Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Back on the east coast, the ice Marathon season is in full swing with the well attended Dimon Sports Marathon in Lake Placid. You can see the full results here, and can find out more about Marathon speedskating and their points series at the tri-lingual marathonskating.org website.

There were many interesting names on the start list from both the inline and ice worlds, is that Olympic short track medal winner Cathy Turner I see in the results?

Here are some images from both Saturday & Sunday:

The start line:

Go!!!

The lead pack

My good friend Jim Cornell broke away in the final 9 laps of the 40k, and soloed in for the win. How hard do you have to work to be able to do this? Jim did an Ironman Triathlon this summer, as well as coaching and working a full time job! (he also uses Powercranks, one of my sponsors).

Here he is, leading the pack:

Pat Kelly won Saturday’s 10k, and inliner Sergio Almeralla the 25k. On the women’s side, Danielle Grey won the 10k, Sarah Kruger the 25k, and Suzanne Dionne the 40k.

-Winners are nice, and deserve applause, but if you race & finish an ice marathon in a blizzard/sleet storm/etc, you are also a winner in my eyes-

Thanks to Michigan skate tribe member Tom Cole & upstate NY-er Marty Haire for these pictures, seeing these images makes me miss racing marathons in the snow… Really, I have some fond memories of racing one on a beautifully foggy morning in Lake Placid (and having Bob Tysen rip my legs off via endless FAST laps).

Tom sent this final image to me with the caption “how do you intimidate a sprinter? Have them look at a lap card with 100 to go on it!”. As a sprinter, I can say that IS intimidating!!! To the right of that are some of the good folks who put on this race, John Dimon and Mike Miller.

Filed under: on the road