Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Dear RZ,

Displaying great determination in the past 2 days, you have learned how to stand, and can now do it without support for some time. Walking is not far behind.

Maybe someday it might mean something that you started standing on your own the same week that the short trackers had their Olympic trials. This probably won’t matter to you, but I’ll always remember.

What you do really need to know is that one of your favorite things to stand up against, or on, or crawl over, is our dog Lilly. Lilly tolerates your babyness the way loyal dogs have for ages.

However, Lilly should not be here for you to lean on. She was neglected & abused before being turned into the Ithaca Humane society as a young adult, and she was one very aggressive scary mess of a barking, snarling dog when she arrived there.

She was people aggressive, dog aggressive, was an escape artist, and evidently dug her way out of a concrete & wire pen.

In most humane societies, Lilly would have gone straight into the dead dog pile. But a volunteer took her in, and worked with Lilly for months before we met her. By then she was just a semi-scary mess, but you could see the possiblity of the dog she could become.

We took a chance.

Even so, it was YEARS of training & work before we would have trusted her with a baby who pulls ears, fur, her leash, her jingly collar, etc. Now we trust her completely. Lilly would die for you, in a split second. This is what dogs are.

So know this. Life is a really long road, sometimes you walk, sometimes crawl, sometimes even run, bike & skate on the good days. And you will do most of this alone. Lilly will not always be with you. Nor will I.

But always remember that you took your first steps with a fistful of Lilly’s fur, a dog who was given every reason to hate people, but learned to trust again, love again, and made everything from her second chance.

Love,

Daddy

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Filed under: from home

I want to take a moment to recognize a few Speedskaters who have done awesome things on the bike this year. But first, here are some opinions of mine. Speedskaters tend to make fantastic cyclists– Why?

Cyclists tend not to do so well at Speedskating, Why?

1. Those little stabilizer muscles for balancing on one leg take years to develop.
2. Ice is brutally unforgiving of anything but perfection.
3. Being crazy strong on the bike still might not be crazy strong in a weight bearing sport. A bike race involves a huge number of sub-max revolutions while the bike supports your body. This is why if you are moving your house, you need Speedskaters to pick up & move the furniture.
4. Speedskaters are athletes who must have phenomenal Proprioceptive ability. Often cyclists don’t. Speedskaters won’t drop the couch when walking backwards.

Make no mistake, I love my bike(s), cycling is a phenomenally interesting sport, with the greatest “variety” of training scenery imaginable. Road, Mountain, Track, Cyclocross, it’s never “hamster wheel” stuff.

But I often feel like skating helps my cycling more than the other way around. After regular ice time, I feel like I can tear the cranks right off the bike. The reverse is not true, just riding a bike is not skating preparation.

I want to send a few shout outs to some skaters I know, who have been excelling on the bike this year.

Melissa Dahlmann has been part of the skate tribe for years, here she is racing in Calgary.

and in one of those pre-race moments before stepping on the ice in Salt lake. This is the only photo in this post that is my work-

She has turned her prodigious gifts towards cycling, and has worked extremely hard. Her facebook updates are a litany of scary long rides.

Here is how her year has been, in her own words:

Speedskating this past winter was very difficult, as the times when I could get out to train were mostly late-night, below zero. Didn’t get to race the weekend time trials after GMSA said non-members couldn’t participate, and Heidi did not have the time/I did not have the money to join. But I did manage to come within a few seconds of my Utah nationals PB in the 3k, at the Pettit one weekend, so that was rather cool! I would love to race more this year. I’ll have to optimize my ice time and train hard off the ice…

Cycling was a looonnnggg season this year, I started racing in April already to try to get ready for the Nature Valley Grand Prix. I needed to upgrade from a cat 4 from last season and get to be a cat 2 if I was to be included, so I had a prolific career as a cat 3: in one race! With a lot of rallying and support from my team (Flanders/Minneapolis Bicycle Racing Club) I was able to get the upgrade approved. Whew!! This was the first time I ever belonged to a team before, so the whole summer was a great big learning experience. Really. On the track, I was more laid back this summer than last, since more of my focus was on the road. having been “Track Rider of the Year” last season at the National Sports Center Velodrome in Blaine, MN, I was more than happy to help my sister Heidi achieve that spot this year and take second, myself.

Melissa did not even mention, she had a huge triumph in winning one of the pro 1-2-3 women’s races at Superweek. I love this photo. That crazy amazing moment, of “win”!

Another Speedskater who has been rocking, is Colton Barrett, shown here on the left, racing national team Skater Paul Dyrud in Minnesota (thanks to his family for the photos).

The strength that Colton built skating in Roseville (mental and physical) came in handy at track nationals this year, as he won the junior national cycling championship in the match sprint. Go Colton!!!

This is the “glow” stage after a win-

It’s just amazing, so many cyclists out there, so few speedskaters, and we do pretty dang well!

(I’ve been looking for some of the newspaper articles I know were written about Colton, and can’t find them, anyone have a link?)

13 Comments »
Filed under: from the coffee shop

(Rz has not been sleeping well at night, so forgive the lack of posts.. I am…. tired …..a lot)

My wife and I, early in our relationship, used to joke about the “projector”. We discovered that when you really LOVE someone, it’s very hard to stop yourself from “projecting” what you want or enjoy onto them, no matter what they themselves want or need.

Part of what I needed learned between 20’s to my 30’s, was how to recognize when my “projector” was running, and to turn it off.

It’s hard to do. Still hard.

Add your own flesh & blood child into the mix, and the projector becomes so difficult to recognize. People ask me frequently if RZ will be a speedskater. Honestly, I don’t care. It’s up to her.

I do care that she has a physical life, and if she has a competitive personality like her parents, it’s great to find a focus. It’s important for competitive types to learn the lessons of losing, of failure, and occasional winning through hard work, that sports can teach.

But what sport? That is more about her than me.

What lessons? Things like what Ashley’s shirt talks about (Ashley has the best race shirts, this is from the John Rose classic in Minnesota)

Right now my inlines are just fascinating toys for RZ because they have spinny things (ice blades are off limits, for obvious reasons).

However it’s still hard for a driven person to not dream of passing on their hard earned knowledge & experience onward to their kids.

How many things do my own Mother & Father know, and deeply care about, that I have never truly asked about

However, it’s not just me, not just my projector. As my very active daughter grows, and begins to show her own physical gifts & determination (and she is VERY detail & determination oriented) the world will react to her partially because of the life her parents have lived.

I can’t tell you the number of times people have looked at her, grabbed her pudgy thighs, and said “Look! Speedskater legs!”

Even though legs of all sizes and shapes have the capacity to go scary fast, and true Tyrannosaurus Rex legs are rare, this makes me smile, and at the same time, hyper-aware of my own projector.

A tiny comment by my father one day, spiraled me off into 20 happy years of joyously painful bicycle racing. But even though he was an accomplished rider, he is not temperamentally a racer.

But he knew I was that kind of hyper-competitive person. He made the comment out of love & recognition of ME, not from his own projector.

That is why my dad rocks, and gave me the kind of thoughtful guidance and love I will try to provide for my little RZ.

6 Comments »
Filed under: from the coffee shop

The Utah oval is crawling with skaters. In addition to the US National teams & the SLC skate tribe, Short track teams from Japan and New Zealand are here, and quite a few Russians as well.

But in the first of these 5 moments, I was totally surprised when I sat down on a bench, and saw fellow master skater Canadian Darren Lind sitting next to me. I met Daren at masters worlds in Calgary in 2007, and we had one of those memorable “back & forth” 5k’s that is seared into my memory.

Daren is a good guy, and missed most of last year due to injury. There are very few men I feel “small” standing next to. Darren is one of them.

Here are his skates & very long, long blades. How narrow blades are when viewed straight on.

2nd moment, I was at my desk at work, wonder why the hell I have this impulse to write/record things. Blogging is like throwing a frisbee out into the dark. Wondering if anyone is actually out there. Then I get notes like this–

Great blog - it’s the best place on the internet for speedskating related material.

I hope you don’t mind me sending you this picture, but I think you are the kind of person that understands what I am talking about. I am a 25 year old returning-to-the-sport speed skating enthusiast Dutchman. My dad taught me the art of speed skating on the frozen canals when I was 4, and joined a club when I was 8 — I quit speedskating at age 15, and last year I realized what I was missing out on those 10 years. The lakes were frozen in Holland last winter and I had 2 weeks to come to the conclusion that I needed skating as much as I needed sunshine and breathing. ——.

This is my old speedsuit that I had when I was 15. It was starting to fall apart so I took it to the sewing shop and had them cut out the part around the hips and sew black lycra shorts in the gap. I also had them cut the foot part off because my legs have grown. I think the old suit looks so good now. A total morale booster, I can’t wait skating the first 500 and 1500m somewhere in october. Anyway, I hope this brightens your day - keep it smooth!

-Wijtze

I remember the first day I got on my suit with the USA on it, I did the same thing, and I think most skaters have. Get a new suit, stand in front of the mirror, and get totally psyched for the upcoming year. Thanks for the note Wijtze. It made my day.

3rd moment….. this is Dave Zabriskie, fresh from his strong showing in The Tour De France, wearing the colors of the USA national time trial champion starting the prolouge of the Tour of Utah. A field of cell phones & cameras waving like windblown grain above the crowd.

Why doesn’t speedskating have national champ specific skinsuits? are we that cheap a sport! (unfortunately… yes)

Maybe Dave Z has the best kind of noteriety to enjoy. He can walk down any street unnoticed, but put him in on the starting line in team kit, and people recognize & appreciate what he has worked for, suffered for, earned.

4th moment– From DZ to RZ, there is so much happening here. I think the wild part is that my daughter not only has figured out how to feed spagetti to Lilly, but also chuckes & pulls it back from the ever-patient dog.

5th moment– Travis Jayner

Although by no means a great picture. What is great here is not just that Travis is on his way to skating a huge personal best 9 lap time trial, but the angles of his body. You can see how at the split second the skate moves off the ice, how far back on the blade his pressure was, because of how it “pops” off with the toes up, and prevents the blade from digging in.

Even when Travis became tired, and started melting from the effort, both blades consistently were lifting off the ice parallel, with emphasis on heel centered pressure.

More soon about the short track Deseret Classic.

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Filed under: from home

I spent years low-walking up the mountainside, following the path grooved by thousands of speedskaters before me…. Then one day I found the Master, in a 400m oval mountaintop monastery wreathed in Inzell-worthy mist tasting faintly of sweat.

He was meditating calmly in his wool suit, battered Vikings gleaming through the fog as he skated effortless turns with eyes closed. The ice was milk-perfect & he was smooth as black cat, ageless power in every stride….

His wind-burned face turned to me, and as his eyes opened…… I gasped in shock…

They were the color of medals earned far, far above gold.

I don’t know what nationality he was- Grizzled Norwegian? Japanese? 1900’s Hudson River speed demon? a Dutch veteran of a hundred Elfstendentochts?

Time was as short as my low-walk ravaged breathing…. My sweat-soaked weight vest fell to the ground along with my pride. Dizzy & about to collapse, humble as the rawest beginner, I asked questions that have been on my mind for years:

Q: Master, how do I skate faster?

A: To know how to skate, you must first know how to skate.

Then he was gone, the rink was gone, the mountain disappeared like a hypoxic hallucination…..

I had not dropped my weight vest after all, it still burned my shoulders & quads like 1500m last lap painful ambition.

But I felt light.. it was light… Pain was clarity, and I started my 3rd set of dryland jumps, lower, and more powerful than I have ever been…

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Filed under: from the coffee shop