Zen and the Art of Speedskating

There are times when I simply stop, awed with wonder, at how the stars & winds & fates seem to be lining up and all pointing my way. From my 100% supportive wife & family, to overcoming injuries (they make me thankful for my health), to getting laid off from eCornell (along with 13 other people) pointing my way to full time training last year, things have all worked out, all pointing my way onward.

Today another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Unlike friends of mine who struggle to get their hometown newspapers to notice their existence, I have been tremendously lucky in meeting with some very intelligent and thoughtful reporters from the Ithaca Journal. Lamond Pope, the sports editor, interviewed me last week, and has produced a wonderful article that came out in today’s paper.

Here is the direct link to the article (I think this will change over a few days as it goes from current to archived, I will check to make sure this link is current).

Yes, I work really hard, I was born with a high concentration of fast twitch muscle fibers (thanks mom & dad!!), and I was taught by my parents and teachers to believe in pursuing what you love to do as the path to a happy life. But wow, today I feel like the canary that ate the cat!

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Filed under: from the coffee shop

I first met Jim Cornell in Lake Placid some years ago at the Connecticut speed skating association Christmas Camp. We quickly became friends (skating in screaming blizzards can accelerate the process of getting to know someone), and he is someone whom I have come to respect deeply, as a skater, as a coach with the Rochester speedskating team, and as an allaround excellent fellow.

Jim recently was honored as US Speedskating’s Volunteer Coach of the Year, he also had an article published about him in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. I am going to be adding short and sweet interviews to this blog, I call them “Zen 10 questions” and Jim seemed an ideal choice for the first one!

Hello Jim!

It is an honor to be interviewed on the Andrew Love blog. We have had many interesting speedskating related conversations in Lake Placid.

1. What world class speed skater would you someday like to have dinner with? What kind of questions would you ask them?

Eric Heiden. How did you get started in speedskating? What motivated you to endure the rigors of high intensity training? What was it like traveling the world speedskating at such a young age?

2. Your skaters talk of “The Plan” that you have spent over 200 hours developing, I have seen it, in its phone-book sized binder, and it’s more complicated & detailed than some national team annual plans I have seen. Can you describe it for all those in internet-land?

“The Plan” is a year long periodization road map. It consists of a few interactive spreadsheets (described below) that can be customized on an individualized basis.

1. The yearly planner – the big picture of competitions, training sessions, workloads, year end summaries and graphs which are used to view all the periodization cycle parameters.

2. Weekly workouts - detail customizable workouts. These are sent out in monthly blocks.

3. Personal summary page – charting of personal performance, physical and emotional ratings, heart rate, body weight and body fat. This let you see overtraining and under training trends.

3. Describe some of the improvements skaters following “the Plan” have had? Are you modifying it this year?:

This year we had great success with the plan and it is the first year we used it. Here are the highlights:

1. Marty Medina national short track gold medalist masters 30-39.

2. Craig Pielechowski national short track gold medalist masters 60-69.

3. Mike Burdekin national short track gold medalist juvenile.

4. Many personal bests. Personally, I took 3 seconds off of both my 500 short track and long track times. In my 1500M long track I took 10 seconds off.

There were several changes this year:

1. I created a training diary that has emotional and physical rating scales, meal entry and workout entry. At the USS spring board meeting Jen Rodriguez saw it on a table and liked it, so I gave her a copy to use. Also, the short track team in Marquett are receiving copies.

2. More performance testing. Our cycle is 4 weeks. Week 1 is recovery (easy) Week 4 is the toughest. It is in week 4 that our workouts become tests. We do strength, speed, power, agility, vo2max, aerobic and anaerobic tests over the course of the week. The test results are recorded and tracked for each individual.

4. Do you have anything readers can download to read more about the plan?

Every year our team gets together for a presentation which covers the upcoming year of training. It covers what is periodization training, what types of training sessions we do. Everything from training, recovery to nutrition is covered. This year’s presentation can be downloaded by your readers. (the 8.5 mb powerpoint will be downloaded directly by clicking here).

5. Most coaches hung up their own blades long ago. You still compete, and compete very well! You won the Jack Shea Sprints in Lake Placid as well as taking 3rd overall in the Season ice marathon series Is it hard to skate as well as coach? Or are there benefits? (the pic is Jim leading the pack at US ice Marathon National champs, 50k is a looooong race).

It is hard to skate and coach at the same time. I am lucky that Rochester has many coaches so I do not have to do keep an eye on everyone all the time. There are benefits to coaching. The process of breaking down the speedskating technique into small parts for teaching purposes has helped me understand technique more.

6. You were named US Speedskating’s Volunteer Coach of the Year this year. Where were you when you found out? What was your immediate reaction?

I was at work when I got an email from USS congratulating me on being nominated volunteer coach of the year. They needed a picture of me ASAP. My immediate reaction was, “Is this some sort of a joke?” I did not tell anybody until it was put on the USS website. Then I knew it was for real.

7. What has been your happiest moment, as a coach? How about as a skater?

As a coach, wining the volunteer coach of the year was awesome.

As a skater, I don’t have a happiest moment, but feeling the speed coming out of a corner always makes me happy.

8. Paul Marchese once said to me “dryland is the brussel sprouts of your training diet”. Do you agree? What do you think he means?

I totally agree! I think he means that you may not like it, but it is good for you.

Another dryland quote I like is from Pat Maxwell. He said “A breakthrough season starts with a breakthrough summer.”

9. Tell us something surprising about you or your life, that those of us who might have met you through skating would never have suspected:

I received my pilots license at the age of sixteen and retired from flying at the age of 22.

10. Haiku Round Speed Questions

1. Awesome training book?

Periodization of strength by Tudor Bompa

2. Best Coach you know?

Sue Ellis

3. Ideal post-marathon meal?

Lasagna

4. What movie do you never tire of seeing?

Stripes

5. What do you skate on?

Viking for long track and SS for short

6. Really expensive habit you wish you could afford?

world traveling 10 months a year

7. Biggest influence on your life?

Speedskating and all those involved

8. 2 Internet sites you visit all the time?

rochesterspeedskating.org & CNN.com

9. Do you think America fundamentally divided between “red states” & “blue states”?

yes

10. How about a quote you find motivating?

Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.

Thanks Jim! it was great chatting and I look forward to crossing paths with you this year!

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Filed under: Zen 10 Questions:

A number of years ago, the Boy Scouts of America added a new category between cub scouts and full-on boy scouts. They called it Webelos. It just so happened that the first scout to complete the full Webelos program was an Ithaca resident with the initials of C.M. (I asked him what name he wanted me to use, he was ambivalent, so I think his initials suffice).

So anyway, the national newspapers picked up this story, of the first scout to ever complete Webelos status. C.M. received a tremendous number of letters from all over the country, including some containing money! and others telling him what an inspiration he is. This made a huge impression on the young man (and later exceptional athlete, as he rowed for crew super power Cornell University!), and I believe C.M. now holds it as a life value, that when someone does something that inspires you, you let them know, even if they are complete strangers.

C.M. also happens to own a 24 foot U-haul truck. On April 20th of last year, he read the article the Ithaca journal wrote about me, & he thought, “hey, I could help this guy move!” so he contacted me with a wonderful letter, and offered the use of his time and truck, free of charge to me, to move! Needless to say, this will save Jessica and I multiple thousands of dollars, as we would have had to rent a truck that size to move the 2,200 miles to salt lake city from ithaca. Financial worries scare me more than falling flat on my face during Olympic trials. So this is a tremendous help!

I had breakfast with this C.M. this morning, and his father, completely delightful people. We talked of many things. What I did not say to him there, and I will here, is that I have learned a very tangible lesson from C.M., as well as from the great local business like The Rink and Courtside, and my national level sponsors, Dimon Sports, Athlete Octane, and Powercranks. The message/lesson is kindness when you can help, and if you reach out, you can create a cycle of good, that will extend beyond your immediate effort, and create waves of good like the wake following a motorboat.

My years of being able to compete as an elite athlete are limited by time and my age (34) I have probably only 2 more seasons of being really able to run with the top skaters in the U.S. However, I will have decades after that, to be in a position to help others who inspire me, and to apply some of the amazing life lessons I am earning vias this path (and I will very likely coach someday). I do not know if I will ever be able to repay CM for his time, truck, and personal kindness, except for passing it onward, and maybe that is as it should be.

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Filed under: from home

I have been emailing back and forth with 2 time national ice marathon womens champ Carla Langenthal, about the coaches/silly putty idea I discussed in my previous post, Carla is coached by Olympian & overall nice guy Dave Tamburino. Here is what she emailed me (reprinted here with permission)

Carla says:

I have an image for you. Flamingos are pink because
of what they eat, right? So I am the same THING no matter what a coach tells me to do but get my “color” (performance) from the program I’m given. hahaha

(I thought of this image because): I like low walk workouts, so Dave
keeps saying things like “Carla’s eating this up” and “Carla eats this for
breakfast” and last year Mark Jeter said “you’re chewing this up and
spitting it out” so I was thinking about things that eat things and then
show some result.

And we’re supposed to have one foot on the ice at a time!

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Filed under: from home

wow, 4 comments on the last post! it must be the John Dimon Magic…. since my next post is still in mental rumination format (i.e. been thinking about it, but haven’t written it yet, it has to do with silly putty & coaches) I will reprint a John Dimon Story I wrote down a ong time ago, and that originally existed elsewhere on the web. I think many of the lifetime athlete crowd of traveling sweat-gypsies have unique & weird road trip racing stories, but I have met few who have such a plethora of stories as John Dimon, here is one of my favorites (and the weirdest):

In the late 70’s a couple of US Olympic Biathlon team hopefuls were traveling the Northeast, doing cross country ski races and generally having way too much fun. As this was cross country skiing in the 70’s, lets just say these young, spunky, extremely fit fellows were just a little on the furry side. In fact John Dimon back then sported quite the viking beard (see the picture below). He learned the hard way that when carrying a pair of skis over your shoulder, keep the klister AWAY from your full beard, it was only 3/4 of a beard after that incident.

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.

The next day at the races, the brutal XC ski race course contained a lot of switchback climbing through the woods. John and the other Americans were in such a mood after the rat incident (and maybe suffering a bit of testosterone poisoning that is so common to 20 year olds), that they were howling like wolves at various parts of the climb, to encourage each other, and to see where they were on the course in relation to each other.

That was confirmation enough to the Canadians, After this race weekend, the Quebec racers began to call John Le Loup-Garou. That is french for “The werewolf”. The name stuck.

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Filed under: from home