Zen and the Art of Speedskating

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.

Filed under: on the road