Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Check out this photo and see how my blade is gliding above my shadow. I love this, it makes me smile every time I see it. At an indoor oval like Salt lake or Calgary, when the summertime sun slants in through the windows, and the ice is perfectly clear at the beginning of the season, you get this weird effect as you glide through the beams of light, like you are totally free of your shadow.

Of course, my mind immediately starts playing around with the metaphorical implications of leaving one’s own shadow, of skating somehow disconnecting oneself from that distorted dark twin always gnawing at your feet as you walk. What brief moments of flight we have, on that 1mm of bi-metal, moments that change everything.

Despite this happy metaphor I arrived at the rink in a bad mood, just grinding my teeth at my own insufficiencies and wanting to go fast. Wanting that physical purification of punishment & pain (I should have been a monk in some masochistic order, wait! I am! just I wear Lycra instead of rope & burlap). I get out of my car in the parking lot and am greeted by a grinning Chad Hedrick (world allround champ on ice 2 seasons ago, 40-time world inline champion). We chat briefly, Chad is happy to be back in Utah, having just returned from racing inlines in the rain in Europe. I don’t think Chad knows my name, but he certainly recognizes me from nationals last year. I never thought I would finish near him in any race, but I did one notch better than that last year in a 500m. I respect his ability & years of effort so much; it just blows me away I can race with studs like Chad.

Walking into the rink, it had transformed into elite skater central. I should have taken pictures of the plethora of athletic firepower warming up all around me, but I was focused on my own warmup. 3 or 4 Japanese corporate sponsored teams were there, including Shimizu and I think Joji Kato. The US National sprint team & many of the Allarounders & coaches were there. By my count, 6 olympic medalists were on the ice (Shimizu, Fitzrandolph, Carpenter, Cheek, Parra, Rodriguez) and 3 world Champions (J-Rod, Hedrick & Kato) plus oodles of world cup level skaters. Heady stuff.

Oh yeah, and there definitely was another team out there. The High 5 team. Although we were at the bottom branches of the evolutionary tree during this practice, it was a pretty tall tree of the best skaters in the world.

The US national team has already had several weeks on the ice, and they are already in thoroughbred form. The Japanese skaters skate quite differently than the taller American skaters but still go REALLY fast. At one point our team was doing a 250m accel, and they were doing an easy 600, we passed the Japanese paceline, Shimizu was in the lead, and I will carry this vision as long as I live of how smooth & groovy Shimizu’s hip & thigh action is when skating. Just totally inspiring! I mean, imagine the smoothest skater you ever saw, the perfect equation of motion, then multiply it by 34.32

Hmmm, other secret info just for readers of this blog! I saw Joey Cheek testing out the new Okolo clap, (available, of course, from my sponsor Dimon Sports) Casey Fitzrandolph was taking a step backward technology wise, and skated much of the practice on a pair of SSS fixed blades. His technique is still puma-perfect, no visible difference to my eyes at all from his clap technique (Patrick Kelly, I think you might be right). Tucker Fredericks is happy, feeling healthy and looking forward to the upcoming year, Kip Carpenter is going to single handedly bring the mullet back into style, he has quite a nice one going with streaks of blond mixed in.

Surrounded by all this firepower, I wanted to go fast. I finally cranked it up to about 85% effort level for 400m with Nate DiPalma in my draft. I felt the whoosh of speed! Big pressure all through the turns, cracked that whip of centrifugal force from the turn to the straightaway and glided out big strokes. I left Nate behind and was all smiles. As I returned to the group, Boris said “how did that feel” I replied “great!” he said, “I know it felt good, you went right back to all your old bad technical habits, skate behind other people for the rest of the practice, and skate right!” my already dark mood darkened, Boris was right though, Nate said in a really nice way a little later, that my knees were so far apart on that rep as I accelerated, he could have skated through them underneath me.

Coaches are there to tell you the things you don’t want to hear, and get you to work on what you often don’t want to face. Technique technique technique! it does not matter one whit that I am stronger than some of these elite guys, if I can’t create pressure into the ice with my power! Boris & Rex were both really nice to me, & encouraging as they were probably a little surprised to see my moodiness come through, I usually hide it much better.

Hours later, exhausted and somewhat dispirited (after 3 hours on the ice, I lifted for an hour with Eva), crawling through the parking lot on my way home, I hear a “Hey Andrew” and turn around to find a smiling Derek Parra. We chatted a while, I met Derek at an inline race, a few lifetimes ago, long before either of us had ever set foot on a long track, he was super-nice then, and the gold medal he has now has not changed that aspect of him at all.

I was in a better mood as I left the rink, and I got a call from Jess saying mounds of Chinese food was waiting at home! Great! And I had a nice dose of perspective later, at least I did not have a really sweet dog die in my arms that day, as Jess did.

Filed under: sweat