Zen and the Art of Speedskating

When last heard from, this traveling skateblogger was updating from a gas station hallway, it was raining/slushing outside, and he was going to race shortly… the story continues…. (now I am writing from the Munich airport, killing a few hours before my flight home)

As I was doing my pre-race warmup jog, I noticed Pat Kelly intently watching a German drilling holes into the ice and setting up the electronic timing. As we peered into the very deep hole he had created, I remarked it looked more like an ice fishing hole than Long-track racing ice, Pat said, “yeah, that is some thick ice, at least 9 cm”.

Most of the time, Long track racing ice is 2- 3cm thick. Ice thickness makes a true difference to top speed & the effort needed to maintain top speed. The difference between Salt Lake ice during Olympic trials, and the ice in Inzell today is similar to the difference in feel to riding a road bike along an asphalt road or across a grassy field. There is an ice-motocross event next weekend at this oval, so they are probably trying to thicken things up. Lucky us.

And the rain/snow mix gooping from the sky, and the thick, damp air, does not help things much either. There is a headwind on the backstretch, but it’s slight.

The rain stops as the races start, and I see many masters skaters I know going half at second or more slower than Davos or Hamar. The air gets a bit colder, after a resurface, the ice even looks passable. Pat Kelly opens his 500m with an excellent 10.2 for his 500m, faster than he did at Davos, but his final time is .2 slower, a 38.2

Boris skates a great 39.5 for his 500m, and continues the North American sprinters assault on the master’s records!! Go Boris! Here he is driving for the finish.

In my previous post about racing at Davos, I talked about speedskating hip positions illustrated with a great picture of Pat Kelly and myself. I showed that pic to Boris, and since then he has drilled me over and over, both in Collabo and Inzell, on this one simple aspect to technique, to drive my left hip more deeply into the turns. It’s a simple, difficult, maddening thing.

By this time in the season, I am on technical auto-pilot for most of what I do, and can focus on fine tuning. When it was my turn for the 500, I had not paid any attention to the other skaters in my age group at all, so I felt pressure on myself to go fast, but was relaxed, because after all, there won’t be fast times skated today.

Bang, I am off the line like a shot! Down the first 100m in 10.35 I hit the first turn really well & feel the new hip angle giving my left leg more power into the ice. I slam out of the turn and fight extra low and hard through the wind on the backstretch.

Boris is standing right at the entrance to the final outer corner, screaming something. I am too focused to hear it, but the image of him, and his body language urging me on, I will remember till my dying day. As I whip by and set the corner, I glimpse him break into a full running sprint so he can see the whole corner.

I set the turn well, sink into it & focus on that low-hip feeling. I build that turn like I have never built a final outer turn in my whole life. Feeling the extra power, I get greedy, and try to throw in more crossover steps in than there is space. I miss the pads with my right foot by a whisker, and as my left foot is crossing over, I skate on the edge crust of the track for a split second.

Now riding a slight tailwind, I drive that last 100m with everything I have left, You can see the amazing Italian men urging me onward. Fortza! Fortza! Die Die Die! Andrea! rings in my ears! Like many truly fast races, this looked a bit wild & out of control at moments, but it was VERY effective.

I cross the line, 37.47!!!!! A crazy time for these conditions outdoors, and another lowering of my 500m record! I am stunned! Ecstatic! How do I deserve this amazing life! As I coast by the stands, the crowd is applauding, The skaters on the warm-up track are a barrage of high-fives & smiles. I see Boris jumping around with a huge grin on his face. I point at him, begin my own applause and start saying, “it’s all his fault!”

I am the Canary that ate the Cat! Who knows how fast this effort would have been in Salt Lake, but it would have been roughly in the middle of the group racing in the first day of the men’s 500 world cup in Inzell last month (and they had to be skating in better conditions than there were today!!!).

But maybe that is not a fair comparison to make, because it’s impossible to compare conditions day to day on outdoor tracks, and before I get too full of myself, I must say that later that day in the Planet-Ice rinkside bar, watching the 500m races from World Speedskating Sprint Championships on live TV, a couple of Swiss Masters Skaters kidded me as to why I was skating masters races, and not skating world sprints? They pointed out I was faster than some skaters who were competing at world sprints. Just as they were saying that, Casey Fitzrandolph and Kip Carpenter appeared on the screen to skate their 500m races, I pointed to the screen and said, “That is the reason I am not skating world sprints, the US sprinters are all absolute studs, and there are a whole bunch more fellows in the US who are waay faster than me, several of whom are OLDER than I am.”

A Russian then joined in with kidding me “But you have your world record! No?” as I have said before in this space, there is no official masters world record, it does not exist, and it makes me feel odd to call it a world record. So I said “Naw, it’s a Master’s International record, a cool thing, but there is no sanctioned world records for Masters” he looked puzzled for a moment, then brightened up and said in an extremely thick Ruski accent “ok, then it is a Galactic record!” That cracked me up! Fastest 35-40 solar orbits carbon-based life-form traveling over solid h2o in this Galactic region? I will accept that! sanctioned or not!

I was lucky to have had that narrow window of halfway decent ice to race at least once on, as the fickle mountain weather closed in hard. Warming up for the 1000m, the wind came into the stadium, and swirled around, and seemed to be a headwind for most of the track. Racing became a bit more a rationing of effort. In outdoor & windy conditions, things get funky. I skated a steady 1:17.38, being conservative until the last 400m. After the results were tallied, I was solidly in the lead of the 11 men in my age group, and also on track to break the sprint samalong record as well.

After racing, Boris & our Norwegian buddy Arne jogged 20 minutes for warmdown. I could barely follow them. After only 800m, my body was crumbling like a dirt clod in a rainstorm, abs & calves cramping and crusty. I would swear at that moment that I was no athlete of any kind, just some worn-out lame-duck who needs a hundred tabs of advil, and a week in bed.

Sunday dawned with a foot of new snow on the ground, and it just poured snow all day long. Racing became as much survival oriented as speed oriented. Boris smacked a wall pretty well in his 500m, but was ok, I thought that I skated another excellent 500, but was a full second slower than on Saturday. By the time the 1000m races came around. It was snowing silly hard, skate blades were parting the snow like the wake beside the prow of a boat. I hope these two images give you a good idea. (I know Boris well enough to know he is gonna look at these two pictures here and start working on my funny arm swing, I really swing my shoulder when I am accelerating, not my elbow/arm like one is supposed to)

Gotta love racing outdoors! It certainly is character building sometimes! Boris and I certainly suffer from an excess of character! After all the races were over, and the results were tallied up, Pat Kelly and I handily won our age groups & set new sprint samalong records, Boris’s crash cost him the overall in his. But he was not upset, as our good buddy Arne stepped right in with an excellent final 1000m to take the overall.

This European racing trip has been an astonishing experience. I am glad I was able to share some of it with you here.

Ugh, its 2am here in the Munich airport. I chatted with one of the security guards who said there is an all night coffee place in the terminal somewhere. I need to post this. As I get some of the pictures I took organized, I will make up some galleries of images of Europe, but right now coffee is the mission.

Thanks for reading…

4 Comments »
Filed under: on the road, sweat

for every picture in this post, click it to see a larger version

This is the central station in Milan. I think this train looks more like a rocket than a train. I rode it for several hours from Milan to Bolzano, and although we did not leave earth’s atmosphere, it was quite comfortable and fast. The passenger car compartments seated 6 people facing each other. I felt linguistically inept for the hundredth time since I arrived, as I was with 5 other people with whom I couldn’t communicate at all.

And here is a better view of the really cool roof.

Boris on the small commuter tram in Collabo/Kobelstien, we took this to a gondola that rode down the mountainside into Bolzano. It was not really for tourists, it was for people commuting to work.

The view down the tracks in Collabo/Kobelstien, complete with a very old man in a stained work apron walking down the tracks. As he shuffled by me, I showed him the picture; he gave me a huge toothless smile from under his green felt fedora, and said something to me in German. A person is faced with choices in life, places where tracks diverge, and sometimes when you choose one track, you can’t go back.

I like the view from the track I have chosen; this is Austria, just outside of Innsbruck. Innsbruck was the site of the 1976 Olympics, and the physical outlines remind me oddly of Salt Lake; a fairly large city in a wide valley, surrounded on two sides by gargantuan mountains.

A whole bunch of VW’s & Audis blasting by waiting commuters in the Austrian Town of Rosenheim. This train was quite long, it could have stopped and picked us all up, each to our own new car.

Me on the train, hiding my “travel hair” under a baseball cap that probably identifies me as an American from 100 feet away. Gosh I have a huge chin.

4 Comments »
Filed under: on the road

I am in Northern Italy for a few days, training with a gaggle of Russians & Boris on the high altitude, very cold, fast outdoor ice in Collabo. The lesson I just learned is that you can discover a lot about yourself getting lost walking home in the dark from the rink to the hotel.

Especially if it’s brutally cold, you are extremely tired, sweaty & cranky, the streets are badly marked and twistier/odder/narrower/steeper/older & stranger than staircases at Hogwarts.

I did finally make it home, after turning a 15 minute walk into an hour long frozen shuffle through this tiny mountainside town called “Lengmoos”. You probably won’t find it on a map, but nearby Bolzano is big enough to appear. Even though I am in Italy, they speak German here, as this was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until WWI. European linguistic identity & cultural grudges run quite deep.

It’s beautiful here in the Dolomites. Cold, forbidding, stern, Tyrolian, but beautiful.

I can’t understand how I went 35 years of my life without traveling from Bolzano at sea level, through endless terraced vineyards and 20+ winding switchbacks, to these Dolomite mountain hamlets at 4,000 feet.

The only problem is, now I want to come back in the summer and ride my road bike up the steep switchbacks, when its warm, the vineyards are green, and the sun is brilliant. I want to feel that endless out of the saddle cycling strength I used to have living in Ithaca, where your lungs, heart and legs can hammer an endless, sweaty, excellent, unstoppable, altitude gobbling rhythm.

It is winter, but imagine the vineyards green on this road winding up from Bolzano. Every inch of the hillside on the right is vineyard!

I probably will never come back in the summer, but I am glad I found an excuse to visit here anyway. Why is it in life that this overwhelming urge to be “practical?” is so strong. Speedskating, or following most intense passions, is totally impractical, expensive, crazy, but seeing new places, even if it means being lost in Lengmoos on a freezing evening? Priceless!

Why do I need “excuses” to travel? I never would have come here if not for this odd sport as my excuse.

Quite a few of the Utah speedskating tribe, who were full time skaters through Olympic trials, have ended their seasons and returned to full time jobs or school. I will return to a somewhat more practical/normal life when this season ends as well. I will both welcome it and regret it.

2 Comments »
Filed under: on the road

The ice in Davos is a unique surface. It gets incredibly cold at night, so it’s really hard, yet once the mountain sun hits it in the morning, the top softens over a hard bottom layer, so combines grip and excellent glide. The air is also 5,000 feet thin… Combine this with some pretty decent ice techs, and this can be an awfully fast place to race.

During training, it felt like the top speeds were higher than Hamar, but its still outdoors, and so you don’t coast as well, and even slight winds can slow times dramatically. So I was unsure what to expect.

There were several records I had shots at during this race weekend, the two I set in Hamar last week, 37.93 in the 500m, and 1:16.11 in the 1000m. Dutch Skater Ledo Beeksma has the 1500m record at 1:58.9, and he also has the small allaround samalong record

Translation for non-speedskaters: a samalong is basically lowest elapsed time over 4 races, but it’s a weighted time score where 1 second in the 500 = 2 seconds in the 1000 = 3 seconds in the 1500 = 6 seconds in the 3,000. They never do this in the Olympics, but it’s important in many meets.

Since Hamar I have been changing some of the mechanics of my arm swing, and I am very happy with the slight timing changes I feel. You don’t skate with your arms, & you don’t need arm strength to be a good speedskater, but the path your arms travel impacts how your legs transfer power into the ice, and more importantly for me, it affects your timing of how fast you step from foot to foot.

So I go to the 500m start line happy, confident. There were a few Swiss national team skaters before me, in addition to the masters racing. One of the Swiss skates a 38.12 500m, supposedly a new Swiss national record (he was very happy), hmmm, cool. I roughly expect a 38.4 from myself, as I have never gone faster than 39.01 outdoors. Soon it’s my turn to be called to the line.

I bust off my best technical & physical start in weeks, 10.44, I have a minor slip in the first corner. I hit a very high top speed in the backstretch, you can see that I have picked up some jedi skills and briefly turned my skate blades into a light sabre! (it’s just the sun, but quite cool looking!).

Finally I skate a clean final outer turn! I focus on the new arm swing in the last 100m, and I feel excellent pressure every step of the way.

I cross the line and see 37.81 !!!!! FASTER THAN HAMAR! AND A NEW RECORD!

I do a little celebrating of my own, as I was quite surprised. I don’t hide my emotions too much when I am on the ice. Jessica gives me some good natured kidding afterwards “Too bad you are not Swiss!”. As an added bonus, my time is .2 faster than my lake placid Yoda, Pat Kelly’s time of 38 flat. Pat said he slipped awfully at the start. He still opened in 10.31 though! I wish I went that fast when I slip.

The less that is said about the 1500m I raced later that afternoon, the better. I really have not trained for that distance at all, and have not raced one this year. My plan was to start slow and work the corners after 800m. What happened was I went very fast for 700m and built up a lethal dose of lactic acid, and was utterly shattered with 500m still to go. I faded by 5 seconds in the final lap, only slightly faster than if I had simply coasted along, and finished in 2:02, well outside the record. Pat skated a great looking, controlled race to just nose under the 2 minute mark. 1:59 something, a new age group record for him.

In the overall classification for all the masters racing in Davos, Pat and I were #1 and #2 in the standings, even though we are in different age groups, as I am 35 and he is 42. So we would definitely be paired together on the next day. I must admit to being a little intimidated. After all, the 1000m tomorrow is Pat’s specialty, he finished 6th in the 1994 Olympics the year Jansen won his gold.

Tomorrow seemed like it arrived in no time (even though Jessica, Becky and I had a fantastic party with our new Italian friends, they deserve a whole blog post of their own one of these days).

Sure enough, on the start list, there are Pat and I set together for the 1000m. The ice is still good, not quite as fast as yesterday, but smoother. By the time the 1000m came along, the sun was quite hot & beginning to soften things up a bit.

Pat has his game face on, they call us to the line, Him on the inner, me on the outer. BANG! I shoot off the line very well, but part way through the first turn, Pat comes sailing by me with a world-class sub 17 start. Grrrrr! I hit the first straightaway absolutely raging, in dramatic contrast to Pat’s control & smooth tempo. He is faster than me to 200m, but I pass him before the second turn, and accelerate the turn crazy hard.

A huge thank you goes out to my italian buddy Paolo Gemme for this fantastic shot of this moment. You can see Pat’s hips really in the turn, and I am not so precise.

Coming into the backstretch, I see the perfect draft! Starting on the outer in the 1000m often sucks, except when you manage to get that perfect draft at that perfect moment, like right now.

I am able to pick up a ton of speed as I get a beautiful draft. You can see here the subtle contrast in body position between his top speed relaxed groove and the intense effort of my style. I shoot through Pat’s draft, pass him, hit the fast inner turn and can barely hold the corner I am going so fast. Even though I can toss 450lbs around on the squat rack, it’s hard to extend my legs against the intense pressures of this speed. I get the bell for the final lap 15 meters ahead, I feel good today, and hit the crucial second to last turn pretty well.

My legs begin to lock up in the backstretch in the same old spot, in the final outer turn, I slow down dramatically, exiting the turn, I can hear the clap-clap-clap of the Pat Kelly tractor beam chasing me down. I drive with everything I have over the last 50 meters, my mouth hanging open in a desperate attempt to suck oxygen to my screaming legs.

I barely beat Pat to the line by a few meters, Again I am faster than Hamar, 1:15.95!! Pat right behind at 1:16.52. Our splits were a contrast in style I skated like a 17.14, 27.0, then a 31.81! an ouchy 4.8 second fade! Gotta love racing outdoors! Pat was something like 16.97, 29.3, 30.12.! Totally different approaches to a 1000. I am always faster when I just burn everything I have in the first 600m, as much as it looks bad on paper.

Later that day, we are paired together again for the 3k. Pat is already thinking ahead to Masters world allaround champs in Finland later this year, and needs to test himself by skating a fast 3k, as that will be the make or break distance for him. I just want to survive the 7.5 laps without puking on myself!! As this is a distance I REALLY don’t train for! Distance racing is its own unique beast. I can hear allarounders & marathon skaters laughing at me for fearing a 3k, and this fast-twitch fella deserves every bit of it!

Pat takes off hard from the gun. With Jessica yelling lap times and encouragement to me, I skate my own, much slower race, and manage consistent 36.9 second laps. That was as fast as I am capable of going. I tried to build the corners hard on the last 2 laps, but the legs started locking and I slowed down to 38’s. Final time of 4:44, and I was satisfied, as that is 18 seconds faster than the last 3,000 meter I raced over 2 years ago.

Pat beat me by quite a bit in the 3k, and won the overall masters’ samalong. We are in separate age categories though, and both set new samalong records in the 500-1000-1500-3000 combinations in our age groups. Yay for us!

Ugh, its late, I need to go to sleep. Thanks for reading.

7 Comments »
Filed under: on the road, sweat

I made it to Switzerland without any trouble (the Swiss trains do run on time), and for the first time in a week, I see the sun! Yay! Lugano has a mild winter climate, and it’s as beautiful as one could imagine, hilly too. Click on the image for a larger one

After a few days recovering from travel in Lugano, my wife, Becky and I drove through the Alps to Davos, where my next race is. We got to see a good deal of the mountains and Switzerland as we drove.

My overwhelming impression of the many small mountain towns I saw was that the Swiss reputation for being tough and resourceful is well deserved, because this must have been an awfully difficult place to live in until fairly recently. This part of Switzerland is vertical in nature, and there simply is very little room for ANYTHING between the towering mountains on every side. Livestock or agriculture must have been a huge challenge, and the population that could be supported on postage stamp sized agricultural plots must have been quite small.

However, it is beautiful, and I imagine generations of invaders must have found the narrow Swiss valleys with plentiful castles & natural defenses about as much fun as swing dancing with a porcupine.

We arrived in Davos, and the next morning, after Jess and Becky left for some downhill skiing, I walked the 800 meters to the rink for a warm-up skate. A large crowd of skaters is here from all over Europe. Here is a Norwegian and a Dutch Skater chatting about equipment. For you equipment-obsessed skaters, I see the Euro-Masters skating overwhelmingly on Vikings, with a smattering of Raps. The Germans are the only ones I see using custom molded carbon fiber boots like most US skaters. Especially a brand called SEUSS. I don’t think I have seen a single skater on the maple aluminum tube blades that are so common in the USA & Canada.

If you want to see the view of Davos from the top of the mountain, click here for a pic Jess took while skiing. The rink is barely out of view under the lip of the hill.

Davos is an interesting place. I have heard elite world cup skaters talk in reverent tones about “A Davos Day”, and now I know what they mean.

The rink is a huge expanse of ice, bordered by tasteful hotels, and then surrounded by the Alps. Davos is at roughly 5,000 feet, so it has the same thin air of Salt Lake. The Swiss take good care of their ice, so when you combine thin air and good ice, this can be a very fast place to skate. Since Davos is at high altitude, the nights are very cold, so the ice is extremely hard, but once the sun rises, the mile-high radiant heat from the sun makes skating very comfortable, even if the air and ice stay cold.

Here is the view looking one direction (click on these pics for larger versions)

And here is the view looking back at the rink building itself. There is a nice restaurant with outdoor tables to the right of the deck, under the word “DAVOS”. You can drink good European beer, eat steak, and watch speedskating!

Today was a textbook Davos Day. Sunny, highs in the mid 30’s, but it felt at least 15 degrees warmer. I chatted with my Italian friends from Hamar, made some new Dutch friends (including a Dutch skater who is 84!!!) and then unexpectedly saw my Lake Placid skate Yoda, Patrick Kelly, walk in the door.

Pat is a great guy, and a technically outstanding skater. Here he is enjoying the sun during a textbook Davos day. He has some really great memories of competing here during his time on the world cup circuit. His wife was an Olympic figure skater, and as Pat and I were zipping around the track, Karen was doing jumps and spins on the inside. Skating is such an addictive sport.

It’s great to see him, and I hope they pair us together tomorrow, as Pat is a 2 time Olympian, and can really motor. I feel quite good on my skates, and technically solid in my turns.

Speedskating is a preparation sport; what I mean by that is that ice speedskaters work crushingly hard for summer and fall to create physical capacity, and now in the meat of the racing season we relax, focus on technique, and rest so that we can be physically fresh to race fast. As Boris says “sleep, race, and celebrate life”. This is the fun part, and I plan to enjoy every moment of these “Davos Days” as much as I can. Maybe I will even get some sleep tonight, as the Italians have invited Jessica, Becky and I to a party at their hotel!

Thanks to everyone who reads & comments on this strange life I am leading. This experience could be kind of lonely, especially in Norway, as I spent a lot of time by myself. But I have not felt alone for a minute, because of all of you (and that is roughly 220 of you every day!!). Thanks.

13 Comments »
Filed under: on the road