Green Mountain Invitational Short Track, Rutland VT 10/25/08

The Green Mountain Speed Skating Club hosted their first meet this weekend, and I am very glad I went over to Rutland, Vt.  Fast moving, fun event and perfect for young skaters and us not so young ones! The ice conditions were near perfect, and the facility is comfortable, clean very pleasant.  It's a non-profit operation, not a municipal one, and the pride of ownership shows.  This one should be on the radar of everyone in the Northeast and eastern Ontario/western Quebec next year.  One great feature:  the Castleton State College men's hockey team served, in shifts, as the block chasers and squeegee guys all day.  What a good volunteer service!  Thanks guys!

Thank you first of all to my teammate Beth Burchill for outstanding moral support (and congrats on some very impressive personal records!!!!)  Thanks, too, to many of the adults at the arena for their friendship and support (Don A., Rick T., Fred M., Chris & Ramona H., etc.) and to the other three members of my age group for the competition--Fred Cole of the Saratoga Winter Club and John Murphy and Paul Cantella of the Pittsfield (MA) Speed Skating Club.  They are much stronger, faster skaters but once again proved what a friendly, supportive activity speed skating can be and usually is.  It was a pleasure to kibbutz with them all day, and to try my best to keep up (and out of the way, once passed!!!).  The good news for me is that two 500 meter races were both PBs, and I am beginning to hope that I'll be not quite so far behind soon.  Moving the blades back a bit seems to have helped two weeks in a row!  A 01:37.345 for 500 meters may not be all that impressive, but it's a full six seconds faster than my previous best, and is encouraging.  

There was one little glitch for me early in the day.  The races started with 1000 meter heats and finals.  My heat time was objectively slow, but pretty good for me.  In the final, I felt great and was sure that I was on a PR time.  I was coming into my bell lap (I'd been counting carefully, after going a lap too far the prior week in Rochester, and my count matched that of a couple of officials as I passed), but unfortunately the chief up thought I was too slow and that I had more laps to go and called the race.  The numbers got posted.  It WAS going to be a personal best by a lot.  To say that I was pretty fried was putting it mildly.  Beth Burchill to the rescue on that score!  No complaints though.  The official and I wound up the day on the same page and all is good. I've been an official at enough events to know how hard those jobs are, anyway.   Since the timers did report the time, I was able to figure the pace and see progress, which was my goal.  And for as long as judgment is part of the sport, there are going to be days when I, or any other skater, will get a break we did not expect or perhaps deserve.  Those cut both ways... sometimes the luck is good, too, and the judgment call goes your way.

Rochester Invitational Oct.18-19, 2008

Day one, marked by frustration, wobbly knees, slow times and my usual place in the back of the pack....arrgh.  More in the nature of a Hail Mary pass than anything else, I decided to move my blades back a little on the boots.  Day two.  Two skaters on the line:  my good friend (and better, faster skater) Don Ducharme and I.  The gun sounds.  A much better than usual start and I have the lead!

Passing the apex on turn one, the announcer, Tom Connelly, with some incredulity in his voice, calls my name as the leader!  I've never been in the lead...what to do now!!!  I try to focus on form, getting as low as I get, milking glides for as much as possible......bell lap....still in the lead!  People who have cheered me on for a year are yelling!  Tom's voice on the PA.....Ducharme gaining...who wants it more....last turn.....I can see Don in my peripheral vision....running out of gas....never mind form....break into a run down the last straight.....focus...push....and across the line with six-hundredths of a second to spare!!!!!    What a rush!!!!  Don leaves me in the dust a little later at 1000 meters, but for the first time, in the first meet of my second season, I've won one heat....feeling really good....this sport frustrates, but it also rewards.....

When teammates help the most

A week from the opening meet of my second season, the discouragement is palpable. It is so incredibly frustrating to feel that skills are no better, and some worse than at the end of last year, and to see the performance gap increasing. At one practice, Tina said "you're so tense...there is no smile and you don't look like you're enjoying it." The inner demons are at work: fear of speed, fear of falling, fear of embarassment. Still, my team mates keep encouraging me on: an idea to exaggerate the kick, to make more of a pendulum and to glide better... a suggestion to go back to one of Jim Cornell's dryland drills to finally get a crossover... a "thataway" from inside the circle at a practice... an invitation to stay on ice and help with the youngest kids....the invitation to sit with "Coach Sam Adams" after practice...I have been part of a lot of groups and organizations over a lifetime, but the men and women and girls and boys of the Rochester Speed Skating Team are the greatest. They meant it when they called it a team and not a club.
If I ever develop any real skills in this sport, it will be as much because of the support and the patience of my team, as it will be of effort on my part. But I will keep plugging until then...see the post from August 18th on the "late bloomer" at the Summer Olympics.