Zen and the Art of Speedskating

In the center of the speedskating Galaxy, the Olympics are going on, and its tremendous gravitational pull is felt even in the outlying planets.

Even so, racing goes on all over the universe, even if all eyes are turned to Torino. This past weekend was the combined Junior National Sprint Championships/America’s cup final in Milwaukee. You can see the results here on the WASSC results pages (scroll down a bit, look for the ADT Long Track America Cup final).

I really like Milwaukee, and the good folks of the Milwaukee Skate tribe. Here are a few more faces & moments from this past weekend’s races:

This is the view down the straightaway at the Pettit, lots of people in attendance. I like the hanging snowflakes. Click on the image for a larger picture.

Here is one of the good folks of the skate tribe; Olusegun Sijuwade is possibly the physically strongest man ever to lace up skates. Really… He is a world champion powerlifter and can do things like squat 675, bench 410, and deadlift over 700+… That is scary strong. Here he is sharpening before his race.

Olu is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, and a talented musician who is often asked to play the national anthem before meets. I lived in his house for several months last winter, and now call peanut butter & jelly sandwiches “Olu Powerbars” (nutritionally, a PB & J is very close to a Powerbar, and easier to eat after a workout).

His feet are big, he does wear a size 44 skate/12 shoe, but not as big as this particular camera angle suggests.

Eleanor Poore came in from the snows of lake placid, skated huge PB’s in her first race on indoor ice. 1.5 seconds in the 500, and a whopping 5 seconds in the 1000. I have known her since she was very young, and it’s wonderful to see someone you care about develop tremendously as an athlete and a person. El, you rock!

Tiffany Wilson, a Canadian going to school in Milwaukee, took second overall in the Senior Women allaround. She is John Dimon’s step-daughter, was coached by Pat Kelly for several years, and somehow managed to fit her new dreadlocks under that hood. Her technique looks pretty good for being 1200m into the 1500m. You can really see that hip pushing into the turn, she is getting nice extension and has a controlled arm swing. Tiffany finished 2nd overall in the Allaround women.

Like myself, Steve Desotell is one of those masters who just races and races and races cause he simply loves this crazy sport. Here he is in the red & blue, 200m into his 1000, with Andrew Hodor of Saratoga springs. Steve was kidding several of the hotshot juniors saying “respect your elders”, since they were roughly 1/3 his age. Then he went out and matched the young guns step for step in every race! Here are the results for their category.

A junior national team skater, I am not quite sure who it is. But I like the lights & impressionistic flavor of the picture. This is an image grab from a video of a 1000m race, and he was haulin! p.s. thanks to Alice in the comments, this is Brent Aussprung.

Carla “last-lap” Langenthal driving for the finish. The finish line timing box is just coming into the picture on the right. Carla won the 3k in the All-around women by .07 seconds from Hedi Shockley. At racing speeds, how far is that? Head to head, over 3,000 meters, at their final lap velocity they would have been separated at the finish line by about 2 feet. (.72 meter, to be exact). I figured this out by tossing numbers through the So-Cal club’s “how fast can you really skate” speed calculator

Some might think I exaggerate when I talk about pain. Here I am 600 meters into the 1000, and then here is my face a few seconds after the finish as I am reaching to take my hood off. As 1000’s go, this one did not feel too bad. Here are the results from the Sprint Men.

Another inliner making the switch to ice, Hedi Shockley, waits for the 1500m start in typical inline down-start mode. She used a nice brew of power, fitness, and emotional intensity to win the overall of the women’s allaround. She actually slipped during this start, and then just flew the rest of the race.

Many thanks for these pictures goes to Marcia Focht, who took many of them, and to Alice Hagen, who loaned me the correct camera cable so I could download them to my computer!

Filed under: from the coffee shop