<- Left Turns Only!

No big news on the season so far.  Still in early stages of my season, pretty much hitting the ice for practice time.  First time trial of the season is a little more than two weeks away now.  I will most likely be skating a 500M / 1500M combination that day.  Although they’ve had some strange race/distance pairings at the Pettit recently (requiring you to do certain distances, as opposed to choosing the two races that you want to skate that day).  I believe it was last weekend that they only allowed people to do a 500M / 3000M combo….. I suppose I will have to see what they allow on December 6th.

Until then, it looks like I’ll probably get two more short track workouts in, as we have no short track ice time next week and go to Thursday nights only in December.  However, the long track is open, with less short track time on the schedule I’ll be able to get up there for more long track workouts.  Hoping to get up there at least 8 times in the next two weeks.  Add in a couple days at the gym, and any sprint work that I can get in, and you can see that it’s starting to ramp up… thankfully, gas costs are coming down. 

I remember once upon a time when I actually used to write stuff here… 

Summer is now gone, and the cold weather is on the horizon (high of 42 this weekend)…so it must be speed skating season.  I’ve been pretty much MIA for the last few months, from team related practice and workouts at least.  Work has pretty much sucked me into it’s death throes….and I am just now starting to get back on track.  Rather than summarize the last four months of missed workouts, I’ll give the preview of what lies ahead. 

I bought a new pair of long track blades a little over a month ago and this Saturday I’ll be getting them rocked (will explain and have pictures later).  Next week work will be sucking out one last bit of my schedule, but after that it will be back to the ice on a regular basis.  After looking at the season schedule - this is what I’m looking it between now and the end of March:

December 6th - Time Trials (Pettit National Ice Center, Milwaukee, WI)

December 13th - I-94 Sprints (Pettit National Ice Center, Milwaukee, WI)

December 14th - Holiday Classic (Pettit National Ice Center, Milwaukee, WI)

December 20th - Time Trials (Pettit National Ice Center, Milwaukee, WI)

January 10th/11th - 2nd Masters International American Sprint (Pettit National Ice Center, Milwaukee, WI)

January 24th - Time Trials (Pettit National Ice Center, Milwaukee, WI)

January 31th/February 1st - Long Track Nationals (Pettit National Ice Center, Milwaukee, WI)

February 6th-8th - North American Long Track (Calgary Olympic Oval, Calgary, Alberta, Canada)

February 14th-15th - 11th Masters International American Championships (Pettit National Ice Center, Milwaukee, WI)

February 21st-22nd - 2nd Masters Internation Canadian Open (Richmond Olympic Oval, Vancouver, BC, Canada)

February 28th - Time Trials (Pettit National Ice Center, Milwaukee, WI)

March 7th - Time Trials (Pettit National Ice Center, Milwaukee, WI)

March 14th - Time Trials (Pettit National Ice Center, Milwaukee, WI)

March 20th-22nd - American Cup IV / Champions Challenge (Utah Olympic Oval, Salt Lake City, UT)

There is the season at a glance, as planned today.  There may be a new job on the horizon which might screw up the Calgary and/or Salt Lake City trips.  More on that later…. For now, it’s just time to get my blades sharp and get my butt on the ice (oval).  For now, short track practice continues tonight….

We are back at.  The new season started on May 1st, and workouts are under way.  Thursday and Saturday we did our workouts at the Pettit Center.  This early on it’s about building our conditioning.  Then, in the weeks ahead, we work on strength, speed and technique.  For now, our the two workouts were very similar:

4 x 60 meter sprints, followed by 26 min run (the run was at a mild tempo, with 1 min faster tempo runs at the 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th and 25th minute).  We repeated that set - sprints, run - then finished with one more set of 4 x 60 sprints.

Saturday, it was the same workout, except after the sprints we added two sets of continuous broad jumps.  The first set was 30 seconds, next set was 45 seconds.  So, the workout went - sprints, jumps, run, sprints, jumps, run, sprints, jumps.

Between each set we would take time to stretch, get water and recover.

I felt alright Friday, some leg soreness and some good ab/lower back soreness Sunday from the jump routine.  Was pretty sedate during the month off.  I was trying to get as far ahead as I could at work (which doesn’t seem to happen) and set up my schedule to keep my mind on training hard this season. 

To that extent, I’ve sold almost all of my Cubs tickets for the season - should keep the distractions at a minimum… being around Wrigley during the summer turns into a giant, two-day, distraction.  The second day is usually required to recover from the game… but I’m not sure if it’s the pain of watching them lose or the beer that eases the pain that makes the recovery necessary.  Anyway, had to sell the tickets even though they might actually be good this year, but then again, they are the Cubs.  :)

Got an hour long spin in to get the blood flowing on Sunday.

  In the truly important baseball news, the Yanks have started to wakeup finally.  Although Posada and ARod are on the disable list, a three game sweep of the Mariners seems to have the offense coming to life a bit.  This series against Cleveland should be interesting.  There are some good pitching matchups in all three games.  With a record of 17-16 they are 2 1/2 games ahead of last season’s abyssmal 13-15 start.   And by the end of this month they were 22-29, so they’d have to go 5-13 to be in the same situation.  Hopefully, the warm weather brings out the bats the same way it did last year.  The pitching will be interesting all season long.  Mussina has looked good - hopefully he keeps it together.  Rasner could be a pleasant surprise.  We’ll see if they’re able to get anything out of Igawa (now that he’s been called up to replace Kennedy).  Disappointing start for Ike and Hughes, but they’ll be back… I have no doubts about that.

This winter has been full of snow storms, which is a big reason why I’ve been loving the last couple of days here in the Chicago area.  Seventy degrees and sunny, you can stay for as long as you’d like. 

I did a bit of searching around on the internet, as I was curious as to whether I was just imagining this winter really being this bad, or if there was some truth to it.  The search started after a friend forwarded this link, showing pictures of this odd Frozen Wave Phenomenon, in Michigan…. who knew?!?

Anyway, I was able to find a couple of charts that proved what I’d hoped — I’m not just imagining things, because I’m older and my apartment in Milwaukee actually requires me to help shovel the driveway, sidewalk and when my jeep gets stuck.  First up, the season-to-date snowfall in Chicago - compared to the long-term average annual snowfalls.  As you can see, this year we’ve had approximately 25 inches more than the long-term average, at the end of March.  I am pretty sure we had snow in April… but I’m not looking it up as I am trying to block it out of my head.

This second chart I stumbled across shows the Total Chicago Snowfall, by Season.  Looking back over the 10 years that I’ve been in Chicago it’s easy to see that winter really has been quite mild.  Even during the first year that I was here for winter, 1998-99, it didn’t seem that bad because 20 inches of the snowfall that year occurred on one day.  And I didn’t have to go to work that day! :)  If you look at the big picture though, the snowfall by the end of this March put us in the top 10 snowiest winters in the last 120 years.  If we had 5 inches in April (again, possible but I’m not looking) we’d crack the top 6….meaning 95% of all the winters on record were better than this one.  And here I thought I was just getting old and whining.  (No comments required from the peanut gallery)

Next post will be coming from Disney World!  Heading down to Orlando for work, but looking forward to getting some fun time in on Friday.  Oh, and in case anyone’s wondering, the forecast is calling for 85 and partly cloudy…   

Well, as many of you know there was an earthquake in the Midwest on Friday morning.  The quake was centered in West Salem, Illinois - which is a little over 250 miles south of Chicago.  News on the quake showed that people felt the tremors as far as Milwaukee, Des Moines and Atlanta (nearly 400 miles Southeast).  While I usually sleep through anything, I did wake up on Friday, with my bed shaking for about 5 seconds.  I felt a small after shock a few seconds later.

Regardless of the fact that I live on the 2nd floor of an old two-story walk-up, I pretty much rolled over and went back to sleep.  Here’s a quick pic of home sweet home, in Chicago:

 

I’ve heard of the New Madrid fault line before, and having known about it, this was actually the third time I thought we were being hit by an earthquake in the Midwest.  The first time I was a little more jumpy… got up and looked around outside to see what was happening.  By the third round (Friday) I feel like I’m living in California… didn’t phase me. 

The first two times I woke up thinking there was an earthquake, and the apartment was rocking, it turned out to be construction.  In my neighborhood they’ve been knocking down a lot of older buildings to build three story condos, or huge single family homes.   Here is a pic out the back door of my apartment.  There used to be three condos/rowhouses where they are building these two single family homes (this pic is from March of 2006, the buildings are now complete and occupied). 

 

SPEEDSKATING UPDATE - Not much to report right now.  We are still technically in the off-season, as team workouts don’t start for another 10 days.  I’ve been picking up the pace at the gym, but still nothing that would be considered strenuous - still focusing on light weights with higher reps to build a base for when we get going. 

 Yes, you read that right.  Time to turn over a new leaf.

After 16 years of school, work, and weekends - where in most cases I did not have to be out of bed before 8am… it is time for a change.  

In college I quickly learned 8:30 and 9:30am classes on M/W/F, or 8:40 on T/Th, were not something I had a great desire to attend.  I think my professors learned that too.  You could say that I sometimes spent a little too much time hanging out with friends or roommates into the wee hours of the night (or early morning hours, depending on how you see it).  For the most part, after graduation, the past ten years in Chicago have included a lot of commuting to work.  I prefer to live in the city, but as things have played out, the office has been in Schaumburg or Lake Forest.  Luckily, both jobs let me wait out traffic, and stroll… ahem, report into the office after 9am.  The current routine gets me here more like 10:30 or 11, on a good day.

I’ve been paying the price for it at the rink over the past few years.  How can I put this…. to say that I’m a regular at 7am warm-ups would mean you’d probably have to call everyone else a warm-up addict.  That is going to have to change… the clock is ticking, I’m not getting any younger (so help me if one of you smart asses comments on that) and Olympic trial qualifying times aren’t getting any slower.

The change is in progress.  Today was actually day two of the new routine.  Out of bed, into the gym and done with my workout by 9:30.  We’ll see how it goes… still in easy workout mode.  Physical therapy exercise routine, light weight lifting and a quick spin this morning.  One more week of easy stuff, then slowly start to build the intensity, without group workouts starting on May 1.

 If you haven’t been paying attention, baseball season is under way!  The Baltimore Orioles are in the lead in the AL East.  Mark it on your calendars O’s fans… it ain’t gonna last.  The vaunted Red Sox (3-4) are in the cellar, but leading the lowly Detroit Tigers (0-6) today, 5-0 in the 8th inning.  While the Yanks (4-3) are battling the - again, get out that calendar - first place Kansas City Royals.  To think that the Tigers could be 0-9 at the end of this series… that’s gotta hurt.  We’ll see how The Captain bounces back from the strained quad he suffered last night. 

Over in the NL, the Cubs have bounced back from a shaky first two games (although almost losing, while blowing a 7 run lead yesterday was less than inspiring).  We’ll see if the Cubs fans are once again saying “Next year is the year”… well, I don’t actually think they say that anymore, after 100 years of… being the Cubs.  Keep your fingers crossed, I want playoff (hysteria) tickets. 

Finally, if you’ve got five minutes more to kill… check this link out, pretty amazing.

Although our season training doesn’t officially start until May 1st, today I started my own “spring training” so to speak. Although, it’s the bare minimum… and probably barely qualifies as working out (compared to what we build up to by summer’s end).

I worked on some stretching and flexibility stuff this morning at the gym, also did the strength exercises that I was doing while I was going to physical therapy in Oct & Nov last season. I finished with a very light core and upper body routine (two areas I neglected last season while I tried to keep my knee from barking at me too much) and a slow 2 mile jog on the treadmill. Overall, enough to break a small sweat without doing much leg work.

The biggest part of my prep work for next season is going to be in the change in my eating habits - and the need to follow a more strict, healthier diet this season. I will openly admit that I neglect this aspect more than anything, because for my entire life I’ve never had an issue with food or gaining weight. I also tend to forget to hydrate and drink enough throughout the day. So I stocked the shelves in my office this afternoon, and overloaded the refrigerator in the break room with fruits and vegetables. I’ve been telling everyone in the office that I’m going on a two week “detox”… especially after I’ve eaten pretty much everything in sight while we’ve been off the last two weeks. I won’t list the details, you don’t want to know. Let’s just say there was fast food, Ben and Jerry’s, and Oreos. We’ll leave it at that… now that I’ve gotten it out of my system, it’s time for the detox and to create a better routine going forward.

We’ll see how I manage to get through the first two “tests” - Blackhawks game tomorrow night, Brewers game on Saturday.

While I take a break from speed skating for the next month, and look forward to the Yankees next championship season opening up in two weeks (that’s right, they’re bringing the title back to where it belongs), the next few days will be clouded with the likes of ”bracket busters”, “cinderellas”, “office pools” — that’s right, the NCAA Tournament is here!!!

As a Temple University graduate, I’m proud to see that my school is back in the Tourney!  After winning the Atlantic 10 Championship, the Owls enter the tourney with a seven game winning streak and they’re poised to take down Michigan State (and believe me, watching anyone beat a Big Ten school is music to my ears…)  I understand that I live in the heart of it, but one can only listen to Big Ten babble so much… 

Below are two good articles about the tournament.  Dan Wetzel is one of the better writers for Yahoo! Sports (in my opinion).  He’s rarely biased and usually gets creative with his writing.  First article, talks about ”The Boss Button” - I have to find this thing!!!  The second article hits on a topic that should be screamed out loud during every game of the tournament… college players that leave school with no education, and no hope for a job if they don’t make it in the pros.  The TV stations get rich, the schools get rich, the coaches get rich… the players - well, hope you make it kid.  The NCAA preaches about student-athletes, yet very few graduate with an education.

The Boss Button

Hypocrisy 101

My predictions:

Final Four: Kansas, Tennessee, Texas, UCLA

Championship:  Kansas beats UCLA 

Go Temple!!!

Well, now that the season is over I can reflect on what I did right, what I did wrong and what needs to be changed heading into next season.  There was a definite lesson learned with respect to summer training and the importance of speed skating specific dryland training (versus the combination of biking/running).  Granted, the change in my summer training last year was brought on by an injury, still, it made me realize what the proper training does for one’s season.  As I suffered in several of the 1500, 3000 and 5000 races that I had this season.  And it wasn’t a struggle because I was breathing heavy, or becuase I was not in shape so to speak.  It was because my legs weren’t in shape for speed skating, and they didn’t want to finish the race… it’s a bad feeling when you don’t think your legs are going to hold you up anymore… and you have a few hundred meters to the finish line.  A bad feeling.

Anyway, this last meet was a success in that I ened the season with three personal bests, missed a fourth by .8 seconds, and missed a fifth best when my legs collapsed and I went sliding into the mats with 100m to go in my 1500 (it was looking like a pb by about 3 seconds according one of the guys I practice with).  I did get to reskate it, and finished with a season best, but reskating the 1500 is not a good idea… I learned that the hard way.  The times are not where I want them to be right now, not too ecstatic about that.  The upside is that one month ago I honestly didn’t think I was going to match my times in Calgary from last season…. my legs just felt that bad.  But with a good hard month of training, and a few pointers, I was able to lower my times to the point where I feel like I can at least take something positive from this season into next season. 

 Now, time to take a month off… and to stop giving all my money to those crooks at Mobil.  A couple of weeks to veg, couple of weeks to plan.  Then, to string together 11 months that are just as productive as the last one… next year the results will be there.

American Cup Times:

500M #1 - 43.16, 1500M - 2:13:14

500M #2 - 43.07, 5000M - 8:17:09

1000M - 1:24:96

Well, the end is near for this season. Not a moment too soon. The environment in my office has started to take time away from working out. Luckily, it’s only been this way for the last two weeks when I’ve been tapering as I prepped for this weekend’s competition. It’d be one thing if I actually felt like my boss supported my efforts, but I know he doesn’t care - make money, make money, make money…

The goals for this meet are pretty simple - end the season with four personal best times. We’ll see how it all goes. Will try to get a post up after the first couple of events, but it won’t be until late Friday or Saturday.

In other news, how about that Eliot Spitzer? Nothing like being the high and mighty one day, then at the bottom of the barrel the next…