photo by Steve Penland

Thursday, December 29, 2011

H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks

I have nothing against hockey players.  In fact, I married one (sort of--The Hubster grew up playing hockey in Canada, but has since switched to broomball).

Two of them, however, made my workout very interesting last night.

On paper, it should have been a great workout.  Just two tempos--500 and 1500 meters.  Perfect weather--35 degrees and calm (where is our Minnesota winter!?). And, best of all, Coach TieGuy was in town.

Unfortunately it became quite clear, as I got into the workout, that I was not living up to these auspicious portents.  Warmup was OK; Coach TieGuy was able to point out a couple of things that I had become sloppy with in the past few months, but in general was pleased with my NIT (New Improved Technique).  The 500 tempo was lackluster, though; partly, no doubt, because I hate 500 tempos.  The 500 meter start line is right after a corner, so when you need to stand on the line to do a start you need to make darn sure that no skaters are coming down the backstretch--if they come around the corner to find you standing there, really bad stuff will happen.  (Take note of that--that right there is what we in the literary world call "foreshadowing.")  So to minimize the possibility of disaster I basically skated to the start line, paused briefly to assume the "ready" position, and then took off.  Clumsily.

So the 500 was "meh."  Still, it was nice to have Coach TieGuy back on the other end of the FRS radio, even though--due to my less-than-thorough inspection of the remaining battery life in our radios--his comments sounded something like "....ccccckkkkk....entry...ccck...good exit...cccckkkk...knees...."  After the 500, he told me that I was forgetting to do the extra crossover when coming out of a corner, which, upon reflection, I decided was probably due to forgetting to "drift out" when exiting the corner.  So I resolved to do better in the 1500.

The 1500 shares the starting-line-after-a-corner problem with the 500, but it seemed that a few skaters had gone in for their mid-workout warmup so the track was less crowded.  So my start was better, and as I approached the first corner I focused on attacking the corner, drifting out slightly on the exit, and getting that extra crossover to help carry my cornering speed into the straightaway.

I exited the corner, extra crossover, good, look down the track...

...and see an 8-year-old hockey player, stick and all, skating slowly across the ice from her practice in the oval infield to the exit on the outside of the track.

Given the fact that she was skating to the outside, and I was drifting to the outside, we were both heading for the same patch of oval real estate.  Collision was imminent.

I stood up out of my skating stance, swerved (as much as I could) to my right to pass her on the outside--there was no way I could swerve back to the inside, behind her, at that speed--and yelled "YOU HAVE TO LOOK!!! GEEZ!!!"  Except that there was an "us" on the end of my "geez."  Hope I didn't offend anyone.

And then I got back down into skating position and resumed my tempo.  About five seconds later, a rink attendant came on the loudspeaker to remind hockey players that they must not cross the track unattended, and that coaches must not let their players cross without adult supervision.

The rest of the tempo was not pretty; by the last lap, I was really struggling.  When I finished, I coasted over to TieGuy for the lap times.

"Opener was...let me see...34.  Then a 39.5, then a 41.8"

"And?"  I said.  "What was the last lap?"  A 1500 is the opener plus 3 laps.

Coach TieGuy gave me a strange look.

"That's all," he said.

Turns out I had been so flustered by the near-collision that I lost my ability to count to 3, and quit a lap early.

Oh, well...given how I felt, the last lap would have been spectacularly bad, anyway.

So, after my cooldown, we headed back to the locker room.  (The skating center building has a large warming-house room as well as several locker rooms for the hockey arena, and the oval staff are nice enough to let the speedskaters use a locker room whenever there isn't a varsity hockey game going on.)  As TieGuy and I discussed my skating while I took off my skates, the door opened and a 20-something hockey player, complete with goalie gear, stuck his head in the room and asked if he could share our locker room.  Seems there was an alumni hockey game coming up and all the other rooms were taken.

"Sure," I said, "as long as you don't smell too bad."  Sometimes our locker room reeks of unwashed hockey gear.

"Um...I don't think so..." he said, as he came into the room.

Somehow, though, within 5 minutes one fairly-unstinky-goalie had morphed into 10 large hockey players stuffing themselves into gear that had obviously never been introduced to Febreeze.

10 large hockey players, moreover, who had obviously never been introduced to the concept of "there's a woman in the locker room."

Yes, I looked up from stuffing my skates into my bag just in time to be mooned by one of the players.

In future, I'd appreciate it if all hockey players at the oval--whether little girls or young men--would keep their asses out of my way.

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