Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Tech geek that I am, I have a way for Chad Hedrick to call me, and leave mp3 files that I would later post on chadhedrick.com

Here is the first, Chad walking into the opening ceremony!! In his own words!!!

The way audioblog technology works, I actually have to post it here first before putting the code into Chad's site.

Usually I delete it after posting it… Olympic fever being what it is, and the fact that he might win the 5k today, I thought I might as well leave this.

I wonder how he feels, hopefully a lot less nervous than I was before Olympic trials!!

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Filed under: Audio/Video

I once read a nasty remark by a female track and field sprinter, she said that simply making an Olympic final in track and field sprinting is as hard as winning a gold medal in swimming. In some ultimate sense, she has a point. Track and field is a massive & truly global sport compared to swimming (what nation doesn’t run?).

But in the moral sense, her attitude demeans the blood, sweat, & tears of other athletes, and ultimately devalues her own accomplishments, since there are always nasty and small-minded scales to weigh things where even her own achievements will be lacking.

Is a women’s gold medal harder to earn than a men’s gold medal, for instance? After all, a lot more men participate in sports worldwide. Is a sprinting medal worth less than a marathon? After all, sprinters often get several shots at medals per games, a marathoner only one.

How do you weigh individual accomplishments vs team sports? Is being the MVP of the Superbowl or World Series harder than winning a gold medal in the Olympic games? How about winning the Tour de France?

This is dangerous ground to start treading upon, and ultimately leads to arguments & ruffled feathers, as the “lines in the sand” are different to different people.

What really matters is not the cheers of any crowd, it’s how that medal rests within the althlete themselves, & the sacrifices they made. I did not live the life of that track and field sprinter, or of a swimmer. I have lived and loved and tried and failed & succeeded in my own life. I did not touch a long track till I was 31, and in the bar I set for myself, this race has mattered.

Yesterday I won both the packstyle 500m and 3,000m, clinching the overall category. That lets me call myself a US Speedskating “National Champion”. This was my third trip to Masters Pack Nationals, and my third time trying to reach this goal. The 3,000 was fantastic, they combined my category with the 40-49 guys, and we had a fast, tactical, no-holds barred race. Afterwards, the head ref said to us “now that is how to race a 3k! great job guys!”

I was quite surprised how emotional I got, how deep the warmth of satisfaction when this heavy piece of metal on a red-white-and blue ribbon was hung around my neck. Tom Cole took this picture of me as I stepped off the podium, thanks Tom! It’s a cool looking medal, but to me, the smile is worth more than the medal. Of course this is not an Olympic gold medal, but it feels…. hmmmm…

Many could chuckle, national champion in a tiny sport! Go ahead! over 4 races and 6,000m of racing, I was the fastest guy between age 30-39 who showed up at our National Championships. If you are in my age group and laugh, then you should have been on the start line & tried to go faster than I did (other ages & the entire female gender can laugh freely). This hurdle is sweeter to have finally cleared because twice before I tried hard and failed. Every time I came back to this challenge stronger, more focused, and more prepared.

The whole plane flight home I dozed in and out of an exhausted, happy, incoherent, gauzy sleep. A sleep like sharing a bottle of wine with Jessica and falling asleep curled up with her on the couch. National Champion? me? an intoxicating thought….

I finally woke up as the plane began banking down across the Wasatch Mountains, and the lights of home.

Actually, Those were the lights of Ogden, just north of Salt Lake. This is Salt Lake, looking west towards the Oquirrh Mountains, as the plane was about to touch down. Home! home again! I am so happy to be back.

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Filed under: from the coffee shop

Today was a combined event, the junior US national champs, a metric all-around competition, and the age class Pack style National Champs. We are racing in Roseville, Minnesota. No matter what happens, I am prepared well, and I will try hard, and I see many of my good friends from the Milwaukee skate tribe, so no matter this weekends outcome, I am having a great time.

Minnesota! February! outdoor speedskating! oh so much fun! The locals were saying it was a really nice day to skate, about 20 degrees & with bitter, gusty winds. Upper Midwest cold is a damp cold, and pushed by that wind it just really claws through your body. Especially if you are just in a skinsuit!

A lot of the junior racers, after skating metric 3000m races in ferocious winds, had this look on their faces, a flushed cheek vacant stare. More of a happy-to-be-alive look instead of the normal post-race mellowglow. Times were really slow in the 20-30mph gusts, there was some big pain out there.

But they are still juniors. I heard a few of the younger ones planning a trip to the nearby thrill rides at the humongous Mall of America.

So when it comes time for the masters to race, we all truck out to the huge expanse of ice. Roseville has a unique set up to the rink, the center is all ice! It’s pretty cool. (check out the quicktime VR I took 2 years ago, link #7 on the left) They also have these mobile wind shelters like bus stops, they move them right up against the start line. So you can huddle out of the wind until they call you to the line.

On the menu of fun today was just one 1500m race. I have only 3 other people in the masters 30-39 category with me, 2 of them, Zen 10 interviewee Jim Cornell and Mike Anderson, are good distance skaters. Hmmmm, I want to beat the current National Masters record of 2:06.9, to do that, I can’t mess around tactically, and I don’t want anything to do with any distance skaters on the last lap! I need to just blast off the line hard, skate this like it’s metric, use my speed in the first 700, and hope these guys don’t catch me in the last 400. I went 2:02 in good conditions in Davos a few weeks ago, so it’s possible.

I am stripping out of my warm ups, putting my mind in order for a hard effort, I have the serious face going, and am only a minute or two from my start, when Kaari Cox skates into the wind shelter, after handily winning the ladies 40-49 1500m race, and says:

“Wow, I should not have had that Powerbar earlier, I almost just had a PowerBarf”

I simply lost every semblance of seriousness at that moment, and just burst out laughing. PowerBarf! What a thought! Tom Cole, upon hearing this, opined “is that something like a Cliff barf?”

Athlete humor, gotta love it, I think I have PowerBarfed once, many years ago before a bike race, although come to think of it, I think it was more the cheese sandwich than the Powerbar, but I digress…

So when it’s time to go for this packstyle 1500m, I blast off the line like a pizza man driving a porsche, fearing no CoffeeBarf fate.

Fighting my way through the wind, 300m into the race I look back over my shoulder, and there is a piece of rink equipment blocking my view, I know I am at least 20 meters ahead, but I hear Jim Cornell’s friends and fans screaming encouragement to him “THIS IS YOUR RACE!” so he can’t be that far back. I hear Jeff Brand’s voice announcing, he says they are chasing hard. At 700m I try to look back again, but by this time I am suffering lactic acid poisoning, and can’t think or judge distance clearly, I see Jim and Mike chasing but I can’t tell how far back. I get the bell for the final lap, hear more screaming for Jim, and struggle to skate with any semblance of form. I glance back one final time, can’t focus my eyes on anything, and keep driving for the line, waiting to hear that dreaded sound of clap skates rushing up behind me.

It’s really ugly, but somehow I am still ahead when I cross the line, I stand up and see Mike edge out Jim at the finish 4 seconds after I cross.

Like a gummy bear melted on a summer dashboard, I am a colorful mess, my skinsuit speckled with spit. My hands too cold to work the zippers on my warm-ups. Tottering from one foot to another, I stagger off the ice with that same look I saw the juniors wearing earlier, but minus the urge to visit the Mall of America. I have that 1500m cough for hours, but thankfully no CoffeeBarf.

My time turned out to be a 2:12, ouch, 5 seconds slower than Brian’s record. But I don’t care, today, I did what I could, it happened to be that I did end up first, but even if they had roared by me in the last turn, as happens so often to me in Salt Lake city weekend time trials, I did my best.

I had a very interesting conversation with Kaari Cox after the races. She said she had a heart problem this summer, tachycardia, and really could not go hard at all. So she spent a lot of time on her inlines, simply focusing on technique & drills, skate 100m or 200m, really slow and technically correct, and then recover for a long time before her next effort.

She likes to go hard, “skating like an ox” as she described herself. She could not do that for a long time, but when heart problem finally resolved itself, she discovered she was a far better skater than she had EVER been, because of this enforced “easy” technique work.

Interesting…. Also more interesting, she said that now she is healthy, she is back to skating like an ox almost every time she skates.

I remember reading a heart rate monitor training book that cited some European studies claiming that when learning new skills & movement patterns, it is essential to do so without high lactic acid levels. These studies were done on soccer players, but I think it’s even more applicable to speedskating, and it’s an important lesson for skaters to understand, especially as we tend to be hammerheads, and sometimes equate pain with progress.

Technique training is essentially easy training, when you start up that burn, it seems your capacity to learn is the first thing to catch on fire.

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Filed under: on the road

(I wrote this in Europe, but have not had the brain power/time to organize the pictures until now)

Italy reminded me of visiting a close relative who is worldly, educated, stylish, endearingly eccentric, disorganized, rambunctious, and who lives in a house that is exceptionally beautiful, but who ran out of money halfway through construction, so it’s wonderful in a work-in-progress kind of way.

Many of the American professional bicycle racers who base themselves in Europe choose Italy, and I can see why immediately. There is something in the Italian spirit and zest for life that appeals to Americans.

Now I need to be somewhat careful as I write this, as my wonderful father-in-law is Italian, and my wife speaks Italian fluently and has lots of family in Milan. Also, I spent the majority of my Italian time in South Tyrolia. They speak German & Italian there, and have a complicated relationship to Italy. So who knows what mismash of culture I saw through my own filter of odd Americana.

So with that disqualifier, here are some of my observations & moments from my few days in Italy.

10. Fertile ITALY
Switzerland is so magisterial, tough, and spartan in it’s rugged physical nature. Yet only one hour south of Lugano by train, suddenly a mild climate & very agriculturally rich land leaps into view. It just blew my mind to think that this is the landscape the Romans marched all over the rest of the world from, and that now I am here.

9. Italian Graffiti
I saw lots of urban graffiti in Europe, and a lot around Milan. This is the best picture I got.

8. Bicycle Commuters.
I waited for the bus one chilly evening on a hill in Bolzano. For every car that roared past, I saw at least one bicycle or scooter commuter zipping by. The cyclists were all ages, all economic classes, and actually had to work to get up this hill. They did so with speed and a pedaling suppleness that suggests they do this every single day. The cars on the road did drive aggressively and very fast, but the drivers used their considerable skill to give cyclists wide berths. It was quite cold out, everyone was still riding.

7. Walking arm & arm with mom.
I saw this many times, a man or woman about my age, out for a walk with mom. Usually with a proffered elbow gratefully accepted. It seemed both stately and intimate at the same time. It made me miss my mom, and having the excuse to go for a walk somewhere with her. But in America, how many of us are still in the same town as our folks? And how many of us are completely dependent on our cars, physically and psychologically, to do ANYTHING? When was the last time we “went for a walk” with mom for the sake of the walk?

6. Adjustable Showerheads
The same as I have seen all over, but this one in my Hotel had the hot & cold indicators installed wrong. The cold handle was hot, and the hot handle was cold. It took me a while to figure it out. Disorganization or a test of tourist intelligence? I almost failed the test.

5. Newsstands
I think it takes spending a good solid hour browsing an Italian newspaper & magazine oriented store to hold a good mirror up to your American face & take a close look at yourself. What do you find appealing? revolting? familiar? boring? kinky? exotic?

There is an amazing spectrum of stuff at the average newstand, newspapers rivaling the raunchiest british tabloids, Harley Davidson custom chopper mags, endless Cosmo & girly-girl mag rip-offs, lots of hardcore porn, computer ‘zines, yachting mags, Futbol Futbol & Futbol. All mixed together and a good mirror to look deeply into, since in every topic, the temperature & intensity seems to be several notches higher that us stuffy Americani.

4. Italian keys
From space age Swiss keys to the middle ages of the hotel I was staying at. This quite large & primitive key is connected to a huge, extremely heavy brass weight that practically pulls your pants off if you are not wearing a belt and put it in your pocket. I am not sure what the black rubber bumper around the brass weight is for. Anyone have ideas?

3. The unofficial Italian State Bird
I don’t know what the official state “bird” of Italy is. But here is my nomination, the construction crane. Most Italy seems to be under construction/reconstruction/desperately needed remodeling. Huge cranes cast their shadows EVERYWHERE. Every neighborhood seems to have one or two. There are five visible in this shot, and over one very modest town, I quickly counted 14. I asked an Italian about it, he said something about they are absolutely necessary because they must build strong homes… yeah, whatever…

I have lived in some of the fastest growing urban areas in America, towns in Colorado and Utah that are adding population at 10-14% a year, and we only use these in major urban construction for things like skyscrapers, never for one story houses. Italy is actually shrinking in population, not growing, so I simply don’t understand why these eyesores are towering over everything.

Besides, I only ever saw one of them actually moving something.

2. The McOrientale
I am mortified over what the US most visibly exports to the rest of the world; the pop music, fast food, & sitcom TV is so far from the best of what America is. However I was intrigued to try a McOrientale, but it was discontinued. I wanted to see a bun with a pictogram on the top. What does it mean? Any speakers of Chinese read this blog and know this word? (wayne in taiwan, you probably know) Or maybe that is McDonaldese, and not any real Asian language.

1. The birthplace of all Tortellini.
Forget the mythical “Fountain of Youth” I want to live next to this “Fountain of Tortellini!” hidden in a snowy nook of the Dolomites. I like the vineyards in front of this factory, as well as the creative steam rising from who knows what? Wine & tortellini? Sounds good!

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Filed under: on the road

Pack style racing! Love it or hate it, it’s a whole different expression of the sport than metric time trials. Pack racing is intense, exciting, mano-a-mano (or womao-a-womano) and combines strategy with the unique skill to change speeds quickly, as frequently the races are quite tactical until an intense acceleration to the finish.

Times don’t really matter as much as finishing first. There are pack style records, I have a few of them, but they are VERY difficult to achieve when you have a whole bunch of people sitting in your draft just waiting to slingshot past you in sight of the finish!

Here are some pictures I took at today’s North American pack style meet. North Americans is a joint US-Canada meet, and has a lot of the top younger skaters going head to head with each other. Notice that many of the skaters look like they have yellow socks on, that actually is Kevlar or neoprene protection for their ankles/achilles in case they get kicked by someone else. If you look closely you can also see the bump from soccer shinguards under several skinsuits as well.

These are all fairly young skaters. Quite prominent in these shots is the red and blue of the Quebec speedskating association. Montreal alone has more skaters in its club system than the USA has skaters (about 2,000). Their selection races are intense, and the skaters they send to meets like this are usually terrific, in both short and long track. There are also a lot of blue and black uniforms in these pics, that’s Alberta.

For a long time, pack style speedskating was the only kind of speedskating in North America. Today for Masters skaters in the US, pack-style is the only competition we skate with our “peers”. I did outdoor inline racing for years, and I like packstyle, even though it’s hard to switch mental gears after so much metric-centric training.

If it weren’t for the fact that North American Pack Championships was in Salt Lake this weekend, I would have been couch surfing for sure, as I am emotionally blah & jet lagged after my European trip. But I would have been kicking myself if I had skipped it.

Also these races were my last chance to renew a very intense and friendly rivalry with Brian Boudreau. Brian has won US master’s 30-39 Packstyle Nationals the last 4 years in a row, (twice with me simmering in second place). We are very closely matched, with most of our races being decided by less than .2 of a second, but Brian has been consistently that .2 better at pack than I am, tactically, technically, and physically.

Today’s races were the usual Andrew & Brian deathmatch, with him crushing me in the 1500, and me barely squeaking out a 1000m win by .17. However the refs threw in a bit of speedskating politics, and disqualified Brian in the 1500m because he was wearing a US national team skinsuit in a championship race. He has never been on the national team, & the rules say you can’t wear the USA in top races unless you have earned it. I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about how different minor sports approach the thorny issues surrounding sponsorship & money.

Suffice it to say, Brian did break a rule, but it was sad that the rigid enforcing of this rule took away his excellent racing in the 1500m. This is such a small sport, why not just let us race & give Brian a warning instead of a DQ? You could not even see the USA through his racing bib number! Would a few strategically applied pieces of Duct tape be okay?

I understand the issues, and there are very complicated, emotional, & nuanced arguments for both sides. But I find it somewhat strange that US speedskating is currently threatening legal action against some top skaters who are not wearing the official US speedskating sponsors, but when an excellent skater who has poured many years of his life into this sport, and was given a suit EXACTLY like this one to wear at Olympic trials a few weeks ago, wears those logos, ooooooh! Baaaaad!

I shouldn’t even wade into this argument, as it’s an EXTREMELY emotional one right now in the upper echelons of skating, and it does not impact me at all. I think I will just leave this with the idea that most professional cycling teams are flattered when someone wears one of their jerseys.

Tomorrow will be my last chance to race Brian packstyle until the 2011 season, as he is not going to US Masters champs in Minnesota next weekend, and next season, he will be racing with the 40-49 category! Watch out guys, the Boudreau express is a hard one to follow!

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Filed under: sweat, from home