hours & fire
“Victory or defeat is not determined at the moment of crisis, but rather in the long and unspectacular period of preparation”
-Anonymous“It’s not the hours you put in, it’s what you put in the hours.”
-Anonymous“Having a great game is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You have to light yourself on fire.”
-Thomas Luebbe“The harder you work…the more fun you will have.”
-Eldon Marshall
When I look back, and think about previous seasons, It feels as if I am opening up a book of hard work, fire, endless hours and a lot of fun. And also some insanity! I used to spend countless hours shoveling off this pond above (scenic, but very cold and studded with muskrat holes) to skate a 300m long track oblong (a real oval didn’t quite fit). I usually was lucky if the pond was good for a week or two a year, and it would take around 7 hours to shovel the whole thing myself. Around a week from today, I get to start skating on the fastest 400m ice in the world! In JULY! And I live here! I will finally get a whole season on a long track! 
I look out the window in the morning and can’t quite believe this is what I see through the trees beyond the house.
I find no lesson to write down, in some essential book of my own truths, but that this life is a whole giant pile of choices, some big, some small, some complex, some simple, all these choices compressed and visible on your face & body every step you take through all your days, every step you take from each starting line, hurtling through precious seconds, crossing each finishing line, and then doing it all over again.
Filed under: from the coffee shop
Hey Andrew! Great picture! I used to do that on the pond down in Cortland behind my mom’s house and skated with my hands on my back on hockey skates because I saw speed skating on Wide World of Sports on T.V. I didn’t know where else they did it so I made my own rink. The reason you are now skating on the fastest rink in the world is ( among other things ) because of all those hours you shoveled your own rink in Ithaca! By the way, you are in good company. An 80 year old lady named Orna ( I forget her last name ) told me about 5 years ago she used to train with Jack Shea early mornings on Mirror Lake itself. They shoveled snow first. Then rammed pipes down through the ice ( if needed ) inboard of the warm up lane to flood the ice. They skated their workout, went to breakfast as a bunch of skaters and then went to work! So the ladies got their demonstration sport in 1832 and Jack got his 2 gold medals. Cool, huh?