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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….

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

Bare with me if this doesn’t work… I’m just learning the backend of things and don’t know HTML well enough yet. 

So, hopefully, here are two videos that I came across on YouTube this weekend.  Pretty cool speedskating clips, for those interested.  I’m sure many in the small speedskating community have seen them… as most of us are pretty much obsessed (in a good way) with the sport. 

Obviously there are a ton of clips out there about anything these days - my roommate has figured out how to download seemingly all of the speedskating clips possible off of Dutch websites and post them on his YouTube profile.  Anyway, one clip shows World Cup highlights (posted by basvanberg).  The Dutch TV coverage of speedskating is awesome.  If we had that kind of coverage here - on any channel - the sport would easily take off…. maybe someday it’ll happen…

The second video shows hightlights from the 2002 games, those games (and Derek Parra’s performance during them) are the main reason that I am now on the ice.  That clip was posted by Paul Nahrwold.

As for me, this weekend time trials were only held on Saturday, as Sunday only 5 people registered so they racing was canceled.  I raced a 500M and 1500M.  I had my best openers of the season in both races, but unfortunately I didn’t have my best lap times (putting my hand down on the ice in my last inner of the 500, and putting another body part on the ice coming out of the last turn of the 1500).  I missed a PB by .05 in the 500, we won’t go over the final time of the 1500.

This weekend I begin my taper in the warm weather of Montana.  Yes, Montana, where it is supposed to be a balmy 40-45 while I’m out there.  I might not wear a coat… since I’m used to 10 degrees all so well now.  (Seriously, spring and baseball both need to get here sooner!)

This weekend is easily one of the busiest racing weekends on my schedule each season.  The Masters International meet is usually a lot of fun, and also a LOT of skating. 

A normal weekend will have me racing some combination of time trials and/or pack meets.  On a time trial day, one typically skates two metric races.  In most pack meets you skate three races, and there is a chance that you might have to race a heat in each race - in order to get to the final for that distance.  So, on a weekend where you skate in time trials on Saturday, and a pack meet on Sunday - you are looking at 5 races for sure, with a chance of having as many as 8 total races that weekend.

Now… during the Masters International meet, the schedule has two metric races, six pack races that might have heats, and one 5000M pack Super Final (no heat, all competitors on the ice at the same time).   In essence, if you have to skate heats for your age group, you could be looking at as many as 15 races over the course of two days!  Nearly double the racing of any other weekend during the season.  Needless to say, by the end of the day Sunday I’m heading for a nap after I leave the rink.

There was a Canadian invasion at the Pettit Center in Milwaukee this weekend.  In the four years that I’ve been skating Long Track races, I’ve only been to one race with this many competitors (last February’s Masters International Games in Calgary, where there were 300+ skaters).  This weekend, I’m guessing there were more Canadians than Americans skating at the NALT meet, which had 184 skaters - I believe that was the final number.

Canada is much deeper than the U.S. in talent when it comes to speed skating.  I believe the number of registered skaters there almost doubles the number that we have here in the states.  And the qualifying times for their Olympic Trials are much tougher than ours.  Obviously, it goes without saying that they live to the north of us, the cold weather and winter sports are a bigger part of their culture.  Most winter sports here take a back seat to baseball, football and basketball.  It will be interesting over the next few years to see if U.S. Speedskating can build a deeper program with the inline-to-ice transitions that are going on now (3 of our 4 competitors this weekend at the world allaround competitors are former inline skaters).  The two big questions are - how many inline skaters will be willing to leave the sunny inline world for cold ice rinks?  And, will inline skating ever become an Olympic sport?  Who knows the answer to either….

Anyway, while I chased Canadians around the ice this weekend, I did manage to post personal bests in all three races.  My 500M dropped from a 43.73 to a 43.50.  In the 1000M I lowered my personal from a 1:27:91 to a 1:26:27.  Finally, this morning I lowered my 1500M from a 2:13:92 to a 2:13:19.  I feel like I’m finally getting close to being where I was at the end of last season.  The summer knee injury, and resulting tendonitis, are seemingly no longer an issue. I still get some stiffness from time to time but pain is no longer a problem.  I’m looking forward to the next five weeks of practice and really getting a good push towards Salt Lake City and the final American Cup in March.  We’ll see how it all plays out.

Oh, and how can I not mention —– PITCHERS and CATCHERS report this weekend!  Final season at The Stadium, I have a feeling it’s going to be a good one!

Well, I made it back from the two-day pack national meet in Lake Placid at 2am this morning.  In my travels I’ve been pretty fortunate over the 10 years that I’ve lived in, and traveled to/from Chicago. I have only once been subjected to the delays, cancellations and issues that put O’Hare International Airport in the top five in many categories of Flight Stats’ report for 2007 (click here).  Check out the number of cancellations compared to other airports, yikes!!!

Anyway, after being delayed for 2-1/2 hours, on Friday morning I made it in to Albany, the end of the first leg of travel.  Then proceeded to drive up to Lake Placid with fellow skater, and one of our Glen Ellyn coaches, Steve Penland.  It took us nearly 4 hours to go 132 miles, as we drove through rain, then sleet, then finally snow.  We reached Lake Placid at around 5:30pm.  Twelve hours of travel time isn’t always a lot of fun, but it still beats going to work! 

Saturday morning the competition started with temps that were around 15 degrees, and winds at about 10-20 mph.  The tricky part was that during warm-ups the wind seemed to be hitting you in the face on both sides of the rink.  However, by the time we got to racing it was definitely hitting you in the face on the backstretch.   Here’s a few pics that I took before warm-ups started.

Both pics show the view from the end of the tunnel ramp.  You walk down the tunnel from the locker rooms (which are inside the hockey rink) as you go to get on the ice.  First pic shows one of the turns, and the warming hut (building on the right) - the finish line for most of the race is in front of the warming hut.  The timers and officials congregate there, at the edge of the ice as the races are being contested.  The second pic is looking down the backstretch, again with a vantage point from where you enter the ice before racing.

Here’s a couple of quick action shot from Senior Men’s the 1500m start, they raced right after I finished my 1500 (I needed to stand still for a minute after getting hit in the face by the wind for four laps).   In the first shot you can see the officials and timers in the background (on the right hand side of the pic).  The dark red cone is where the finish line was for the race, you can see the lap counter behind the gentleman to the right of the cone (click on the image to enlarge it).

In spite of the winds, there were still a couple of records set on Saturday.  Some were because certain distances were never raced before (new events in some of the younger age categories), but others were just flat out good skating.

Sunday, we had better temps and less wind.  The ice was fantastic for the first races of the day, and the records continued to fall.  Here are a few pics from Sunday - don’t have any action shots as I was in spectator mode for a good portion of the day (I didn’t race on Sunday until the 47th race of the day, including the heats…. so I had shut my brain off for awhile…. goes back to the inability to function at certain early morning hours).  First pic shows Lake Placid High School, next the entrance area when you come out of the tunnel to get on the ice (you can see the Hockey Rink behind the flagpoles), finally a view from the flagpole area.

Lastly, here are a bunch of thumbnails of pics that I took inside the 1980 hockey rink.  The 1932 hockey rink is right next door, but I wasn’t in full camera-photographer mode all weekend.  Those pics will have to wait for the next trip. Anyway, the ice doesn’t have that bluish tint you see in the highlights, the place was pretty much empty, and the hockey game being played had very little magnitude (to me at least) - still, pretty cool to stand there and imagine what it was like to be in those stands when the rest of us heard Al Michaels ask that famous question…. and emphatically answer by himself. 

“Do you believe in miracles? YES!!!”    (5 minute version)