Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Dawn in Salt Lake

Lunchtime in Minneapolis

Afternoon in Milwaukee, praying my skates will arrive undamaged at the baggage claim.

(they did, every time I travel with them I fear the worst)

For the 4th time, I am on my way to competing at US National Long Track Championships. I am in the best shape of my life, and have prepared to the limit of my physical and mental ability.

But really, in some odd part of my soul, all I am racing for is a T-shirt that I bought three years ago, and never have worn. Yes, that sounds strange, let me explain.

It’s been a goal of mine for the past 5 years to earn “Category I” status. This is a national team/development team designation. To earn “Cat 1” you need to do 2 things.

1. Place top 10 at US nationals, in the 500m, that’s a top 10 with your two race times combined.

2. Skate a qualifying time that varies according to the distance. In the 500m, it’s 37.75 (I’ve been regularly faster than this time for 3 years now).

When you earn category I status, US speedskating gives you a skinsuit with the USA on it, and other things, like paying for ice time & coaching.

Earning the right to wear the “USA” is an honor. Many National team guys & Olympians told me how they felt the first time someone handed them their “USA” gear.

So what does this have to do with a T-Shirt?

Before the 2004-2005 National Championships, I bought a shirt that says “USA” and told myself I would not put it on unless I earned it. I thought that was my year to crack top 10 in the US.

In 2004-05, I ended up 12th overall in the 500m.

Last year, I poured my soul into the fires, had an off day at Olympic trials, and was 11th.

The T-Shirt has hung in my closet now for 3 years, tags still on it. Never worn, as I was packing before my flight, I put it in my bag.

To me, it’s not really a simple T-Shirt anymore, it’s some strange totem symbolizing me vs myself. It’s a symbol of perseverance, persistence, execution under pressure, and illogical-insane-irrational dedication to this sport.

It’s just a T-Shirt with three letters on it, but it’s become much more.

Every single skater in the field is talented, dedicated, intense, and full time; each has their own story, desires, intensity.

It’s going to be a very interesting week, nationals always is. I have a feeling it’s my last time competing here.

17 Comments »
Filed under: on the road

I watched national team member Pat Meek go whizzing by me at top speed. That was the training job for the day, top speed, and I remember thinking; “Wow, he looks good, I wonder what that lap time will be…”

He disappeared around the corner, and my mind wandered back to whatever silly thing it was stewing over…

30 seconds of self absorbed coasting later, I turn the corner, and see Pat against the wall, curled up on the ice, surrounded by frantic coaches calling for immediate medical attention…

When an NFL player is injured during a game, and it looks truly bad, both teams will often come together in the middle of the field, kneeling & holding hands, praying together that the injured athlete will be ok.

We don’t have any kind of tradition like that in speedskating, but we should.

The wheelchair came out, and slowly, carefully, they picked Pat up. His shoulders & legs had melted a shape into the ice, like a crime scene, Surrounded by swirling marks from dull coach skates.

It’s hard to tell when someone is bleeding badly when they wear a bright red skinsuit, even though the impact had torn his suit up pretty well.

As they were wheeling him away, He looked pale & shaken, but coherent. Scott Koons told me it looked like Pat cut himself pretty badly on his own blade as he mashed into the wall, might need a frankenstien of stitches, but should be ok.

As I write this, I really don’t know how badly he is hurt. Will he be able to skate US Nationals that start 5 days from today? Is it a flesh wound or a really nasty injury? I don’t know. It was a scary moment, and all of us on the ice were quite upset, to see a friend being carted away in a wheelchair.

Speedskating is a sport with some risk involved, but many of the wonderful things life has to offer contain risk. Living inside a concrete bunker wearing a suit of armor & never going outside might be safe, but it’s not a LIFE.

Here is Pat, truly living life/racing a 10k just a few weeks ago:

Heal well Pat.

5 Comments »
Filed under: from home

Ohnozone.net and Peter’s inline racing webpage are both producing FANTASTIC coverage of the recent short track world cups in Canada. I love how both of these sites give the overwhelming impression that athletes are PEOPLE, who try incredibly hard, but who are human and crash, get DQ-ed, etc. Sometimes losing, failure, and challenges make success all the sweeter (even simple success vs yourself, the measure that matters the most when you look in the mirror).

Check out this video by Jordan Malone, that he made & posted on Youtube, and look at it with the fact in mind that he just won his first world cup individual medal this weekend!

I have met Jordan once, during North American short track champs in march of 2006. He came across as a humble and hardworking guy, and his video (and what happened to him one month before Olympic trials & how he has persevered) has moved me.

Reading Ohnozone, it makes me wonder if this website could be a true news website? There is a need for it on the long track-side of the sport. However, I am still actively competing & training, and that sucks most of the energy out of me.

So I think the best I can do, for now, is to continue being a storyteller who relates snippets of skate culture & training info when I see it.

Like this particular example of training super-hard and then resting to achieve a top performance vs yourself:

One of my training buddies, Clay Cholewinski, has worked really hard all year. Recently he developed an evil blister on his ankle, missed a week of ice time as it healed, then over thanksgiving he missed some more time.

He came back to the ice really rested; & after a week of dialing his technique back in, he has been ABSOLUTELY FLYING & skating PB after PB. On the first day of the America’s cup, he beat me by .01 in the 500m (and by multiple seconds in the 1000). On day 2, we were paired together for the 500, and had one of the most fun races I have done in a long time. I was quicker for the first 75 meters, and from then on I could hear his clap blades steadily getting closer & closer as we roared around the track.

Here are the two of us in the final corner.

I like the reflection of him in the ice, and how level his shoulders and hips are compared to my tipped ones. Another thing you can see is how close I am to the blocks, my shadow literally hanging over them. That’s tricky to do at top speed, but it makes the distance one skates shorter, and times faster.

Thanks to Don Nelson for the photos (& my new blog masthead is a selection from this excellent image he took of me crawling through the final corner of a 1000m, ouch!)

The reason I bring up rest is that US national championships are now 2 weeks away. Through the training year, objectives change. Summer is often 5+ hours a day. Now the goal is to do very little, on and off the ice in under an hour.

Rest is sometimes the hardest lesson for motivated athletes to learn, and structured rest is often the biggest change made when people go from self-trained to professionally coached. Maybe I should look into developing a week long debilitating blister! Just kidding… Clay peaked early because of his, and it will be interesting to see how long he can hold his peak.

It’s somehow karmically odd that sprinters need more rest than endurance athletes. 3-5 weeks is the usual for sprinters to peak, vs 2-ish for most folks like triathletes or allaround speedskaters.

7 Comments »
Filed under: from the coffee shop

Deseret News reporter Heidi Bruce came out to the oval to watch the World University Games qualifer races this past weekend, and she did a nice story on them that quoted me a bit (if this link “rots” over time, here is a .pdf I saved of the article).

It’s very difficult to step into an intense subculture of any kind, and do it justice in a newspaper report, but I think she accurately captured what I call “the skate tribe” in its usual fine form. She saw the intensity, focus, & “mask” required for racing, and then the camaraderie off the ice.

She did miss the factual item that James Clay Warren finished second to me in the 500m, not Matt Plummer. But that’s ok, being a reporter is really hard. If you asked me to cover a basketball game, I would fail miserably at describing the subtleties & subculture of that sport, and probably miss statistics too.

The photographer at the event grabbed a FANTASTIC photo of Michael Stein-Stewart, that goes along with the article. Mike has level shoulders, hip to the inside of the push, good blade direction, and the NIKE logo is even visible to make sponsors happy. I follow him during training every time I can. If I could figure out how to build corner pressure through a turn the way he does, I’d be skating some scary fast times.

I won’t republish the shot of Mike here out of deep respect for digital copyright. But again here is the link to the article.

Hedi also wrote about Saturday’s races as well (here is the .pdf)

Thanks Heidi!

Speedskating has won more Olympic medals for the USA than all the other sports combined. We skate tribe members know that it’s a beautiful, inspiring, fascinating sport full of unique stories. It’s nice when the media shows up and agrees outside of the Olympi-gasm.

Here is my visual evidence of what I am talking about, April Medley has been really sick recently, however she desperately wanted to qualify for World University Games & her performances this weekend were not up to her usual standard. In her final chance, she threw down a technically excellent 5k, even though she was obviously tired & not her normal self.

There was a whole row of people screaming, hamming the pads, clapping, and yelling encouragement as she suffered through her last 50m. It was LOUD, and some of the loudest were other skaters who had beaten her earlier in the weekend.

April made it!!! And will be on the plane to Torino for the World University Games in late january.

You can see how happy she is, here with fellow qualifiers, from L to R, Tani Mintz, Ashlee Barnett, and April. For all 3 of these athletes, this will be their first time competing overseas. Good luck!!

6 Comments »
Filed under: RACE DAY, from home