Ohio Invitational/American Cup II Nov. 1-2, 2008 at Cleveland Heights

There are certain advantages to being an older speedskater, such as when your times are converted to age groups, the group itself is small enough that on paper your performance looks decent.

The Ohio Invitational had all sorts of attractions as my third meet of the season.  First, it was run in tandem with American Cup II, which gave us our first chance to see our daughter Liz skate since she began training in Utah.  She had grown in confidence and skill, and looked stronger.  Injured in practice on Sunday, she nevertheless finished first in the B group, winning three of four events!!! 

Second, the meet presented my second chance to skate the event, and a chance to compare my effort with the prior effort last January.  Mixed bag...a couple times better, a couple worse, but a rollicking good time with a LOT of very good people.  What was clear, though, was that my ability to skate was much better, even if the times did not show it.  Cleveland Heights is a wonderful, wide rink.  For someone of my limited speed, that means moving to the outside really adds distance... oh well, maybe next year!  Tom Frank's crew runs a really smooth meet in Cleveland, and the officials were terrific....can't wait for next year.

Ohio also gave me my third meet of the year, and my third in three weeks (never bunched them like that before).  It was interesting, in a frustrating sort of way.  Apparently I packed a different skater for Cleveland than I had the weekend before for Rutland.  For reasons I could not absolutely define, my confidence and comfort on the ice was less, and the times were consistently worse than the prior week.  Perhaps a flu shot the day before the meet was a factor....perhaps I'd put pressure on myself because my daughter and her teammates were there...perhaps an equipment malfunction?????  I'd been experimenting....I'd moved my blades back a notch, and it had seemed to help during the Rochester and Rutland meets.  In the two weeks since, I had also realized that the old sharpening stone I'd inherited seemed to have seen better days...for my most recent practice, it took 90 minutes of steady work to sharpen well...Finally, I decided to move the blade a little bit to the right on my left boot.  Only one practice, and maybe its a head game, but it felt more comfortable, and my bucket drills actually resulted in crossovers (a minor miracle, that.).