Zen and the Art of Speedskating

The Olympics had their opening ceremony yesterday! And Chris Witty was selected by all the other Olympic team captains! to carry in the flag, leading the US team!

It says something about the success of US speedskaters that she is the third speedskater in a row selected for this honor. It also says something about the kind of challenges & internal pain Chris has overcome in her life, and the respect other athletes have for her. I don’t need to go into that here; the media will do that well enough. Here is what she had to say herself when they announced her selection.

What I can say about the half-dozen conversations that I have had with Chris is this: she is very humble about her accomplishments. She realizes that she has led an unusual life as a professional athlete; she appreciates it, and has stayed a normal person even though she has a gold medal & the 1000m world record attached to her name. She talks about how she sees Eric Heiden handle his own dollop of reknown, and how she admires his approach.

She is also quite funny in a thoughtful way; here is an example; she told me about her two dogs, both are rescue dogs, both are Husky-Heeler breed mixes. She said that her dogs can’t seem to decide if they are independent and aloof huskies, or people-centric blue heelers, and they vacillate between both behaviors in a schizophrenic way.

Here is Kip Carpenter & Chris Witty in the stands during the opening ceremony. Kip is such a goofball, he actually is the person who sent me these pictures! So I suppose its ok to post it!

hmmmm…. Its strange to have watched the Olympics over and over, and now I know many of these people…. wow….

As for me, on this beautiful day in Salt Lake, as the Olympics begin, I felt a door of my life close, I missed watching the opening ceremony, since I was at a job interview.

Somehow that is mythically appropriate. The Olympics start, and the gravitational pull of the working world grounds many of us who were soaring along, defying gravity, chasing skate dreams.

It was a good interview, and I think my chances at working there are excellent. But halfway through, as I was comfortably bantering back and forth with the interviewer about web/tech stuff, I suddenly felt a door close in my life, a door signifying the transition from being someone who put my athletic dreams ahead of everything, towards another set of priorities, another arranging of rewards.

And it was emotionally jarring to feel that door slam shut, another skater told me she also felt that door close while driving to a job interview. I have another interview on Monday.

Airplane pilots talk in reverent tones about flying, motorcyclists about the wind & open road, horseback riders about the surge of a huge animal responding to your commands. I understand, I really do understand. I could no more stop skating than I could stop looking at the mountains, the sunset, from living life with every sense wide open. My skates are practically my feet. But what goals? how much sacrifice, how much financial pain? How much more can I really justify now that Olympic trials are over?

And nothing is really written in stone, I think over time, if I prove my ability, this job could offer me the flexibility I need to continue competing at a high level. I will have almost a month off at the end of the season, and then only once a day training for several months afterwards, so we shall see.

There is training, Training and TRAINING. I have been TRAINING for the last 2 years.

I am so happy for the whole US national speedskating team… I have seen every one of them suffer physically during hard on ice workouts, and then emotionally through the normal season ups & downs, and Olympic trials. These smiles you see, this is part of the reward! keep flying my friends, keep flying.

Filed under: from home