Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Hazy, but clear blue skies over the Salt Lake airport, another beautiful day in the west with a salubrious hint of fall in the air. If you look closely in this photo you can see the buildings of downtown Salt Lake in the distance.

Luckily the plane I was flying to Milwaukee in was bigger than this puddle jumper.

In Denver on my layover, the same gentle western mountain air and blue skies. The Denver airport would win the “P.T Barnum on Acid” award if there was one. It’s wonderful inside, but from the outside it looks like a circus tent that has added several unnecessary time-space dimensions to its existence.

Arriving in Milwaukee & straight to the rink, 35 degrees, biting cold, clouds cold as stone, snowflakes horizontally skittering along in gusty wind. WELCOME TO THE MIDWEST! There is something about low altitude damp cold that just claws its way through your jacket.

Inside the Pettit center was bustling with activity, and warm with the smiles of many good folks I know. Here are some of the young and the fast, in their US Junior National team blue & red. Mathew Shanahan and Connor Slivocka saw me wandering around with my digital camera. They said “hey! Your blog rocks! Can we be on it!”.

Sure, here ya go guys. That is Matthew Hickson sitting on the pads, grinning at their goofing.

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I said I would post this group shot of the competitors from this weekend’s masters international, and so here it is.

Click on the image itself to see a bigger one:

I have a lot more to say about this weekend’s racing, but I wanted to post this ASAP, and before I pass out with happy exhaustion from a weekend of 11 (!!!!) races totaling 15,600 meters (!!!!).

It has occurred to me that there is a real “masters movement” across many sports. What is beginning to happen in speedskating simply reflects the cultural shift already visible in cycling, running, triathlon, etc. The difference is that in Europe masters have been organized for quite a while. Now the moment has come for North Americans to work together, hand in hand with US Speedskating & Speedskating Canada, to organize a cohesive voice & organizing committee to promote Masters speedskating.

And yes, yours truly will be a part of it, I volunteered to build the website!

Oh, and to all my European skating friends, look closely at this picture. You will get to know many of these smiling American and Canadian faces in Calgary next year, at Masters World Championships!

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Travel….. The hidden gift/cost of pursing many sports. If you have gone on the road for competitons, just for fun, make a list of the places you have gone to race, post it in the comments if you want. I was shocked how long my own list became.

As doctor Seuss says in his brilliant book/poem “oh the places you will go!” (check out the full text I linked to here, its incredible! moving! wise…. & don’t get stuck in “the waiting place!)

I am in Madison, Wisconsin, visiting an old friend from High School. I am happy with life. Yesterday I did some fantastic (for me) flying laps on the ice, 400, 600, an ouchy 800. Today, I ate at Monty’s Blue Pate Diner in Madison, a place that serves something called “THE MEATLOAF OF THE GODS!” Oh the places you will go! The meatloaf you will eat! For vegetarians, Monty’s also serves “THE MEATLESS-LOAF OF THE GODS”.

Big lakes make me as happy as big mountains (as happy as good meatloaf!). Here is lake Michigan yesterday. That’s not Krispy Kreme frosting on those rocks, that’s ice!

And this is lake Mendota in Madison this morning. As an added “Where’s Waldo” bonus, click on the image to get the really big version, see if you can find the ice fisherman waaaay out there on the ice, and no, I don’t think that is skateable, it looked too rough.

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Filed under: on the road, from the coffee shop

I am not a machine, I am a human being
-Anni Friesinger

Wouldn’t it be so easy if the athletes on TV responded as quickly and perfectly as computer video games, like machines, and the harder you urged them onward from the comfort of your TV view, the faster they go!

But that is how things go in the movies and in video games; we have become a culture of comfortable control in so many respects. Yet maybe this is why sports occupy more and more fascination within the modern psychological airspace; because Anni Friesinger is not a machine, and no matter how hard her fans hope, or how hard Anni herself tries, she does not always win. She was 4th, actually, in the 3k. She has been the best in the world for years, and she misses the podium in the Olympics.

We love sports because winning moves us, but as often, gut-wrenching loss is equally enthralling.

The pain of an athlete, who has trained their whole life for something, is like a car wreck we can’t look away from. Figure skaters crashing on the first jump of a program, skiers who miss a slalom gate, XC ski racers struggling up hills as the winners accelerate away from them, Michelle Kwan explaining at a news conference how the spirit is willing but her body has failed. There can only be one winner, many losers.

Hmmm, in fact, there are 2,600 athletes competing in Torino. Only 84 gold medal events (there are some team sports, like hockey, counted as “one” medal, but the ratio is still pretty bad)..

Since my own limited experience of just having competed at one Olympic trials, I find watching the Olympics sometimes a wrenching experience. I am not sure if I ever made it clear here how much disappointment I feel looking back on my 500m races during Olympic trials. It was me vs. myself, and I still feel like I failed. I have a picture in the clutter of my desk, its of my stumble in the final corner of my 2nd 500, both arms windmilling wildly. It hurts to look at. Sure, I am proud to have competed there, they were fast races compared to many others, but for me, they still feel like failures. I desperately wanted that top 10 finish, to earn the right to wear the USA on my skinsuit. In the overall rankings after the 2 500m races, I was 11th.

Maybe we do this for the failure, the pain, for the striving that makes us better in the long run. But I wanted to take a moment here to thank someone, someone who I think is in a lot of pain right now, and someone who has meant a lot to this sport:

Without K.C. Boutiette there would probably have been no Derek Parra, no Jen Rodrieguz, no Joey Cheek, no Chad Hedrick winning medals at the Olympics. Even though I don’t belong in that list of athletes, his life gave me the idea to ice a try as well. Without K.C. the arc of my life would have been different, and this blog would never have existed.

K.C. is special because he was the first top inline speedskater to try long-track ice, he grabbed a spot on the 1994 US Olympic team, and opened a lot of eyes. He competed in 94, 98, 2002, and this is his final games.

Maybe someone else would have been that first inliner to make the ice scene, maybe it was an inevitable progression, but K.C. was the definitive pioneer, the first, the one who turned possibility into reality.

But K.C. is not a machine, he has suffered with a back injury for years, and kept training hard for that elusive goal, that stamp of a medal, that validation of all that effort.

He has placed 5th twice in Olympic races, his final event in his 4th Olympics was a few days ago, his final shot (and an excellent chance) at an Olympic medal. But K.C’s legs locked up in the last laps of the team pursuit, and he finished 10 meters behind teammates Chad and Charles, and Italy beat the US team, knocking them out of contention for a medal.

I read the results online before NBC coverage started; I read that KC was in tears afterwards. I skipped watching the coverage; I did not want to see this. I have a hard enough time watching other athletes in other sports suffer. Not this, not this good guy who has always been so friendly & open hearted, I don’t want that memory. (they replayed his tears several times, so I saw it anyway, damm).

K.C. I think that the inliners who have won medals at the Olympics, all of them ought to shave a tiny bit from the backside of each one, melt the shards together, and give it to you.

Or maybe those of us who stepped onto the ice following your inspiration, maybe we can all take a slice of our joy, and en masse brew a tonic against the wrenching I imagine is in your gut at the end of your career. I wish we could all do that right now. A roomful of us, how many? several hundred at least, probably more, a standing ovation just for you that goes on and on.

I came across this line in a poem by an obscure beatnik writer:

Like everything else I have
Somebody showed it to me and I found it by myself

He was writing about a huge boulder on the seashore, that wobbles every time a wave hits it, but I thought of speedskating, K.C. and his pain…. I hope he is at peace.

There is a much worse pain in this world, after all, it’s just skating, it’s just joy, just failure, just pain, just the Olympics…

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Today was a combined event, the junior US national champs, a metric all-around competition, and the age class Pack style National Champs. We are racing in Roseville, Minnesota. No matter what happens, I am prepared well, and I will try hard, and I see many of my good friends from the Milwaukee skate tribe, so no matter this weekends outcome, I am having a great time.

Minnesota! February! outdoor speedskating! oh so much fun! The locals were saying it was a really nice day to skate, about 20 degrees & with bitter, gusty winds. Upper Midwest cold is a damp cold, and pushed by that wind it just really claws through your body. Especially if you are just in a skinsuit!

A lot of the junior racers, after skating metric 3000m races in ferocious winds, had this look on their faces, a flushed cheek vacant stare. More of a happy-to-be-alive look instead of the normal post-race mellowglow. Times were really slow in the 20-30mph gusts, there was some big pain out there.

But they are still juniors. I heard a few of the younger ones planning a trip to the nearby thrill rides at the humongous Mall of America.

So when it comes time for the masters to race, we all truck out to the huge expanse of ice. Roseville has a unique set up to the rink, the center is all ice! It’s pretty cool. (check out the quicktime VR I took 2 years ago, link #7 on the left) They also have these mobile wind shelters like bus stops, they move them right up against the start line. So you can huddle out of the wind until they call you to the line.

On the menu of fun today was just one 1500m race. I have only 3 other people in the masters 30-39 category with me, 2 of them, Zen 10 interviewee Jim Cornell and Mike Anderson, are good distance skaters. Hmmmm, I want to beat the current National Masters record of 2:06.9, to do that, I can’t mess around tactically, and I don’t want anything to do with any distance skaters on the last lap! I need to just blast off the line hard, skate this like it’s metric, use my speed in the first 700, and hope these guys don’t catch me in the last 400. I went 2:02 in good conditions in Davos a few weeks ago, so it’s possible.

I am stripping out of my warm ups, putting my mind in order for a hard effort, I have the serious face going, and am only a minute or two from my start, when Kaari Cox skates into the wind shelter, after handily winning the ladies 40-49 1500m race, and says:

“Wow, I should not have had that Powerbar earlier, I almost just had a PowerBarf”

I simply lost every semblance of seriousness at that moment, and just burst out laughing. PowerBarf! What a thought! Tom Cole, upon hearing this, opined “is that something like a Cliff barf?”

Athlete humor, gotta love it, I think I have PowerBarfed once, many years ago before a bike race, although come to think of it, I think it was more the cheese sandwich than the Powerbar, but I digress…

So when it’s time to go for this packstyle 1500m, I blast off the line like a pizza man driving a porsche, fearing no CoffeeBarf fate.

Fighting my way through the wind, 300m into the race I look back over my shoulder, and there is a piece of rink equipment blocking my view, I know I am at least 20 meters ahead, but I hear Jim Cornell’s friends and fans screaming encouragement to him “THIS IS YOUR RACE!” so he can’t be that far back. I hear Jeff Brand’s voice announcing, he says they are chasing hard. At 700m I try to look back again, but by this time I am suffering lactic acid poisoning, and can’t think or judge distance clearly, I see Jim and Mike chasing but I can’t tell how far back. I get the bell for the final lap, hear more screaming for Jim, and struggle to skate with any semblance of form. I glance back one final time, can’t focus my eyes on anything, and keep driving for the line, waiting to hear that dreaded sound of clap skates rushing up behind me.

It’s really ugly, but somehow I am still ahead when I cross the line, I stand up and see Mike edge out Jim at the finish 4 seconds after I cross.

Like a gummy bear melted on a summer dashboard, I am a colorful mess, my skinsuit speckled with spit. My hands too cold to work the zippers on my warm-ups. Tottering from one foot to another, I stagger off the ice with that same look I saw the juniors wearing earlier, but minus the urge to visit the Mall of America. I have that 1500m cough for hours, but thankfully no CoffeeBarf.

My time turned out to be a 2:12, ouch, 5 seconds slower than Brian’s record. But I don’t care, today, I did what I could, it happened to be that I did end up first, but even if they had roared by me in the last turn, as happens so often to me in Salt Lake city weekend time trials, I did my best.

I had a very interesting conversation with Kaari Cox after the races. She said she had a heart problem this summer, tachycardia, and really could not go hard at all. So she spent a lot of time on her inlines, simply focusing on technique & drills, skate 100m or 200m, really slow and technically correct, and then recover for a long time before her next effort.

She likes to go hard, “skating like an ox” as she described herself. She could not do that for a long time, but when heart problem finally resolved itself, she discovered she was a far better skater than she had EVER been, because of this enforced “easy” technique work.

Interesting…. Also more interesting, she said that now she is healthy, she is back to skating like an ox almost every time she skates.

I remember reading a heart rate monitor training book that cited some European studies claiming that when learning new skills & movement patterns, it is essential to do so without high lactic acid levels. These studies were done on soccer players, but I think it’s even more applicable to speedskating, and it’s an important lesson for skaters to understand, especially as we tend to be hammerheads, and sometimes equate pain with progress.

Technique training is essentially easy training, when you start up that burn, it seems your capacity to learn is the first thing to catch on fire.

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Filed under: on the road