Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Hello, my name is Olaf, what are your Personal Best times?

-a greeting by one of the Norwegians, to several of the Americans, it made us laugh, actually we discovered some of the Euro’s had researched their American competitors online, and knew all of our times!!

Memories of yesterday’s amazing racing swirl through my mind’s eye like the view through a flamethrower powered kaleidoscope. Today will be no different, so let me get as much down as I can before today’s flamethrower memory machine sparks into life.

Bruce Connor came to this meet a man on a mission, and broke the 500m masters world record for the 50-55 year old age group. How good does that feel? This good!

(are these world records? fairly deep in this old post from last year, here is my take on this, all the euro’s informally call these world records).

Jim Cornell is skating in the deep and strong 32 member field of the 40-45 age group. His Parents came to Calgary to cheer him on, as they have not seen him race in 10 years. It was a good day to catch up. He was 9th in the 500 and 7th in the 3k. As I write these words, a Dutch reporter from Schaatssport is interviewing him because of his ice marathoning success (a Dutch team needs to hire him!!!)

Pat Kelly set another masters world record with a very strong 37.75 500m. He was as smooth as a greased cruise missile on a bobsled run. His face is so relaxed here, 10 meters and 420 meters into his race.

I wish I had captured on film the wonderful ovation the Europeans all gave him, and everyone who set a record. They are true fans, as well as athletes.

Dimon Sports Athlete Jeff Bakal, flying like a reddish Canadian meteor.

Ivar Njos skated several 37 second 500m races at sea level in Hamar this year, and was my odd’s on favorite to pop out a 36 second 500 here in Calgary. He opened his 500m with a very strong 10.14, but slipped on the backstretch & ended up with a 38.3.

Speedskating requires a blend of propreceptive technique and a fit body to apply it. Ivar Njos has both, and like many of the Euros, has no inhibitions about changing right in front of everyone.

It does not bug me, but I still do a repressed American double take when I see it, especially when women do it (and I did ask Ivar for permission to publish this shot).

Steve Desotell suffered possibly the worst announcer mispronunciation of a name I have ever heard, but he ignored the distraction to skate very well in both his races. Canadian Ross Hanham’s newsblog has been instrumental in developing North American Masters speedskating. Both are good men I respect tremendously, and its fun to watch friends skate hard.

On the left Greg Oly shows some awesome born in the USA sprint technique, on the right he skated a huge 3k PB, and was grinning ear to ear through the lactic haze of accomplishment.

As for how I raced, I lowered my own master’s record in the 500m from a 37.47 to a 37.40, but the race itself was an awful start (10.5) & a very fast finish, maybe the best final corner I have ever skated, but it should have been much better…. I am much happier & more proud of my 5 second PB in the 3k (a 4:24), even though it was 8th place of the 17 men in my category. Overall I am in 3rd, but will probably fall a spot or two in today’s 1500m and many, many spots in the 5,000m.

This is sooo much fun…

In an earlier post, I showed the skates of Norwegian John Arthur Olafson as he was training in Salt Lake. Here is the man, at top speed. He skated PB’s in the 500m and 3k, and is solidly in the lead of the 30 competitors in the Men’s 45-59.

Brian Boudreau had some terrible luck in the 500m, he false started twice and was DQ-ed. He has trained incredibly hard for this event, and was devastated. But he is a champion in soul, and some odd mechanism of fate paired him with the best Dutch Skater, Jan Duif, for the 3k.

What resulted was one of the most incredible races I have ever personally witnessed. Both men started suicidally fast & attacked every turn all out. The lead changed hands every lap & the lap times were crazy fast; whoever was going to win this race would be the new masters record holder.

Brian is the one who told me about the “Pain Cave”, and he was incredibly deep in it today.

At the bell for the last lap, both men cracked & it was pure guts & glory all the way to the finish, Jan just had a little more than Brian in the final turn. They both skated over 9 seconds faster than the previous 3k masters world record, and for Brian, it was huge 10 second personal best, Jan went 4:03.19 and Brian 4:05.10 (!!!!!)

Incredible!!! and two men who did not know each other before today are now friends. This is Masters racing.

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Filed under: RACE DAY, on the road

There is a certain amount of comfort when you can actually SEE your luggage going into the plane.

My trusty skate traveling toolbox is making its way up the conveyor belt in this photo.. You can see a hand reaching out from the hold & pulling the cardboard box in front of it inside. If it hadn’t, my bag would have taken a 10 foot tumble onto the pavement. Several bags suffered this fate as they piled up on the conveyor belt (to the consternation of watching passengers).

It’s great to be back in Calgary, this is my 4th time racing here, and I like the feeling of big Alberta sky.

There are roughly 300+ masters speedskaters here from all over the world… The ice was CROWDED. Skating around among Norwegians, dutch, germans, Italians, Russians, Latvians, etc, it made my whole summer of dryland training seem suddenly very worthwhile

I will try to take more pictures soon….

There are so many good folks I ran into today, Ross Hanham, Bob Lawrence, Mora D’Andrea, Pat Kelly, Bruce Connor, Rangvald Ness, Arne Stenhaug & Arne Kjell Foldvik (Arne gave me some good natured kidding about why couldn’t I have published a better foto of him on this blog, and that he does not skate that high!! that is him on the absolute lower left in the blue.. in the last laps of a 70+ 5k record)

Also here is the whole Italian Masters team, good dudes.. I’ve been working on my Italian, and am starting to understand bits of conversations.

Funny, and slightly off color story:

Several of the Norwegian master skaters are suffering from lost luggage. One of them went out and purchased a new set of top-level Van Horne Boots & maple steel blades. Just incredible equipment, very pretty in the afternoon light slanting into the Calgary Oval. I asked him how the new skates felt, he said

Well, you know how it is to be with a beautiful woman for the first time, when you both know what to do, but just aren’t used to doing it together. That is how I feel.

I just about fell over laughing, I have never heard a more eloquent connection between skates & sex.

More soon, gotta run to the rink!!

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Filed under: on the road

Tell me ‘how’ you seek and I will tell you ‘what’ you are seeking.”

-Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein

In the foreground of this picture are the skates of the very fast Norwegian Masters Athlete Jon Arthur Olafsen.

In the middleground is 2002 Olympic Gold medalist Chris Witty.

In the far background against the pads is 1976 USA 1000m Gold medalist and current Norwegian national team coach Peter Muller, with one of his athletes.

How we seek is steel sliding across the ice… But of course that is not truly “how” and is so far from “what”

A close friend of mine from high school, who is currently a professional pianist/organist in New York City, once told me that there are an infinite number of ways to touch a piano key and produce a tone, as opposed to something like a church organ, that will always create the same tone from a single keystroke. Aleeza has played Carnegie hall, so this is the opinon of a true pro who would know.

I have thought about her words for a really long time, and never felt like I really understood them….

But is it possible that there are an infinite number of ways for the soul to tell the body to skate that same 400m frozen circle? so the “how” & “what” of our seeking, changes constantly?

Is speedskating more piano? Or organ?

Hmmmmm….

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Filed under: Quotes

I read cyclingnews.com every day, keeping up on my old passion of bike racing. It’s been quite painful to be a fan of elite racing recently, but the sport itself is still wonderful.

Recently they had this article about Cyclocross, one of my favorite kinds of cycling, and the article interviewed someone I used to drive to races with, good fella extraordinaire Adam Myerson. There is much food for thought in this, if these lessons are extrapolated to speedskating.

What is cyclo-cross?

Imagine steeplechase, but on road bikes! conditions usually combine mud, sand, logs, slop, hills & barriers requiring dismounting and running with the bike on your shoulder, some mandatory fast asphalt for the start/finish, and generally appalling “more fun” muckitude.

To the right is me, at 19, happily covered in mud while racing at Wompatuck state park, just south of Boston.

Basically cyclocross is riding road bikes off-road with knobby tires. Although mountain bikes can compete, they are often at a disadvantage to a true cross bike due to the nature of the courses.

Here is an image gallery from the elite men at the recent US nationals. And here are the women, A typical slop-fest fun ‘cross race!

In Europe, road racers have been doing ‘cross since the 1950’s to keep in shape over the winter, and it is HUGELY popular due to the short spectator friendly courses & “festival mentality” surrounding Euro-racing. Lance Armstrong has even raced ‘cross, here is a photo gallery, and this particular one is priceless and channels the spirit of the sport.

Racing cyclocross helped me train the physical aspects of cycling I am awful at, and made me very confidant while riding a road bike in terrible conditions. I very rarely ever cracked the top half of the results in any cross race, but it did not matter. The mud-spattered, endorphin-addled idiot grin was why I raced.

In the early 90’s, cyclocross was a cult sport in the USA, practiced by just a tiny number of people. I was a happy part of the New England cult. Races were small, often only 50-75 total athletes in a few categories. Nationals would attract a few hundred.

I bet in 1990, nationwide, cyclocross was very similar to speedskating in total numbers of participants, maybe even smaller.

From the late 90’s through to when I did my last cyclocross race in the fall of 2001, something DEFINITELY CHANGED.

Attendance at races skyrocketed, a national series cropped up. Multiple categories became the norm. There was suddenly prize money involved, and world class road & mountain bikers started appearing. Nationals used to happen all on one day. Now it takes 3.

I found my true calling in ice speedskating in 2002, and lost touch with ‘cross, as the racing seasons both start in October. The only speedskater I know who did both was multiple-US ice marathon Champion Rob Kramer. He raced a lot of ‘cross until the ice would come in at Lake Placid, then it was all skates.

If you don’t want to read this cool article I linked above, no problem, but here are the lessons I think can be drawn from it.

1. A strong, visible national series, where the top people all gather, is essential.
2. Cyclocross was never supported by USA cycling, it really was created by race promoters & passionate folks like my buddy Adam. They saw a problem and solved it regionally, with passion & elbow grease.
3. It’s ok to have regional differences/flavor in how racing is run, as long as differences are celebrated.
4. When speedskaters whine about lack of support at the elite levels, we are riding the IOC gravy train compared to the top-crossers (or inliners, for that matter).
5. Ice Speedskaters also can train to compete at the world-class level without a mandatory move to Belgium or Switzerland!
6. Speedskating equipment is CHEAP comparatively. Most top crossers need 2-3 bikes at each race. Top bikes are many thousands of dollars each, and cyclocross destroys equipment like nothing else. The bike I am riding in the above photo, I snapped the down tube at a race my parents attended. My father never fails to give me good nature crap about how proud I was of this.
7. Cyclocross has certainly benefited from the explosion of Mountain biking, in the same way ice speedskating should joyously cross-pollinate with inline.
8. Speedskating has visible national heroes; everyone agrees there has been a massive failure to turn their celebrity into a grassroots program. Is there another model? I think cyclocross shows one.
9. What are the lessons? cyclocross grassroots promoters show them in these excellent examples, I found 20+ local series websites in one googling, none of these series existed when I did my first cross race in 1988.

   The Pacific Northwest’s cross crusade.
   The Verge New England verge series.
   Tennessee’s Mud, sweat & gears
   The Southern California cross folks.
   Seattle cyclocross
   Surf-City Cyclocross
   North Carolina Cyclocross
   Utah Cyclocross

   and the national series, the US Grand Prix of Cyclocross.

10. Imagine if the America’s cup races were organized with outside sponsors, like any one of these… Taken as a whole, these websites have something to teach speedskaters as it shows passionate individuals creating regional race circuits, attracting money & industry sponsors, creating grassroots community, etc.
11. A bit of passion, a bit of cult, is a good thing, but popularity does change the sport.
12. TV coverage is nice, but there has never been cyclocross on American national TV. Most people in the population at large know about speedskating & can name a few speedskaters. Mentioning ‘cross to a non-cyclist draws a blank stare.

Its easy to say “oh, these are such different sports for XYZ reasons”. Yes, they are, but 17 years ago, I believe there were far more similarities than differences.

Taking the long view, 17 years from now, where will speedskating be? We can thrash around in the dark of our own morbid frustrations, or we can look to other examples of “small-sport” success, and model our own efforts upon the best examples of them.

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Filed under: from home

Really, really sucks!!!!!!

I will spare you a lyric description of violent digestive purging, but the aftermath felt like I was at the losing end of drunken fistfight with a rolling ball of sledgehammers.

This past October, I was skating like never before. Since then I have been sick twice, (getting slower each time) and now this.

Our strength as thinking creatures is that we can see patterns in the world. However it’s also been scientifically proven that humans constantly imagine & create patterns where there truly are none. The gift of intelligence is also it’s Achilles heel.

Am I overtrained? Getting old? Not enough veggies in my diet? Struck down by vengeful muses who cursed the spicy bean dip Jessica made for a Superbowl party?

Who knows…

But I do know this for sure; there were quite a few moments yesterday when I was so incapacitated I did not give a damm about skating, and before my unfocusing eyes was that burning truth we so often ignore until it ferociously smashes us into blubbering bits:

Health is wealth, and should be appreciated every minute that we have it.

Korean skaters bow before stepping on the ice. I will practice my own internal, silent, westernized version of that next time I am at the rink.

I feel much better today, still sore from the sledgehammers, but I might actually be able to eat. Yay!

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Filed under: from home