photo by Steve Penland

Sunday, October 23, 2011

OMG in MKE

Yesterday's time trials at the Pettit in Milwaukee definitely deserved an "OMG"--the good kind.  As I wrote on Friday, after two days of unbelievably good workouts I was anxious to see how my first time trials of the season would go.

And they went fabulously.

OK, so the 1k was a bit shaky.  My focus was on maintaining my new technique improvements at race speed, and not devolving back to my usual hack-and-scramble.  I'm also trying to "skate off the line" on starts (as opposed to my usual uncoordinated attempt at sprinting, which the Hubster says looks like a Frilled Lizard.)

Like this guy.
Picture me with the same upright posture and frantic little steps...but my skinsuit hood fits a bit tighter than his does, I'm not screaming, and I don't climb a tree at the end of the first straightaway...

So anyway, the start went well.  Skating off the line enabled me to keep my posture more skater-like and less lizard-like, and my "opener"--the first partial lap of the race--was pretty much my usual time despite the reduced effort and flailing.  The first corner, which happens only 50 meters or so after the start and thus not at top speed, wasn't too much of a problem.  Exit the corner, snapflingdrive down the first straightaway--yeah, this is feeling pretty good.

And then...corner approaching!  Sound the alarm!  Woop! Woop!  Engage cornering sequence!  Damn!  Brain not responding!  Speed exceeds brain's capacity to process!  Left leg recovery stroke not engaged!  Abort the mission!  Abort the mission!

Well, I didn't actually "abort the mission" by not crossing over at all (as I did in my 1500 meter race in the US Championships in 2007...that was truly an epic fail)...instead, I skated deep into the corner and then initiated a rushed, scrambling crossover step that effectively scrubbed off all the speed I had managed to build in the straight and also didn't allow me to build much speed in the rest of the corner.  Rinse and repeat for the remaining laps of the race, and that was how the 1000 meters went.

Still, it was a decent race for me.  My time was 2 seconds faster than my 1000 in 2009 (which had been preceded by exactly the same workouts the week before, so the fatigue level should have been similar).  Lap times were 36.7 and 37.1, so no big "die" in the second lap.  And I achieved the state that always indicates to me that I've skated a 1000 or 1500 hard--the "I can see but my brain isn't processing any visual information" state.

The 3k was my real focus of the day, though.  I always consider the 500 and the 1000 to be just a part of my warmup; I am definitely not a sprinter and my times reflect that.  So I was anxious to see how the 3k went.  Usually my early-season 3k's are around 5:09-5:10; last year I achieved a 5:03 in October, but that was with rest (not hard workouts) before the race, and a good pre-season of workouts.  This year, with my lackluster spring and summer and the hard workouts the two days before the race, I figured I'd be happy to replicate 2009's 5:09.

I didn't have a coach on the backstretch to give me my times, but the announcer was doing a nice job of reporting people's splits so I figured I'd be OK.  And my friend Mel was racing with me...actually, she was doing a 5k, so when I finished my 7 1/2 laps she'd still have 5 laps to go (insert evil chuckle here).  And Mel's dad was going to videotape us, so I'd be able to show Coach TieGuy the race, however it turned out.

The race started off well; the start was a little sketchy, but I settled into skating pretty quickly.  A little too quickly, as it turned out; my first lap was a 37.7, which is a bit brisk for me for a 3k in Milwaukee.  After that, though, my lap times settled into the more-expected 39-to-low 41 second range (even the second to last lap, where I slipped in a corner and almost crashed).  I got a negative split in the last lap, a 40.85, and ended up with a very satisfying 5:05.42.  And the race felt good; most corner entries were smooth, I maintained a decent "snapflingdrive" the whole way, and my splits were nice and even.  I felt like I was skating, rather than running--in fact, a fellow masters skater, when I questioned him afterwards about whether my technique looked any different, said (with mild surprise), "yeah...yeah, you actually had some weight transfer.  And you're bringing your feet all the way together now."  

Here's the visual, for anyone who's got a few minutes to kill.  I'm the shorter skater in gray; Mel is in green/black.


So it was good.  Really good.  And now I want to go back to Milwaukee in a week or two and try a 5k.

Oh, and just in the interest of science, I repeated my testing from the drive down, and confirmed that I do, indeed, get 75 Miles Per PopTart.  Just in case you were wondering.

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