises of downtown Salt Lake make me labor out of the saddle, my heart is thudding along like a jackhammer into my sodden willpower. I call myself an athlete? Ugh!!

But there is nothing like seeing a group of like minded crazed souls, many of them also tired from hard training, to make the soul brighten, (coffee helps too, I was drinking as I was riding!) and shortly I was hammering up the grades of emigration canyon behind 210lbs of hill climbing bike cracking power that is the Kirk Fogdall express.
An hour and a half of climbing later, and after something like 3,000 feet of vertical gain, our group arrived at the top of the Wasatch range. The view was as stunning as the climb was hard, at one point I had about 25 minutes straight climbing with my HR pegged at 188, pounding my easiest gear at about 70rpm. Kirk & Eric Krann did the climb so fast they made the rest of us look silly, but the pain is the same for all of us, no matter the speed.

The view at the top was stunning! The winding valley fell away below, with the countless switchbacks and straights we had ascended visible, and the teeth of snow capped mountains surrounding like the jaws of long dead reason-killed gods & titans.

Getting to the top of a climb like this is not just a pure measure of being fit, but its also about determination, and not just determination on today’s ride, but determination built up over years of repeated self-challenging, & getting the better of doubt gnawing away at your willpower. Although I am doing my best impression of roadkill in our group shot, my spirit was soaring (maybe endorphins? Altitude sicknesss/euphoria).

As slow as am going up, I am wicked fast pointing down. The group left the mountain-top in ones and twos, I waited a minute after the last one left, and then used every pound of bodyweight & spin I have to fly down off the mountain, howling with glee through the switchbacks. From years of bicycle racing, I know that fine line between “death” & “more fun” and I can confidently stand on the edge & smile. I caught and passed everyone, except the “lightning rod” herself, Eva Rodansky. The road pointed upward for one final 10 minute climb, and I threw it all into the effort, chasing her in big gears. Eva recently posted on her blog, her top 10 favorite offspring songs; here are some of her favorite lyrics

When the wind blows
I’ll lean into the wind.
My anger grows
I’ll use it to win.”

Yeah, that is Eva, She was using every ounce of rage on that final climb, as she told me later, she was thinking about all the girls she is gonna beat at Olympic trials, and I could not close any distance on her, she was riding inspired (and will probably ride that rage all the way to the Olympics too). About 500 meters from the top, I hear the whoosh-woosh of tires, a qwadzilla figure riding a bike out of the saddle blows by me, its Kirk, and he has ridden this whole last steep climb IN THE BIG RING!!! But 500 meters to go is Andrew-land, so I kick it up 4 gears, accelerate, and pass him at the summit as we both hoot & holler across the final hilltop, yelling for sheer love of this crazy thing that we do.

Later, after parting company with everyone at the parking lot, riding home I found myself humming the Bob Marley tune “redemption song”, but since I don’t really know the song well, I smooshed the lyrics around to fit my mood.

Won’t you hear me sing
On these climbs to freedom-
they’re all I ever have:
Redemption songs;

Looking at my HR data later, 3 hours & 21 minutes of riding time, averaging 166 beats per minute (max of 197, probably at that sprint with Kirk) that’s 33,366 beats of redemption.

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To my former co-workers/friends who read this, somewhere in your Cornell office cubicle (or any other office-bound job), please do laugh at me and my “job” every time you get your paycheck (and with as hard as my training is, it’s really a full time job), but I can tell you, the view from my “cubicle” is pretty hard to beat! Check out the mountains behind us! This is just a few of the skaters who were at a recent 3 hour pylometric practice at a high school track; I am standing next to my coaches Rex Albertson & Boris Leikin, Kirk, my brother-by-another-mother, is kneeling in front of me.. Eric & Kim Kraan are standing in the back row on the left, Paul & Arnim are kneeling in the front next to Kirk. Good folks all…. The cool thing is that some of the strongest members of our group, Eva Rodansky, Marco Bucci, and Nate DiPalma, we training elsewhere/out of state that particular day.

As I indicated before, my recent “days at the office” have felt quite good. This time of year, speedskaters are lifting in the gym, running/hopping/jumping/pylometrics, and doing hard bicycle rides. Speedskaters have been cross training for as long as there has been the sport of speedskating (late 1880’s), because there was no ice in the summer until recently!

A few days ago our group rode up big cottonwood canyon outside of town, it’s a pretty nasty 14 mile climb. Eric Kraan is an excellent cyclist (and a world cup skater) he and I rode off the front of the 7-person group as the incline began to bite. We spun easy & chatted on the gradual bits, and hammered for all we were worth on the steep parts (that is what the coaches wanted, big gear hard efforts on the steep stuff). I took the lead about 1/2 of the way up the pass, and started hammering out of the saddle around switchback turns and increasing grade. My heart was redlining along nicely 194-196bpm, turn after turn I kept going, then finally, wham, done, I was toast, Eric floated by me (I outweigh him by a good 40+ pounds of sprinter muscle) saying “only 10 more minutes of climbing till this steep part is over” ugh!!. Eric disappeared up the hill. I backed off the intensity for a few minutes, recovered, then cranked it up again, earning tenths of seconds in my legs for the 1000m races I will do this fall.

In wonderment, I was approaching the snow & treeline when I came across Eric relaxing outside a mountainside restaurant. We turned around to zip home, I thanked him for pushing me on the climb, I actually like being passed by people, if in my efforts to catch them, I improve my own abilities. I earned something on this climb today. Over and over I have chosen training partners who are good at things I am really bad at. It helps if they are friendly & a little crazy too. A lot of people dislike being competitive & competitive situations, but I usually thrive in them, especially competing with good fellow like Eric.

Just another day at the office!

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