Zen and the Art of Speedskating

This past weekend, I spend some time wandering the Utah arts festival with several other speedskaters. We are really enjoying this brief rest week before the really hard training we will be facing in the next few months. Ice cream and art, rest for the body and soul.

One of the things that really struck me during festival was Project Bandaloop, they are dancers who do their thing suspended by cables off of the side of a building, in this case, the Salt Lake City Public Library. Part rock climbing & gymnastics, it was amazing stuff. I had watched them practice from inside the building several days last week. The compression in their feet as they launched themselves off of the glass of the building, and the bending of said glass was quite visible. Each one of them was not just an artist, but an tremendous athlete, you could see in their musculature the countless hours of work they put in (they must have core strength like a neutron star). Dancers are not given the kind of credit & respect as athletes that they deserve. Do speedskaters deserve credit as artists then? I think some do, some inspire as powerfully as any artists. Some skaters are artists of perfection, some are artists of pain (any 1500m specialist qualifies), short trackers are graceful in the face of extreme danger and muliple G’s, some skaters are artists of willpower & determination over weakness and shortcomings.

There are several different kinds of respect in this world:

1. The kind where you have done the activity, and have a taste for how amazingly hard it is to perform something. This is how I usually feel when I see gold medal winner Casey Fitzrandolph zip by me on the ice, giving the impression of puma-smooth grace, when I have a pretty good idea how much pressure is on his body through those turns.
2. The kind of respect where you are just slack jawed in awe, thinking “wow, I could never even contemplate doing that!”

Project Bandaloop made me feel respect flavor #2

A friend had emailed this supposed Hawaiian magic chant last week, and I was thinking of it in relation to training, preparing to race, and Project Bandaloop.

The world is what you think it is.
There are no limits.
Energy Flows where attention goes.
Now is the moment of power.
To love is to be happy with.
All power comes from within.
Effectiveness is the measure of truth.

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