Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Who cares what Derek Jeter’s batting average is in spring training? Or how many passes Tom Brady completes during a preseason scrimmage? These early season endeavors are the chances to get an athlete back into the groove, before things get serious, and those numbers really matter. They matter only for analysis, & further preparation.

Yesterday was my first race of the season, the deseret classic (yes mom, thats the correct spelling of the strange mormon word deseret), and it had quite the early season atmosphere. No one was really prepared to race at 100%, in our group we have not really even skated at top speed this season, as we are still building the solid foundation and technique framing/wiring for the house of speed, but a pre-season race is a good thing.

My first 500m of the season is always a keystone cops on clap blades affair anyway, I stumble off the line, skate from my toes, rush the turns with my weight in the wrong place, and always engage in some very vulgar usage of American vernacular once I have caught my breath after a race. Better to get this out of the way early.

I raced 2 500m races, My first 500m was no exception to my usual ugly rule, I stumbled off the start, went down the opening 100m with my knees farther apart than a Paris showgirl and my upper body swiveling L to R like I had been drinking Jack Daniels instead of Gatorade, then in the first turn, my left arm, instead of nicely gluing itself to my back, hung out in a position halfway out there, not swinging, and not on my back either. Yeah, that ugly! The finish of the first turn was ok, once I sorted out my arm, the backstretch was nice, got a good draft off of my pair, tentatively took the final inner, and relaxed too much on the final 100m (and my relaxing did not lengthen my stroke! aaaagh!) and my pair, Michael Stein, caught me on the line, we both crossed with a 38.55. Once I caught my breath after the finish, I was swearing like a sailor. The overall results from this race are a .pdf downloadable file available here. Here is the webpage with all the .pdf file results from all the races available.

All digital evidence of my first race has been destroyed; it was so ugly it would have damaged my computer’s hard drive to remain there.

However I had another chance, and my second 500m of the day felt much better, and Here is a movie of it.

the previous file is a pretty small, easily digestable movie with both start and finish, but if you want it crystal clear, here are the larger, high quality, native video formats… these are both 26mb files, so don’t try this without high speed!!!
here is the start and first 100 meters
and here is the last 200m and finish.

The pictures to the right here, grabbed from the video of my 2nd 500, make me happy, this corner was very solid. But at the beginning of the video I see my left hand moves in the wrong direction when the gun goes off, & my hips are too high for the first 100m, I wanted to drop my tempo just before entering the first turn so I could set up the turn perfectly, and I dropped my tempo about 50m into the race (you can see me kick it back up just before the turn). Mistakes, mistakes, but my final outer turn felt extremely solid! One of the best I have ever skated, and in the final 100m my right leg is following my new patterns of knee and ankles passing close together, my left leg is still in the old habits.. so I am half better. Neither skate is set down pointing directly down the track, but that will come as I get more used to managing & maintaining top speed.

Its funny, but my finishing time was 38.44, only .12 faster than the race before that felt sooo ugly. If both races were raced at the same moment, that’s maybe a 1.8 meter difference at the finish, as I am moving about 15 meters a second. Speedskating is such a strange sport.

But there is an important pattern that emerges from the stumbling and swearing of a preseason race; I very predictably improve from my first race to my season personal best. Last season, 2004-2005, from my first 500m race of the year to my PB the difference was 1.6 seconds, , 1.4 seconds the year in 2003-2004, and a whisker short of 2 seconds in 2002-2003. So if my physical personal mathematics remain constant, my guess is that after skating a 38.44, my best races this year will end up in the mid-36’s. I am aspiring to bust out a 35 this year, but time will tell, I have never have had the coaching before that I do now, but also every .1 becomes harder & harder to earn as the windforce you must overcome cubes in resistance.

Every step I take that shows improvement makes me happy, the 2.5 to 3.5 seconds that I am slower than the National Sprint team studs is still a huge mountain to climb though. I have the willpower, snap, and strength for this mountain, but do I have the time to learn what I still need to know? And I don’t mean learn it intellectually, but learn it in the fibers of my body and the ingrained movement patterns within my mind?.

Filed under: sweat