Monthly Archive
Posted on 09 Oct 09:50 am

Injury & Pilates

Pictured below, the new Short Track-specific rink they put up for next week’s world cup.

The unique pad system keeps the athletes safe. It’s some extremely fast, nice ice. The best I have ever skated for short track.

I should have been skating at this moment. In fact, 20 minutes before this shot, I was having a lovely morning skate, But while crossing hard through a turn, with a lot of pressure on my left foot at the apex, something gave way in my back.

It felt like I had been shot where rotational muscles attach to the top of the left hip.

There is a big difference between “injuries” & “owies” and It’s crucial for athletes to know the difference between the two. This was obviously bad news, I left the ice immediately.

When I have been hurt before, it always happens during a rest week, & during moments when I am feeling fantastic… This injury ran true to that pattern, weird…

Getting in and out of my car was a slo-motion wobbly challenge with a red-hot iron poker stuck into my hip. Sitting in my office chair at work and rotating to my left while reaching for a coffee cup was very painful. Uh oh.

At my doctor’s office the very next morning; the verdict? Good & bad. I did not do anything cosmically bad to myself, no nerve damage or ligament tears, but a good chunk of rehab is in order for a few weeks.

I got a prescription from my extremely knowlegable doctor (who is an elite athlete himself) for painkillers, core-centric physical therapy, and a pilates class!! Whoo!

I want to be back on the ice in 2 or 3 weeks. But with Jess due any day now, a little break is not a bad thing. It’s funny how many skaters were kidding me, about how I can’t get hurt now, I need to be able to carry around a baby, and change diapers!

Gotta be at the top of my game for those upcoming challenges…

11 Comments »
Filed under: from home

Posted on 06 Oct 10:53 am

1000m analysis

For speedskating around in the sweet mud of the Grass-roots, YouTube is awesome!

I raced a 1000m this weekend, and by the time I was home, Don Nelson had emailed me a link to a youtube of my race! real time & slow-mo, whooo!

(I am still working on my own long video from the last two weekends of racing)

I like what Don calls his YouTube account, speedskatinganalyst.

This was my first 1000m of the year, & since I’ve been bike racing a ton and only skating once a week, this was a race to make mistakes in, and refine physical & psychological execution.

Here is my analysis of what I see, it was a typical early season messy race.

Start: good off the line, snappy for my lack of snap-work. I make a serious mistake not holding the turn on the blocks & sitting back deeper. It costs me time. There is no room to lose time in a sprint! 17.99 opening 200m. It “felt” faster than that time.

First lap: Felt fast, knees together (I skate like a bowlegged old cowboy when I don’t work on this daily), and I get a good draft from my pair, world cup skater Roger Schnieder of Switzerland. My hips are not as strong as I would like them to be in the turns. 27.35 lap, a fast lap for an 18 opener. So I developed more speed in the first 200m than my time suggested.

Last Lap: Ouch! I completely blow up, , and skate position goes to pieces in the final turn, 30.97 lap time. It’s embarrassing to slow down this much & look this bad. The last turn is painful to watch, and painful to do as well.

I have trained so many different ways, over so many years, to fix the last lap blow-up, but I am what I am, and a 3.6 second fade is average for the body I was born with. Many pure sprinters are like this.

Short track does seem to help my fade more than anything else, even more than a whole summer of marathon inline racing. Probably because it helps hip strength to hold the position in the turns.

(info for non speedskaters, anything over a 2 second lap fade in a 1000m is bad, I did load the training pretty hard this week too.)

Overall I am happy though, I skated a 38.12 in my 500m earlier in the day, and this race was a 1:16.3, and those are excellent early season times for me. Usually my first race of the season is a high 38 & a low 1:17. So this is an optimistic weekend.

Both of these races qualified me for Olympic trials in October 2009. 54 weeks from now.. Hmmmm…

I joked with my pair Roger before the race that people always skate PB’s when paired with me.

At masters worlds & US nationals last year, 75% of the races for my pair were PB’s. And sure enough, Roger skates a PB in this 1000m race! His splits were more like a true allarounder. 18.16 / 27.40 / 28.04

2 Comments »
Filed under: RACE DAY, Audio/Video

Posted on 03 Oct 03:40 pm

Goodbye Bike!

One moment– Riders being called to the start line for a race about a week ago.

I did not realize this when I shot the picture, but think the fellow on the left is longtime speedskater/bike racer Mark Chrysler, who was a regular at the summer training crits.

I mostly did local training races, and when I tallied it up, I was surprised to find I had raced 20 times this summer and consistently placed very well. I did not think I would be fast this year at all.

Also it was very satisfying to feel part of the “bike trash” racing culture again for the first time since I got serious about skating 7 seasons ago.

Cyclists are certainly a different crowd than speedskaters, but the bike season is over, ice racing is here, and now I have several painful months of converting bike muscles to “static position skate muscles” (going from skate to bike is so much easier).

Last year I PBed in every distance but the 500 & 1000, let’s see what happens this year. I think I have a shot at a 1500 PB, maybe a 3k on a fast ice day, but probably no others.

Of course, I might have other priorities overwhelm my time. 1998 US olympic trials champ, and new dad Cory Carpenter recently joked with me & said “just sell your bike, you won’t be riding much for a while”.

However if it means I will end up with a kid as cute as Cory’s, then I will let go of the bike with a resigned smile, and the skates with a few fond tears.

2 Comments »
Filed under: from the coffee shop

Posted on 02 Oct 04:52 pm

Pictures & Fallout

I’ve got mounds of images & video from the first weekend of racing at the oval, and am trying to put the first video of the year together, however before I ask a “real world” question about the current US financial crisis, here are a few images (and results from the races).

Brent Aussprung’s shadow a few moments before being called to the line. Never, ever try to get a skater’s attention during these few quiet moments. They are usually going pretty deep into an intense focus.

I have a theory about sprinting, compression=speed. There are few who can compress their stroke like 1998 gold medalist & former 500m world record holder Hiroyasu Shimizu. This static image does not communicate his amazing tempo.

Compression is not just for sprinters though, this is Pat Meek and Dutch skater Sietse Heslinga both zooming along at top speed about 400m into a 1000m. Compression=Pressure, pressure=speed. I was an english major, so I will leave it up to a true mathematical mind to explain the exact equation.

John Loquai has wrestled with many injuries over his athletic career, from multiple concussions when he was playing hockey, to surgery on his left ankle, plus back trouble last year. Now he has hurt his right knee, he tried to race on it, and truly struggled.

Here he is, with US National Team coach Bart Veldkamp.

John has such astonishing talent, and works SO hard. But this sport can just break your heart in such cruel ways. When several of his teammates came over to console him right next to where I was standing, there was so much raw emotion there, I turned off my camera.

Heal soon my friend….

(Topic change)

This is a blog about speedskating, but other things intrude, like the massive current financial crisis.

I woke up a few days ago to the news that the place I bank has just been seized by the government. How nice!

I have been looking at plane tickets to Europe in February, and compared to the first time I went there in 2004, prices have TRIPLED! Yeeeow!

I might need to replace my blades this season; prices have also gone through the roof due to the weak & flaccid US dollar. So that is not happening.

All of these things, although minor compared to what many are experiencing, are direct consequences of our current economic condition. So my question is this:

How is the current crisis affecting you? In speedskating or in “real life”?

5 Comments »
Filed under: from home

« Previous Page