Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Posted on 12 Jul 03:22 pm

1 inch from shadow

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.

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Filed under: sweat

A new face

A new face showed up today at practice, and suddenly the goofyness level of the high 5 speedskating team increased dramatically. Nate DiPalma and I just fed off of each others energy, and were chattering and goofing through much of the workout today. We were serious when it was time to work, but making all sorts of noise the rest of the time. How well do I know Nate? Actually not that well, just a half dozen conversations over the last year, but sometimes you meet someone who truly marches to the beat of their own drummer, and you enjoy the music of said drummer quite a bit.

He was not tired in these pics, just goofing about after throwing down some good turncable technique. Nate has been training in Italy recently, as he has dual citizenship, and seems to have a really solid base to add skate fitness on top of. I think he is going to take a shot at Olympic trials in both countries. I look forward to chasing him this year, I need fast people to skate with, and it’s a bonus when they come with a good sense of humor attached.

I mentioned in an earlier previous post Salted out in Salt Lake that John Dimon is having knee surgery, he went under the knife today at 11am east coast time. He says he has gotten many calls from readers of this blog wishing him fast healing (thanks folks!). John joked with me over email that he was looking forward to anesthesia, because he really needs to catch up on his sleep!

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Filed under: sweat, from home

Posted on 07 Jul 09:32 am

News Flash:

This just in from the High 5 Speedskating research department:

Methodical measurements of speedskaters in attendance at a recent pylometric practice indicated that speedskaters in general are bigger asses than the rest of the population at large. Our in-team physicists, psychologists, poets & swearing scientists suggest that although abnormal gluteus maximus hypertrophy might be a result of extremely intense training from the “burning throne” of the deep knee bend skating posture: excessive butt development could hypothetically be the necessary karmic counterweight balanced against the intense attitudes, emotions and ego residing at the other end of a skater’s sport-specific physiology!

Hey, cut us some slack, it was REALLY hot outside, and after the 3-hour intense dryland workout involving charging up and down the steep grassy hill in the background of this photo, we got a little goofy. There is some Russian expression that means “ass like a tank” and it pretty much applies to all of us.

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Filed under: sweat, from home

Homes in the Heart

Could you make a game winning pool shot facing this kind of distraction?

Well, this is my ol buddy Aaron Dimmitt, and his best efforts at weirdness not withstanding, I did make the shot after a few tries. Aaron and his brothers own Allsis, they provides great hosting services (you are viewing a site hosted by them) many of my web design clients are hosted there, and I heartily recommend this exceptional bunch of fellows.

Every place in this world has something that it does uniquely well, some aspect of life that is simply outstanding in its own way. In Fort Collins, Colorado, that hometown gift can be found while playing pool with good friends, & drinking micro-brew beer late into the night at Coopersmiths (ok, after my 3 hour workout that day, I managed about 1/3 of a glass before I felt ill). This is Aaron and his exceptionally cool girlfriend Laura. We laughed and laughed till our heads hurt from it.

I wondered in a previous post “How many “homes” does a heart have room for??”. (in my heart right now, its 5 so far) It’s a good, hard question, this last weekend Jessica were in Fort Collins, Colorado. I lived there for 8 years. It was interesting to be back, to suddenly reopen a Rorschach-esque street map of a town and the associated memories.

I had some of the hardest and most challenging years of my life in Fort Collins, but they really shaped who I am in a tremendously positive way, so I would not trade those hard times for anything, but even so seeing Fort Collins itself again was a mixed bag. It was good to be there with Jessica, for whom Fort Collins is the first two years of our relationship together, and her memories are much happier than mine. We really enjoyed driving by our first house near city park, and walking through Old Town. I walked with her memories this last weekend more than I did my own.

I also got to see my dear friends Evan and Susan, and their 2 kids, Ben and Ellie. As a very wise woman I know says: “Children are true wealth” Evan and Susan are quite wealthy, I have known Evan for 16 years (!!!!!!). Once we were 2 poor bachelors/bike-trash/racers living in a microscopic apartment with 6 bicycles. Now we are happily married men with big houses and waaay more to our lives than can be packed into a hatchback with a roof rack. He is a terrific father & small business owner (of the amazing Evan’s Front Range Salsa).

We stayed really late one night comparing what life is like for each one of us now. We compared the views from the radically different mountains we are climbing. In many ways, his life has changed more than mine has, as fatherhood is a bigger jump of horizons than my shift from being bike-trash to being skate-trash. I think that it takes a radically different kind of strength & endurance to be the father of a 3.5 and a 2 year old (even a super cute 2 year old like ellie here) than it does to try and be a world class speedskater, but at the end of our days, we are both men who crawl into bed exausted.

Evan, I am so glad to have met you that rainy, slushy day 16 years ago on that mountain bike trail in Massachusetts, how far we have come, and miles still to go, miles still to go.

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Filed under: on the road

Posted on 02 Jul 08:29 am

Fires and Freezers

The Utah sun is blazing with that strange radiant heat that feels like someone is pressing a hot frying pan against your exposed skin. The mercury is in the upper 90’s, So of course, with as unnatural a sport as 400m long track speedskating is, today is the PERFECT day to have our first on ice practice!!

Out of the fires and into the freezer! It was such a pleasant moment to step from the blast furnace into the 40-degree air of the Utah Olympic oval facility. The whole speedskating team was bouncy and happy, like kids and Christmas. As skaters, we do a lot of lifting and dryland training, and most view them as necessary evils. I find Cycling fun, but I used to race bikes, many skaters are less than enthusiastic about a 3 hour ride up a mountain.

But today, we get to finally do what we truly love to do! Skate! Of course the first 20 minutes or so was pretty weird, but after that, the whole team settled down into a nice rhythm. Here Eva and Kirk are doing some endurance laps, smooth as buttah (yeah Kirk, I know you don’t FEEL like buttah, maybe more like crusty gray gravy, but the impression is definitely at least margarine).

It was a fun day, and I got to see how fundamentally Boris and Rex have changed how I skate through 4 months of intensive body crushing/muscle remolding dryland work. I was overjoyed at the differences in my straightaway stroke. In fact, I was getting so much power out of my straightaways, when I was in the correct rhythm I pretty much found it impossible to skate in the paceline (since its my first day on ice, I had very little control over “feathering” my speed), I would pull out of the flailing line and skate in the outer lanes on my own. Not chasing the velocity, but relaxing and letting it come to me. Zoooom! I think I have the best of two worlds, one coach leaning up against the pads, the other following directly behind me, step by step. Both were happy with my progress (and the progress of the group in general), both say there still is a way to go. Here are Boris and I.

It’s funny, but when I look at this picture, in the past all I would have seen is the good things going on technically (and there are some good things here), but now all I can see are flaws, there are about 2 or 3 quite fundamental ones here that are robbing me of power. But I won’t spoil this otherwise nice shot by describing them. You can see my clap blade opening quite nicely on my right foot too.

After 2 hours of icey playtime, I re-emerged from the freezer back to the fires. It’s much harder going from cold to hot. Locals are in flip-flops and stick to the shade, every car is a sealed aluminum-glass envelope & has the air conditioner running full blast.

Living in Utah will be a contrast of fire and ice, a rotating sign on a bank says 99 degrees, ugh, and I hear Utah gets MUCH hotter than it is today. I can’t wait to get back to the freezer again.

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Filed under: sweat

Bandaloop & Hawaii

This past weekend, I spend some time wandering the Utah arts festival with several other speedskaters. We are really enjoying this brief rest week before the really hard training we will be facing in the next few months. Ice cream and art, rest for the body and soul.

One of the things that really struck me during festival was Project Bandaloop, they are dancers who do their thing suspended by cables off of the side of a building, in this case, the Salt Lake City Public Library. Part rock climbing & gymnastics, it was amazing stuff. I had watched them practice from inside the building several days last week. The compression in their feet as they launched themselves off of the glass of the building, and the bending of said glass was quite visible. Each one of them was not just an artist, but an tremendous athlete, you could see in their musculature the countless hours of work they put in (they must have core strength like a neutron star). Dancers are not given the kind of credit & respect as athletes that they deserve. Do speedskaters deserve credit as artists then? I think some do, some inspire as powerfully as any artists. Some skaters are artists of perfection, some are artists of pain (any 1500m specialist qualifies), short trackers are graceful in the face of extreme danger and muliple G’s, some skaters are artists of willpower & determination over weakness and shortcomings.

There are several different kinds of respect in this world:

The kind where you have done the activity, and have a taste for how amazingly hard it is to perform something. This is how I usually feel when I see gold medal winner Casey Fitzrandolph zip by me on the ice, giving the impression of puma-smooth grace, when I have a pretty good idea how much pressure is on his body through those turns.
The kind of respect where you are just slack jawed in awe, thinking “wow, I could never even contemplate doing that!”

Project Bandaloop made me feel respect flavor #2

A friend had emailed this supposed Hawaiian magic chant last week, and I was thinking of it in relation to training, preparing to race, and Project Bandaloop.

The world is what you think it is.
There are no limits.
Energy Flows where attention goes.
Now is the moment of power.
To love is to be happy with.
All power comes from within.
Effectiveness is the measure of truth.

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Filed under: from home

Posted on 26 Jun 01:09 pm

Salted Out in Salt Lake

When you are trying to push yourself on a daily basis (and for me, that’s 3-5 hours of training most days) your limiting factors are usually NEVER what you perceive as your strong points as an athlete.

The human body is a great chain of chemical & neurological processes, co-ordination and a precise balance of water, habits & motivations. Your limiting factor is almost never something you like to think about, never something you are already good at, never the muscles that are visible upon cursory examination in the mirror.

Your limiting factor in your own astonishing chain of existence & performance is often something small and unnoticed, like weakness in part of your abs, or a hitch in your pedal stroke, a lack of strength in the small stabilizers of your legs and hips, or an imbalance in how your spine arches (this is why I have problems in the right hip-knee-ankle), or something missing in your diet that you really need. Identifying weak links is one of the things the experience of your coaches & doctors is invaluable for.

My talented slow-twitch mutant marathoner friend Carla, had most of last season completely ruined because there was not enough iron in her diet. She was quite sick before it got diagnosed, skated many PW’s (personal-worsts) and thought she was having heart trouble. That single weak link crippled everything else in her exceptional athletic chain of motion, and wiped out a season of her hard work. (note to all female athletes reading this: this is VERY common, be careful! Eat iron-rich stuff and have your ferratin levels tested occasionally)!!!

My weak link for today is that I “salted out” yesterday. When training many hours in hot weather, I sweat a LOT, I can creates puddles on the floor under a squat rack when working hard. When “salted-out” I can start to feel dizzy, weak, and suffer constant head rushes, even when relaxing around the house. For me, sometimes rest cures this, but through trial, error, & gastronomic whimsy I found it can ALWAYS be cured by a large bag of Sea Salt & Vinegar Kettle Chips.

Near the end of yesterday’s 3 hour ride (on my Powercranks, no less) I started cramping up, I was properly hydrated (2 tall bottles & a Gatorade), and as I was struggling up the final grades of the Avenues towards home, I was getting those dizzy disconnected feelings telling me its time for an infusion of salt. Gatorade has never prevented this, I can feel crummy eating potassium rich bananas by the bunch & still feel this way, I really need a bag of super salty chips.

Fixing weak links is a difficult job, but someone has to do it… hmmm, let me look at this bag of sea salt and vinegar nirvana, it has 5 servings, I am eating it all, so I am gobbling up 900 mg of sodium, and 2,455mg of potassium! Wow…

Oh, everyone send excellent surgery karma to John Dimon, frequent commenter on this blog, and friend to every skater who has ever loved this sport. He is going in for surgery on a torn meniscus in a few days. This “weak link” has bugged him for years, he is as good a soul as has ever been minted, and I wish him a speedy recovery.

Find your weak links, fix them, feel better, & always forge onward!

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Filed under: sweat, from the coffee shop

photos from hike

Most blogs are just words, but photoblogs are becoming more and more popular. I try to blend the best of both here. Some people come here for my words, some just for the pictures. Both have their place.

Its an easy week of training (a good thing, last week was pretty hard) and a good chunk of the high 5 team took a nice long hike up to the mountains. I am really not sure where we were (boris? what trail did we take) but it was gorgeous. Hiking with a bunch of high level athletes, at 10,000 feet, while not being quite used to the altitude, is sooo much fun!!! So, Lots of pictures result, as my brain was definately oxygen starved.

The view looking up

The view looking back, Salt Lake city is very faintly visible, 5,000 feet below & many miles beyond

Kim doing yoga,

Boris in a Boris moment, I think he was saying something like “lets keep going up”

I could not resist the chance to make a snow angel in late june, and no, I am not mugging for the camera, I am howling because this was a VERY COLD result to a spontaneous impulse.

but I am not as much of a sensation-seeker as Eva, she leaped into the snowpack fed lake. We could hear her voice constrict as all her muscles siezed in the ice cold water. She is quite the Kamikaze-beatnik-mosh-girrrrl, After she thawed out, we had a conversation that that she wrote about in her blog.

After the 4 hours on the trail, this was soooooo nice on my tired feet, it was so cold, I could not stand more than 20-30 seconds at a time. If you ever wonder why I have to use custom speedskating boots, you can blame my high arch, very visible in this photo.

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Filed under: from the coffee shop

Posted on 24 Jun 06:43 pm

hours & fire

“Victory or defeat is not determined at the moment of crisis, but rather in the long and unspectacular period of preparation”
-Anonymous

“It’s not the hours you put in, it’s what you put in the hours.”
-Anonymous

“Having a great game is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You have to light yourself on fire.”
-Thomas Luebbe

“The harder you work…the more fun you will have.”
-Eldon Marshall

When I look back, and think about previous seasons, It feels as if I am opening up a book of hard work, fire, endless hours and a lot of fun. And also some insanity! I used to spend countless hours shoveling off this pond above (scenic, but very cold and studded with muskrat holes) to skate a 300m long track oblong (a real oval didn’t quite fit). I usually was lucky if the pond was good for a week or two a year, and it would take around 7 hours to shovel the whole thing myself. Around a week from today, I get to start skating on the fastest 400m ice in the world! In JULY! And I live here! I will finally get a whole season on a long track!
I look out the window in the morning and can’t quite believe this is what I see through the trees beyond the house.
I find no lesson to write down, in some essential book of my own truths, but that this life is a whole giant pile of choices, some big, some small, some complex, some simple, all these choices compressed and visible on your face & body every step you take through all your days, every step you take from each starting line, hurtling through precious seconds, crossing each finishing line, and then doing it all over again.

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Filed under: from the coffee shop

Zen 10 Questions: Dave Tamburrino

Anyone who has ever skated Long Track at the Pettit center in Milwaukee recognizes 2 time Olympian Dave Tamburrino’s intense face at the end of the straightaway. He is usually so completely concentrated & involved with the 20+ skaters he currently coaches it’s hard to grab a word with him. But if you catch him off the ice, he is warm and quite funny, with an offbeat sense of things. I though these qualities made him the perfect candidate/victim for a ZEN 10 interview. I have so often been tempted to ask Dave what really goes on in that brain of his, now here is my chance!

1. I asked Casey Fitzrandolph what was the craziest thing he ever saw on skates. This is the story he told me:

“We were training in Inzell, Germany. On that track, the Zamboni’s enter in the corner. One came onto the ice just as Dave Tamburrino came around the corner at top speed doing a flying 400m. I thought Dave was going to die for sure, but he leaned completely over, put his hand on the ice, and did a perfect graceful short track pivot around the Zamboni! On his long track skates!”

Do you remember this? And do you have your own “Craziest thing on skates” memory to add?

Come to think of it, I do remember that - about 8 years ago or so. Which is surprising, because I couldn’t tell you what I wore to work on Friday. Craziest thing I’ve ever seen on skates: Johan Koss beating Frank Dittrich by over one lap during Koss’ 10,000 meter gold medal performance in 1994.

2. You went to 2 Olympic games, 1994 and 1998. What moment from the Olympics comes first into your mind when you think to your experiences there? I have heard from several Olympic skaters that your first trip to the games has a vastly different feeling than subsequent ones, was this true for you?

Hearing 75,000 fans go crazy for the USA during the 1994 Opening Ceremonies gave me goosebumps, and thinking about it today still gets me pumped. My first Olympic experience in 1994 was like going to Disney World for the first time. The second time in 1998 was like punching a time clock before starting work.

3. Do you have a couple of core principles you follow as you write the training programs for your skaters?

Each morning in Africa a lion wakes up knowing it must be faster than the slowest gazelle if it plans to survive. Each morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up knowing it must run faster than the fastest lion if it is to survive. It doesn’t matter if you are a lion or gazelle, when the sun comes up… You’d better be running.

4. What are the major mistakes athletes who train on their own, withut the benefit of a coach, make?

Don’t know. If I’m not coaching an athlete, how am I supposed to know what mistakes the athlete is making?

5. Do you miss skating full time? When you arrive at the Pettit Center for those dawn time trials, does the competitive urge flash within you? Or does coaching/your sweet job with the milwaulkee brewers fill that need?

The only thing I miss about skating is knowing that I’ll never have an opportunity to make good on the mistakes I made during my career. Racing and training I made some great decisions, and a lot of bad decisions. What I can do is take the lessons I’ve learned and the knowlege I’ve picked up along the way and use it to help future generations become their best. Today, I get more satisfaction from knowing my work could result in an Olympic medal for one of my athletes than if I were to go out and try and win one for myself. Been there, had my shot, done that.

6. Tell us something surprising about you or your life, that those of us might have met you through skating would never have suspected:

I’m ranked 23rd on the DezClan Half Life 2 server out of over 500 people. I plan on cracking the Top 10 in the next couple months.

7. What was your happiest moment as a skater? Your win at US nationals in 1988? 5th in world allarounds in 1995? Or is it in some race in a blizzard long ago that everyone else has forgotten but you?

Happiest moment as a skater: Winning my third consecutive National Short Track Championship in 1989.

8. What has been your most satisfying moment as a coach?

Tallying up all of my athletes personal bests at the end of the 2004/2005 season, and seeing tangible results on paper that everyone in the group has gotten faster.”

9. Who are some of the good folks of this sport? The smart, funny, good hearted fellas that you still really enjoy sharing dinner table conversation with?

Good folks: The underappreciated officials who make the weekend time trials at the Pettit possible. Thank you, your work is not un-noticed.

10. Speed Haiku Round
1. Best car on the road other than the mini-cooper youdrive

BMW M3 w/ Competition Package.

2. Do you think doping is a problem in speedskating today at the elite level?

Doping is an issue that needs to be addressed in all sports.

3. What coach did you have when you were competing that really influenced your own coaching style the most?

I’ve taken the best from Pat Maxwell, Diane Holum, Mike Crowe and Gerard Kemkers, and have mixed in a few of my own ideas. And, it is working.

4. Who do you think would be a better speedskating coach, archetypally speaking; Yoda or Darth Vader? and why? (I played hockey for both in my youth, and I was a better player for Vader).

Best coach: Darth Yoda.

5. What movie do you never tire of seeing?

Miracle.

6. Some theorize that our personalities are formed by our defeats & failures more than by our successes. Do you agree or disagree?

Don’t know, don’t care. Skate fast and make me proud to say that I am your coach.

7. Will Lance win another Tour De France?

Ask Lance.

8. Born in Saratoga Springs, but Wisconsite for a long time now, are you a loyal Packers fan?

Yes. I’ve been to Lambeau 3 times, and saw the Pack win each time.

9. We are close to the same age, will I ever get the memorable pleasure of going blade to blade with you in a masters race?

Nope.

10. Is there any truth to the rumor that you once lost a bet involving Gunda Neiman’s 5k time vs your own 5k time? And that there was nudity involved for loser of said bet?