photo by Steve Penland

Sunday, February 26, 2012

I Survived the Pack

Well, I made it through Pack Nationals.

The weekend started with me arriving at the oval really early.  I like to stake out my spot on the bench before anyone else gets there...think I succeeded?
As always, I have a LOT of stuff.

I also figured I could use any extra time I had to do some mental work on conquering my pack neuroses.  And initially, I thought I had the mental aspect of pack racing under control.  My first race on Saturday was the 1000 meter, two-and-a-half laps.  As I toed the starting line with the six other 40-49 year-old women, I thought "this isn't so bad, I can handle this."  When the starter said "ready," I thought, "I'm fine, no problem."  When the starter fired the gun, the true reality of pack racing suddenly hit me--there are people everywhere!   Several cuss words raced through my mind in quick succession and I realized that I have absolutely no ability to do a start with people 18 inches from me on either side.

Eventually, of course, I did get going.  As I scrambled down the track attempting to settle into some sort of skating rhythm, there was one skater in front of me on the inside, and another cutting across in front of me from the outer to the inner.  I yelled to let the one cutting across know that she was coming awfully close to me, when suddenly there was a muffled exclamation and she wasn't there anymore.  Hmmmm, not a good start to the day.  Another 20 yards or so, though, and I had gained clear ice, and was able to skate the rest of the race "like a metric"--in other words, time-trial style of going as fast as I can for the distance, rather than using pack tactics to take advantage of the draft, trying to respond to others' strategies, etc.  I really have no ability to execute any pack tactics whatsoever, so it's best if I get to clear ice and just skate hard.

After the race, I approached the skater who had cut across and asked if she fell.  She had, and it turns out she thought it was my fault, since she was in front when she attempted to cut across.  Upon being thus accused, of course, I did what any self-respecting person with Obsessive Compliance Disorder would do--I sought out the nearest authority figure to confess to.  The corner worker I talked to said I hadn't done anything wrong, though--the person in the lead, as in Nascar, track racing, and freeway driving, is obliged to ensure that they have appropriate space to complete the maneuver before cutting in front of someone.

So, "not guilty," but still stressed.  Not 20 seconds into my first pack race in 5 years and I've already had "pack crap" happen.  I feared for what the other four races might bring, but they turned out OK. I pretty much followed the same strategy on all of them: take as much time as I needed to work past those who have a faster start than I do, then get to clear ice and skate like a metric.  I did win all five races, but had quite bad times in all of them--the worst time, in all of the distances, of the last 4-5 times I'd skated those distances at Roseville.

True, Saturday it snowed, which makes the ice slower:
See the piles of snow on the infield?

It snowed part of Saturday, anyway, but not including the part that contained the 1500, which was my slowest race of the weekend but was skated during the best conditions.

Sunday, the wind blew:
Not what I want the flags to be doing...

Wind also, of course, makes for slower conditions...but still, I wasn't too happy with my times.

Which leads me to realize, once again, that I am truly a metric skater.  Times really shouldn't matter in pack races--it's the place that counts.  Still, I found myself hurrying to the "Wall O' Times" after every race, because without numbers I really had no idea how to quantify my race.  I lamented the lack, in pack, of lap times...did I truly die in that last lap of the 1000, or did it just feel like it?  Was my 3000 normal, or the "what's going on is it heart arrhythmia or something else" pattern of slower at first/speeding up at the end of the race?  The group that put on the races did a fabulous job of getting the finishing order and everyone's total time for each race posted quickly, often before I even got my skates off after my race, but pack simply doesn't include lap times and I really felt the lack.

Here's the "Wall O' Times"

Still, it was a good weekend.  It was fun to hang out with other masters competitors between the races; the past couple years I've helped with timing the races which, while enjoyable, doesn't allow me any time to talk to my skating friends.  I ended up doing the 8-lap, for-fun Team Pursuit race at the end of the weekend with Cross Boy (he's not cranky, he just races Cyclocross) and Hawkeye Boy, which was a blast (thanks for the tow, guys, and I'm sorry I slowed you down!)  And I managed to successfully wear the Holter monitor all weekend without it interfering with my racing (I ended up wearing in around my neck, under my skinsuit, rather than on my waist, and it didn't get in the way at all).  I didn't feel any clearcut episodes of what I assume are arrhythmia, but did have a couple of suspected ones, so we'll see how the results come back in a couple days.

So anyways, I'm now National Champion in the women's 40-49 age group.  Here's the obligatory blurry cellphone pic to prove it:
Really, that's me in the middle, honest.  You can tell it's me because I'm wearing the same hat I wore last time I won Pack Nationals, back in 2006.
See?
Towards the right, back row.  Same blue hat.

The upshot is:  I'm glad I did it; I hope I got some arrhythmia data; and only time will tell whether I ever end up skating pack again.

Friday, February 24, 2012

This Weekend Should Be Interesting

Why should this weekend be interesting?  This picture says it all:

First, the shirt.  It says (if you look closely), "Mass Start Championships  US National Long Track." (And I must say it's one of the cooler skating shirts I've gotten.)

Now for those not familiar with speedskating, long track racing comes in two flavors: metric and pack (or, as our Canadian brethren like to say, Olympic style and mass start.  And be sure the "a" in "mass" is the broad Canadian "a," not to be confused with the Canadian "eh," eh?).  Of the two flavors, I prefer metric--pack gives me a bad case of indigestion.  I'm  a control freak who (as I may have mentioned once or twice here) does not like to have anyone near me on the ice when I'm racing.  I have enough trouble keeping track of what my own body is doing, let alone worrying where someone else's is, what their strategy is, and how my strategy must change when theirs does.  Since drafting plays a big role in pack style skating, I can't usually just "skate my own race" without paying heed to anyone else, because the "anyone else" will just draft merrily along behind me, saving a significant amount of energy, and then pass me at the end.  Pack races make me very anxious.

So I haven't raced pack in five years, since the Nationals in 2007.  And in the five years since then, I have professed my dislike of pack to anyone who would listen.  This weekend, though, the US National pack style--or, as the shirt says, mass start--event will be held at my home oval, the John Rose in Roseville.  Since it's the last official event of the year, I decided to sign up.  There are seven of us in my age group, which is a lot of full-size women to be sharing the starting line, but so far I've been able to avoid any pre-event stressing about it.  I want this weekend to just be fun, and so far everything leading up to it has been--skating with my friends who are also going to be racing; comparing notes about who's in our age group, what everyone's strategy is, and so on.  (For the record, my strategy is "leave the starting line as fast as possible and skate every race hard, without paying any attention to what anyone else is doing, if I can.  If I can't,  do as I did in 2007 when I got boxed in during the 1000 meter--freak out, do something stupid, cut someone off, and get disqualified."  I think this strategy covers pretty much any scenario I might encounter during the races).

So that's the racing this weekend...five races over two days, during which I hope to have fun, avoid neuroses and anxiety, dodge the 12 other flashing blades I'll be sharing the ice with, and enjoy the atmosphere of a pack meet for a change.

Now, as for the second interesting thing, check out the black box on my right hip (you know, the one on the left in the photo).  It's a 48-hour Holter monitor, or EKG monitor.  Yes, I decided I want to know what (if anything) is going on with my heart. On Wednesday I got an "event monitor" from my doctor, which is a different kind of EKG monitor than the one I'm wearing in the picture.  I tried it at skating Wednesday and Thursday and discovered that it was not going to be workable.  With this kind of monitor you have to push a button when you are having the arrhythmia, to start the recording--and pushing a button on a small device on your waistband while you're skating is a bit tricky even if you're not a klutz.  So my doctor suggested the Holter (which I've had at least three times in the last 20 years), since it keeps a continuous recording of every heartbeat, and needs no button-pushing.  I think it's definitely the best way to go in this situation, although it's a bit cumbersome to have five wires stuck to various parts of your chest for 48 hours (not to mention not being able to shower between day one and day two of racing!).  Hopefully I'll get some good information from it, though.

So there you have it--pack racing and EKG's.  Should be a fun weekend!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Pettit Time Trials Race Report

I went to the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee yesterday for my final indoor time trials of the season, and try as I might I can't come up with a better title than "Time Trial Race Report."  A lot of stuff happened between leaving after work at 3:40 on Friday and heading down the freeway to Milwaukee, and heading back onto the freeway towards home at 12:30 Saturday afternoon.  Some good, some bad, some funny, some embarrassing...just no good way to condense it all into one pithy (my seventh grade English teacher loved that word) title.

Some of the good: a fast (no, I wasn't speeding, just no end-of-Friday traffic) drive to Milwaukee.  A McDonald's ice cream cone (twist!  They had twist!) that ended up in my mouth instead of on the steering wheel.  Meeting my first "never met him in person but he reads my blog" blog reader (Hi, Michael!  Nice job on the PR's PB's!). Getting to skate the 5k solo, no pair, which is my favorite way to do it.

So the "good" is easy. For the bad, the funny, and the embarrassing, I'll need to go into more detail.  Oh, and for the best "good," which was, strangely enough (since I'm not a sprinter), my 500.

Although it seems strange to drive over 300 miles (one way) just to do two time trials, it made perfect sense to me.  I had done two 5k's this season--one in October, which went great (8:30, a Pettit "non-blowers-on" PB), and one in January, which went horribly (8:32, due to PVC's).  (I know, 8:32 isn't much slower than 8:30, but typically I see considerable improvement from my start-of-season to mid-season times.) Since the PVC's had been mostly absent these past few weeks--with the somewhat ominous exception of their re-appearance in this Wednesday's tempo workout--I figured it would be fun to do an end-of-season, hopefully-PVC-free 5k to see what I could do.  I could skate a 5k outdoors at Roseville, of course, but an outdoor 5k is hugely dependent on the weather so it would be really hard to use an outdoor time as a yardstick of my progress.  So, off to Milwaukee it was!

I planned, as usual, to do a 500 and a 5k.  The 500 is really just the final stage of my warmup, and is typically my worst event, so I wasn't too wound up about it.  I was paired with a Canadian masters skater who was about my speed, which gave me a bit of concern about the backstretch lane-change--my brain doesn't function well during any athletic endeavor, but particularly not during a sprint, so if we hit the backstretch at the same time the potential for screw-up would be high.  But as I say, the 500 is not a big event on my personal radar, so I wasn't too concerned.

At the starting line, I was trying to focus on some of the things I've been working on during my practice starts lately.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to work on starts much, though, since my "once bruised, somewhat recovering, but still a bit sore" heel doesn't appreciate being smashed repeatedly into the back of my skate boot during starts.  So the things I was trying to focus on were certainly not second nature yet.  My main goal was to concentrate on the first push off my right foot--make it powerful and don't worry about speed. So after the starter's command "ready," I assumed my final start position and concentrated on that right foot.

And concentrated.

And concentrated.

Just when I was beginning to think that the starter had died, fallen off his ladder, or had a gun malfunction, he finally fired the shot and we were off.  I was prepared for him to have a long hold (time between "ready" and the gun), but this was extreme.  And so my launch, never blazing at the best of times, was even slower than usual due to my "dang he better fire the gun soon I'm about to move and false start" issue.

Once I finally got off the line, the opener was OK--I tried to chase down my Canadian pair, and caught and passed her when I had the inner lane on the first corner.  This was helpful because I knew I had just enough distance on her to make a clean switch to the outer lane after the corner.  So I did, and finished the rest of the lap with reasonable technique and no problems.  And the final time--48.2--was a Pettit PB for me by .4 seconds, and also included my fastest full lap ever at the Pettit--34.46 seconds.  So that was fun.

After that, it was the wait for the 5k.  I was delighted, as I mentioned, to be solo in the 5k, especially since one of the other two 5k competitors was a Junior skater who is the fastest in the world for his age, and who was hoping to do a sub-6:40.  Yeah, he'd probably lap me three times.  The other 5k skater was another talented junior, but was a sprinter trying his first 5k.  I figured I didn't want to slow him down, either, so solo was looking good to me.

And now for the embarrassing.  First, I need to set the stage a bit.  At the Pettit, I typically sit on one of the benches that's closest to the ice.  This allows me to make a nice little towel runway from the bench to the ice, thus rendering unnecessary the use of my hard plastic skate guards for the walk to the ice.  I use the guards every day at Roseville, but Roseville has nice stomach-high pads around the oval that one can hold onto for balance when removing one's guards.  The Pettit, because we enter the ice from the center of the oval rather than the outside, has no such pads and thus removing the guards once one has achieved the ice requires a careful bending-twisting-tripod pose that is beyond the limits of my personal balance and flexibility.  So, no plastic guards...but I do typically leave my "soakers," the padded cloth guards that one keeps on one's skates to keep them dry in storage, on my skates while I put the skates on, to lessen the chance of ruining my sharpening job by putting the blade on some errant piece of equipment while wedging my feet into the skates.

You already know where this is going, don't you?

As the time for my 5k approached, I finished tying my skates and went through my final mental checklist.  Skates on? Check?  Geeky skating glasses on? Check.  "String Thing" tied firmly around waist?  Check.  Skinsuit on and zipped? Check.

Ready to go.

So I clomped down my towel runway and stepped onto the ice.

"Hmm, first step feels funny.  I must be on the rough ice at the very edge of the oval.   I'll set down my other foot and push, so I get off the rough stuff."

Step.  Set down.  Push.

Crumple ignominiously to the ice, banging my right knee in the process.

Now, I just learned, at a staff development workshop at school, that our brains are capable of processing 2000-3000 thoughts per minute.  Let's average that to 2400, for ease of division.  So it's interesting that, of the 40 thoughts I could process during the second between my step and my landing on the ice, it took until approximately thought number 39 before I realized "oops, I left my soakers on."

I looked up from my resting spot on the warmup lane, right into the wide, horrified eyes of a young boy who had, prior to my descent to the ice, been peacefully assembling a Lego ship while he sat on the bench waiting for his dad to finish skating.

"Are you all right?" he asked with deep concern.

"Yeah," I said as I rolled onto my back like some chunky, lycra-clad turtle and began stripping the soaker from first one and then the other skate.  "I just forgot to take my guards off before I stepped onto the ice."

On the plus side, no one ran over me while I lay on the ice taking my guards off, which is about the best one can hope for in such a situation.

Now, on to the 5k.  Sprinter Boy, who was also in Milwaukee for a day of time trials, was kind enough to agree to give me my lap times, and had even managed to borrow a lap board from Pettit coach "I Yell So Loud They Hear Me In Green Bay,"  so I'd have coaching and splits in the backstretch.  Before the start, Sprinter Boy asked what my goal pace was.  Since I was hoping for a PB, under 8:30, I replied that I wanted to keep the lap times under 40 for as long as possible.

The opener went OK, a 24, just as I expected.  I really tried to relax the first lap, since I have a tendency to feel a bit too frisky at the start of the race and to go out a little to fast.  My first lap was still a 37. 44, which is a bit brisk but not bad--I always figure that the slightly-too-fast first lap will offset the slightly-too-slow opener, and give me a 600 meter time that's just right.

Then, somewhere in the second lap, I don't remember exactly, I got the heart arrhythmia again.  Damn.  Instant leg fatigue, instant out-of-breath, instant mental meltdown.  The second lap was a 39.39, lap 3 was a 40.37, and somewhere in there I completely mentally gave up.

Twelve laps is a long way to go when your body and brain are not into it.  I struggled along through lap 8, with the times steadily climbing to a 43.09-second eighth lap.  Sprinter Boy was valiantly encouraging me to "breathe" and to "set up the corner" and to "use the recovery," all of which were great advice but none of which I could implement enough to stop my slow, painful slide into suckdom.

Then, after I finished what I thought was a lackluster ninth lap, I heard the announcer say "that was a negative split by over six-tenths of a second."

Hmm.

The arrhythmia had stopped somewhere in lap...I don't know, six or seven?... but I was so mentally defeated by that point that I had made no effort to increase my pace when I started feeling better.  But apparently I had sped up anyway, so at that point I decided to try to bring the last three laps down as far as possible.  And I did: lap 10 was a 42.37, lap 11 a 41.68, and lap 12 a 40. 44, for a final time of 8:38.69.

Not a good time, not a good race.  Although still better, in some ways, than the race of the junior skater in the pair after me, who finished his first 5k ever with a respectable 8:22--and with a skinsuit covered in puke.

Still, not the result I was hoping for, and not only because the race time was slow.  I had thought, throughout the course of a mostly--PVC-free February, that the arrhythmia might be going away.  Apparently not so.

Oh, and the funny...after the race I stopped by one of the benches to talk to the Canadian skaters.  The little boy who had expressed concern for me after my fall was sitting on the bench.  He looked at me curiously, then said "someone...was it you...forgot to take their guards off..."

"Yeah," I said, "that was me."

"Oh."  He looked at me curiously.  "You changed your glasses."

Yes, I explained, these were my regular glasses and the other ones were my skating glasses.

"Yes," he replied earnestly, "but skating glasses are usually colored."

Apparently even the 7-year-old thinks I'm a geek.

So now?  The season is two weeks from the end.  I have two more weeks of practice, one more weekend of time trials at Roseville, and one more weekend of racing (more on that soon; it's quite the departure from the norm for me).  So I guess I'll just keep skating, hope the PVC's go away, and enjoy my last two weeks of ice.













Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Just Call Me Cupcake

I knew, when I posted this on Facebook, that tonight's workout could be interesting:


"Hoping that Valentine's cupcake I just ate will prove to be beneficial rather than detrimental to my interval workout in 2.5 hours..."

I should clarify that, by "Valentine's cupcake," I did not mean a cupcake given to my by the Hubster or a student; a cupcake that I needed to eat to prevent the giver from feeling bad.  No, this cupcake was all my own fault, a product of my usual post-work detour through Target in search of Diet Dew.  I strolled down the main aisle,  made a hard right at the pastry case and--hello there sweet thing, what are you doing all by your lonesome on that cold shelf?  Shouldn't you be snuggled up in a plastic box with five of your closest frosting-topped friends?   Clearly you need some company...(translation: who knew that Target sold cupcakes individually?  Jumbo cupcakes, nonetheless.  The world has certainly changed during the 11 years I wasn't eating sugar.)

So anyway, I bought the cupcake--which was a lovely white cake topped with a good half-inch of white frosting and a drift of three colors of sugar sprinkles--and ate it, as my Facebook post said, exactly 2.5 hours before my workout.

Which turned out to be about 2 hours short of the amount of time I should have eaten it before my workout.

It might have been OK if I had stuck to my Coach TieGuy-prescribed workout, but somehow I ended up getting sucked into the draft created by Sprinter Boy and Aussie Boy, who were doing a workout similar to--but much faster than--the one I was planning to do.  They were doing 400 meter repeats, more or less, and, while I couldn't quite keep up with them, it was fun trying--and a lot more effort than I had been planning on exerting, especially post-cupcake.  The first 400 went well.  The second one went...OK.  The third one, well, the third one brought me to the realization that, if I didn't take an extra lap of rest before the fourth, I'd likely be seeing those sugar sprinkles again.  So, as I have every time I've been faced with the "slow down or throw up" decision--I slowed down, and skipped one of the 400's to give the cupcake time to get happy in its current location again.

Still, cupcake notwithstanding, it was a great workout.  The seven hard laps we did were mostly 36's--with one 35 and one 37--and even the two that I led were 36's, which is quite a good lap time for me.  And I had one perfect corner, which always gives me hope of eventually getting that whole corner entry/corner exit thing nailed down.  So the skating seems to be on the upswing...hopefully, in tomorrow night's workout, dinner won't threaten to be on the upswing, as well.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Transitions

No, this isn't going to be some "deep" post about life transitions, or even skating technique transitions.  You should know by now not to expect "deep."  No, this is merely (as promised), a post about my new skating glasses.

Which have "transition" lenses.

I need to wear prescription glasses when I skate, since my over-40 eyes no longer accept contacts as a part of their reality.  For the last 5 years I've had a pair of prescription glasses with transition lenses, that are dedicated to skating.  They look like heck, but work OK...except that they really don't block the wind well, and the bows tend to loosen up with use, which requires me to wear them with a "leash," which is a pain and makes them (and thus, me) look even dorkier than they'd need to.

So when I saw my sister's new prescription sunglasses with a snap-in foam liner that converts them to goggle-like wind blocking capabilities, I had to have some.  Since I usually practice at night but do local races during the day, though, my glasses would need to have transition lenses.  The cheapest glasses only came in black frames.  Fine, I thought, most sunglasses are black anyways; no big deal.

I forgot, of course, that most of the time my glasses will have clear, rather than black, lenses.  So, going from bright light to indoors they transition from "normal sunglasses.."
Nice squint...

...to "hmmm, that's a ...unique...look..."

Oh, and here they are with the little foam insert snapped in...
Really, there are no words...
(and why can't I get my hat--worn to protect you from the horrors of the "I spent my morning with my head in a skinsuit hood" hair) on straight?)

It used to be worse, though--ever since the lenses "transitioned" for the first time when I wore them at the time trials this morning, they have not returned to the full-on clear that they had been when I bought them.  I don't have a picture of the completely clear version, but it's just as well...in their clear state, they simply beg for me to be sporting a white lab coat and a chemistry set.  I can only hope that they never "transition" back fully.

Anyway, enough fashion analysis...the races this morning went well.  The 500 was average--50.23; but the 1500 was my second fastest outdoor 1500 ever, at 2:30.54.  So that's nice.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Holy Headcase, Batman

I think I've mentioned, once or twice, that my brain frequently gets in the way of my body when I'm skating.  And frankly, this just isn't helpful; my body is perfectly capable of getting in its own way without any assistance from my brain.  I know most athletes (ooh, I always feel a little strange when I refer to myself as an "athlete") have this problem now and then but it seems to be a pretty frequent event for me, as demonstrated by last night's experience.

After my American Cup races last weekend in Milwaukee (oh, the Sunday races were so-so--I totally hosed up my first corner entry in the 500 meter and ended up coasting most of the first corner, and the 1000 meter would have been a PB had I skated it before the PB I did on Saturday, but since I did it after, it's simply my second fastest 1000)...where was I?  Oh, yeah--after my Milwaukee races I was feeling a bit stiff and sore at Tuesday's endurance workout, and the laps were spectacularly unspectacular.  So I wasn't expecting much from last night's tempos (race-pace laps).  My plan was to do a rolling start 400 meters and base the rest of my workout on the result.  I usually can do a 37 second lap if I'm having a decent night; I had one or two 36's this year, and a high 35 way back in 2007, but I can also easily throw down a 38, 39, or even a 40 on a given tempo night.  So I figured that, if I couldn't do a 37, I'd bag the rest of the tempos and do something slower.

As I was about to start my lap, though, I saw fellow masters skaters Sprinter Boy and Broomball Boy coasting past.  I knew they were doing 400-meter repeats, and they were planning to do them, and I quote, "really fast."  Which meant, of course, that I hadn't a hope in hell of actually keeping up with them, but I decided to start my 400 with them and just see what happened.  Both are good skaters, and I figured that maybe, if I was (way) behind them, I'd subconsciously mimic their technique and end up skating faster.

And, indeed, I did. By the time we hit the line where I started my watch, I was already a good 30 feet behind them.  But I skated my butt off--drive the knees down the straight, hit the corner wide, tempo up in the corner, drift out on the exit, repeat.  The lap felt great, and when I looked at my watch at the end, I saw...35.37.

Yes, my fastest lap ever at the Oval.

Apparently, my brain--which was anticipating not being able to do a 37--had not been in contact with my body, which was actually capable of a 35.

Or two.  I did another lap with behind "the boys," and it, too, was a 35--35.67.  Then, after the rest break, I did a 400 completely by myself, just to be sure I wasn't experiencing some performance-enhancing draft 50 feet behind the guys.  It was a 36.47, so that was reassuring (I didn't expect a 35, really, because the first two 400's had taken quite a bit out of my legs).

So...I need to work on my brain.  Stop the negative thoughts ("oh, I don't think I can possibly do a 37 tonight..."), start pushing to my body's limits instead of my brain's...and see what happens.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note...indoor ovals are nice, what with being all temperature-controlled and all, but you just can't beat a view like the one we've had the past couple nights at the John Rose Oval...
Yes, that's the full moon between the two rink lights...

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Random Thoughts...

Random thoughts from the past week:

  • If you choose to skate with "the boys," be prepared to work. On Tuesday  I was planning to do a taper workout for the upcoming American Cup races this weekend.  Some of the masters boys were planning to, as well. One of my goals now is to skate with people more often--I think I can count the number of laps I've drafted off of anyone in the last two years on both hands--so when I saw Cop Guy, Aussie Boy and Sprinter Boy winding up to start their warmup laps, I quickly jumped on behind them.  Five fast laps, four hard straightaways, four hard corners, and three, 250 meter accels later, they had completed their warmup.  I, on the other hand, felt that I had completed my warmup and about half of my workout...my usual warmup is more along the lines of "four easy laps."  Still, it was a lot of fun, and I think if these guys let me tag along now and then, I'll become a much better skater.
  • I didn't think it was possible, but I seem to have upped my personal Dorkiness Factor.  I got my new skating glasses and while they do a fantastic job (when they have their little foam insert snapped in) of keeping my eyes from watering on those windy January nights at the oval, they are not exactly a fashion statement.  Well, a Fashion Don't statement, maybe. The glasses are fine, actually--they're nice black-framed sports sunglasses...except that I put Transition lenses in them, so when I wear them inside, as I did today at the American Cup races, they are a heavy black frame with clear lenses.  Nice.  I wanted to get silver frames, but wasn't willing to pay double just to halve my Dorkiness Factor.  (Maybe I'll post a lovely photo when I get home; I forgot the camera cord this weekend).
  • Discovery from the drive down to Milwaukee last night:  McDonald's Chicken McBites and an ice cream cone, while tasty, are not the best "to go" meal.  You see, as soon as the nice McDonald's employee hands you the ice cream cone, you effectively have only one hand.  And while you might be able to unwrap a nice, tidy cheeseburger using only one hand, it's quite difficult to open your McBites, open the sauce, stage the McBites and sauce on the passenger seat in such a way as to allow easy access while avoiding spilling, and simultaneously contain the drip-fest that is happening in the cone hand.  By the time my meal was prepped and I was ready to pull out of the parking lot there was ice cream on the steering wheel, Sweet and Sour sauce on the emergency brake, and a handful of fries had made a successful bid for freedom and are now roaming free somewhere on the Subaru floor mats.
  • And finally, and most important...Personal Bests are nice!  I skated a 1000 meters and a 3k this morning (and I do mean morning; warmups were at 6:15, and I was done racing by 8:40 am), and got a personal best in both.  1:32.62 in the 1000, down from 2008's 1:34.67, and a 4:51.63, in the 3k, down from last February's 4:55.91.  I was hoping to break 4:50, but I'll take the 4:51.  Tomorrow is a 500 and another 1000, and I hope they go as well as today did.  Oh--and no PVC's in the races! (some before and after, but I don't care about those.)
I like when all my random thoughts are good thoughts!