Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Wow, I am amazed! Incredible efforts by these guys!!! Chad won the 5,000m and Joey the 500m! It’s an intense thing to watch the Olympics and suddenly have a personal connection to how an athlete performs because they are also “real world” people to you.

Seeing Joey and Chad win, it’s a bolt of emotional lightning. It’s intense for me with these two guys, partially cause I work for Chad, and Sports Illustrated mentioned today how I did really good job!! (thanks to the blog reader who emailed me that) and secondly, because I can honestly call Joey Cheek a friend, not just a friendly on-ice acquaintance.

Joey has appeared on this blog several times, both in a ZEN 10 Interview, and a video blog I recorded just before Olympic trials, about nerves and racing.

Here is a goofy picture of Joey I took, he is wearing a hat with a picture of him wearing this hat in the window of the hat. He plans on repeating this process many times, so eventually it will be a endless repetition of Joey in a hat wearing a picture of Joey in a hat wearing…. Kind of like the famous infinite cat project. Yes, that is the kind of guys we are.

We frequently chat about all sorts of other things than speedskating. But there are 2 speedskating memories that I will carry in my mind of Joey, the first is him puking several times during training last year, you have to read the Zen 10 interview to read more about that one.

The second memory comes from last August or September. That is the time of year when the training volume and intensity for ice speedskaters is at its highest. I had been at the Utah Olympic Oval all day, and was stuck to the floor tired after 5 hours of skating and lifting, I was spinning on a bike to try and loosen up painful legs that were going to need a massage when I got home, (frequently, that much training makes my legs hurt so much I can’t sleep unless I work the painful knots out).

It was that time of year everyone is exhausted from the intense volume, the national team members had already dragged themselves home, and the only skaters left in the building were a short track club doing a practice on the hockey rink in the oval’s infield.

Joey could have been home, but I noticed him out there skating with the local short track club for probably his 3rd or 4th workout of the day.

I could tell by his body language, and the way he was uncomfortably shifting from foot to foot when standing around between drills, that he was exhausted too. But when it came time for the group to skate, he was exceptionally smooth, fast, and low.

I thought to myself, “Now that is what it takes to be a champion!”

Of course, I was thinking back to Joey’s 1000m bronze in the 2002 games, he was thinking forward to today!

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