Zen and the Art of Speedskating

It’s 6am, and I have already been up for 4 hours. Why? Well I am trying to get myself converted early onto Norwegian time! Tomorrow I leave for 3 weeks of racing in Europe

Now that Olympic Trials are over, and my worldview is only slightly less myopic, here is my racing schedule for the rest of the season.

• January 7th-8th Hamar, Norway, Masters International Single Distance Races
• January 14th-15th Davos, Switzerland, Masters International Davos Meeting
• January 21st-22nd Inzell, Germany, Masters International Sprint Classic
• January 28th-29th Salt Lake City, North American Long Track Championships
• February 4th-5th Roseville, Minnesota, National Long Track Championships
• February 18th-19th Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ADT Long Track America’s Cup Final

• February 25th-26th Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Masters International Long Track

• March 11th-12th Salt Lake City, World Record Challenge

• March 21st-25th Calgary Olympic Oval Finale (maybe, I might be burnt out by then)

If you see a talkative redhead in ugly sunglasses at one of these races, it’s probably me, come on over and say hello!

Why am I going to Europe? Well, it’s very possible that I might never again be as fast as I am during this very narrow window of time, and there are several international/world Masters 35-40 age group records that I have a good chance of breaking, especially the 1000m. Also I have a dear friend in Switzerland, who I am so happy to go visit.

It’s worth mentioning that I could not even BEGIN to think about this much travel without the generous support of my sponsor, POWERCRANKS. Andrew Weber and Frank Day have been terrific. Powercranks are an incredible training device that I use all the time in the summer and fall. Almost ALL of the top cyclists and triathletes use these ego-crushing additions to normal bicycle. They have been my secret hamstring and hip flexor weapons for the last 2 years. Need a pair? Shoot me an email: spdsk88er (at) yahoo (dot) com, and I can get pretty good deals for speedskaters, as it’s a new market Powercranks is interested in. I know a half dozen ice skaters & coaches who use them & love them, inline superstar Kalon Dobbin also has a set. (sorry for the commercial here, but I do believe in these odd cranksets as a device to make cycling much more skate -specific training).

Ugh, The sun is not even up, and it feels like lunchtime. Several well-traveled skaters have given me recommendations on how to prepare optimally for the dramatic time change I am going to experience. So I have them to thank/blame that two hours ago, at 4am I was driving around Salt Lake looking for a good cup of coffee, it was a futile expedition.

Many people dream about winning, some have the will to try and win, but does one really have the will to prepare to win? That is the really hard part. I find it hard, yet vitally important to do the things like making every rep as technically perfect as I can, refueling my body immediately after workouts, not partying to all hours-or even at all!, working obsessively on weaknesses, and today -waking up crazy early so the euro-time change is less of a shock to my body.

Lest I sound holier-than-thou, in some aspects of willpower I utterly fail. Cruising Salt lake at 4am looking for coffee, I saw the Krispy Kreme truck restocking this shelf with new, warm, delectable Krispy Kremes. My willpower completely crumbled, and I ate one. Sigh… Maybe the victory was that I didn’t eat 12!!!

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“I really went for it in that race, and I was really deep in the pain cave.”

Brain Boudreau, talking about his 1000m on day 2

I overheard my friend Brian saying this, and it just stuck in my head. The PAIN CAVE!!

That so wonderfully describes that deep place where focus and determination meet searing agony. In most sports, especially team sports, the objective is to either dish out pain, or avoid it. In metric speedskating, often the objective is to find the deepest pain cave that you can, and enter it willingly, as the more pain you can absorb while keeping the technique together, the faster you go.

Here are some beautiful Pain Cave moments from the 1500m on day 3. This is Chris Callis & Derek Parra, two experts of pain cave spelunking, 350 meters from the finish of the 1500. Ouch. Parra, against all odds, threw down a fantastic race, passing Chris on this moment, and grabbed that last Olympic team 1500m spot. Chris poured his soul all over the ice this week, skated with class, and just missed another Olympic team.

On day 4 Chad Hedrick set a world record in the 10,000m. Skating his 25th and final lap at 28.9!! That is faster than many peoples last lap in the 1000 or 1500!! What a mutant! Here is his final step through the longest of speedskating’s pain caves.

My friend Carla Langenthal continued her excellent trials, skating a fine 8th place finish in the 5k. Here she and Heidi Miller-Shockley are being urged on by their coach on the final lap. Note the fine technique of all three of these people!

I had my own lovely moments in the Pain Cave myself. My wife, brother, mom, and many friends are all sick, and I am slowly catching it. From the exciting stuff I was hacking up from my lungs, I knew before my 1000m race that I would have to have to be really fast through 600m, because after that, it was going to to be a deep trip into the lactic underworld.

I practiced my first 300m over and over in warmup, checking every aspect of technique that could launch me into top speed. I resolved to simply make this 1000m a maximum effort from start to finish. This is often called “skate-to-die”. When it works, it can really work, but when it goes bad, rigor mortis sets in and the finish line is an eternity away.

When the race began, I scorched the first 200m in 17.19, and my first lap in 26.44, both splits were my fastest ever. For one of the first times, I could hear my coaches screaming my lap spilts at me, so I knew I was on fire before I felt the flames. It started to get truly ugly in the final backstretch, and by the middle of the final corner, where this pic is from, I had locked completely up. However the ice was so fast, and I had such velocity, I slowed down to a 29.59. A new fastest final lap too.

I risked, and it worked! a fantastic new PB, 1:13.22!!! 1.2 seconds faster than my previous 1k at trials! I let out a howl of happiness, and then just about collapsed (well, coasted around with my head between my knees). I do have an image of my face from about 30 seconds after the finish, but its so horrible looking, it doesn’t look real, and people would think I was mugging for the camera if I posted it. I kind of looked that that villian from the horror movie “scream” but with a reddish tint. It was almost 10 minutes before I could move easily again.

This has been the season of the 1000m so far, I have improved almost 4 seconds from last year’s 1000m PB of 1:17.10. And my 500m only by .35

This past August I asked Boris, in a joking fashion, “what do you think my best 1000m time for this year will be?” After a short and intense ponder, he said “Oh, probably a 17 opener, 27 first lap, 29 second lap, a 1:13 final time” I looked at him like he was nuts, but that dude has a skating magic-8 ball that speaks truth somewhere in his mind, and he has been eerily right over and over (and not just about me, he has done this accurate time prediction numerous times).

It has not really emotionally even registered at all within me that it is 2006, even with the nice party I went to this evening… Other things have been taking all my brain cells, I think I burnt them all up lighting my way through the pain cave.

Happy new year… (what year is it again?)

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Filed under: Olympic Trials

An athlete must, at times, be completely self-centered in order to maximize their performance. This is especially true in a sport like long track speed skating, that is completely individual, just you vs the clock.

At moments, over the last few days, I did remove myself from my haze of self-centered-ness, and watched some of the amazing efforts & struggles of Olympic trials. My Brother and my wife took many videos, and these pictures are from them.

You can find the results of the races here, But this blog is not a results page, this is my impressionistic take on these few days.

Here is the cool poster advertising Olympic Trials. This picture does crop out the dates to the left and the complete list of sponsors below.

Like many US speedskating advertising efforts, it’s a mix of brilliant and stupid. First of all, the graphic is stunning, but the words “Olympic Trials” were completely missing from the poster!!! (p.s. note, see steph’s comment for the possible reason why this is missing, it makes sense) Also missing were some of the “marquee names” racing in this event. Where is mention of Fitzrandolph? Parra? Witty? Rodriguez? Hedrick? This is what will draw the public to come watch the races. Why not put 1,000 people in the stands, instead of a hundred or two? Aren’t US speedskating’s sponsors paying for “media/public awareness”??

There are maybe a dozen of these hung around the oval. They appeared roughly 3 days before Olympic trials. Why weren’t these hung in every supermarket events board & sporting goods shop in town? Most local classic rock cover bands know better how to promote their shows than this!

Even so, There were actually a some people at the oval Tuesday morning for the first day of races. I could actually hear the cheering as I was racing.

Marco Bucci’s first 500m was his fastest of the season so far, here he is paired with Michael Stein about 30 meters into it. Marco has a habit, like myself and many ex-hockey players, of sometimes swinging his arms like he still is holding that hockey stick in his hands, he controls it nicely here. Good knee drive too. The second photo is marco in exactly the same spot on the track, 400 meters later.

Like in 2002, Eva Rodansky is one placing away from making the Olympic team, here she is driving to the finish of a 500m a bit ahead of multiple short track Olympian Erin Porter. This picture shows great technique from two great skaters, in very closely related moments.

KC Boutiette and Chad Hedrick have competed with & against each other for years on wheels, now they are 2 of the best ice guys in the world, and Chad could come home from Torino with several medals. Here they are in a 500m, Chad on the inner, KC on the outer. Once up to top speed on skates, you have to drive your body forward, while also pushing to the side, it’s a really hard trick to master. In this second pic angle, you clearly see two masters doing it exceptionally well.

500m Gold medalist Casey Fitzrandolph and 500m Bronze medalist Kip Carpenter. No matter if you do a traditional standing start or a down start with one hand on the ice, the goal is the same, to drive off the line powerfully, and to position the shoulders and hips in their proper position for the first 100m. Note that these two skating studs come to identical positions within the very first step

Carla Langenthal skated, in the words of Bob Fenn “the best he has seen her skate in 2 years!” I pretty much agree, Her 3k was great, and she missed a top 10 placing by a whisker. That’s her coach & Zen 10 Interview Victim Dave Tamburino standing in the background.

My brother-by-another-mother Kirk has a great pain face, here he is, in the last step of a teriffic 5000m effort, and a new personal best for him by 6 seconds. He can die a happy man now, or at least go golfing for the next decade without guilt.

Here is Chad and Derek in the 1000m, Derek losing balance in the corner a bit, yet even with this hand down moment, Derek skated a 25.87 lap, incredible. After the 1000’s were over, the margin between Chad Hedrick and 1st place finisher Nick Pearson in the was by the smallest measurable amount, .01 seconds.

Coach Boris appeared in the national media! His picture briefly was on the home page of ESPN.com, and several mentions were made in the media of his age and the other older skater in the race, 49 year old Bruce Conner. Boris was flattered, but what he REALLY cared about was that this race was an all time PB by about a half second! 38.24! An excellent time not just for an older man, but for ANY man.

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Filed under: Olympic Trials

To make a painful story short, things did not turn out the way I wanted. I had something of an off day on the day it mattered, both technically and physically. I have skated extremely well this past month, and all signs pointed in the right direction, but today was just not my day.

In the first 500m, I was going very well until a slip in the final corner. I lost a lot of speed, and ended up with 37.08 (another!) and finished 15th of 34 skaters. In the second one, again I was on pace for a sub-37 race, until the final corner, stumbled a bit, and skated 37.10, 15th of 44.

Maybe it was nerves, all my emotional sensors were certainly experiencing complete overload. The last several days have been just getting through the hours until it was time to race.

It hurts to feel like I failed at something I have thrown everything into being really good at. But this is what happens when you leap headfirst into a competitive arena, with a whole busload of extremely talented people who all want the same thing really badly. Someone wins, but most lose. What really hurts though, is not that I lost vs other people, but that I did not skate well vs myself.

However, there is so much that is still good, my friends, my family, this path I have taken has been very rewarding in many respects. The season is not over, tomorrow I skate a 1000m race, and there is still a lot left in the season after that.

Also my family was certainly the loudest, and best dressed cheering section in the stands (yes, they made t-shirts! the text on them says “love on ice is counter-clockwise”). They are all wonderful, and they matter far more than merely skating fast in a circle.

But it would be a lie to say that I am not upset. It hurts to write this. 15th of 44 in a race at Olympic trials.. hmmm, I should be happier about that than I am.

I have more to write, about Boris’s huge PB, and who made the Olympic team, but I am really tired.. more tomorrow…

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Filed under: Olympic Trials

This picture is the sunrise lighting up the sky over the Oquirrh Mountains, at about 7am Christmas Morning; the Utah Olympic oval is actually just to the left of this view from my bedroom window.

There is something special about this hour, the odd hours, those small pre-dawn moments during major holidays. So many times I have been traveling at this hour, on many occasions arriving home as dawn was breaking; having just driven the 27-hour caffeine fueled plunge straight from my former home in Colorado to my parents in New York.

This year my family came to me, to cheer me on at Olympic trials. I feel so lucky, so loved; my brother drove 1,200 miles from Texas, 980 of that in one day.

Wherever you are, dear reader, I hope your holiday was full of sweet emotion, that travel was safe for you and your loved ones, and that the mountain ranges of your life are lit with sunrise.

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