Update Time

What with teaching and skating and traveling and Thanksgiving-ing, I haven't been blogging.  So here's a brief update from the past week:

• Skating Tuesday and Wednesday (after Saturday's PW--Personal Worst--time trials) was OK.  Tuesday's endurance went better than Wednesday's intervals, but both were semi-OK.  Sort of. Conditions Wednesday were bad--63 degrees, which led to slow, frosty, hacked-up ice.  I don't do well mentally in such conditions because I don't know how much "slow" to ascribe to the conditions and how much to me--so I end up feeling like I was slow even if maybe I wasn't.  So we'll see how this week goes.  I've just adjusted the thyroid meds again, so the roller coaster continues.
• We went to the cabin for Thanksgiving, which was a blast.  Dinner was at my cousins' cabin--16 people.  Fortunately not all of the 11 dogs made an appearance.  Speaking of dogs, I decided, before the five-and-a-half hour car trip to the cabin, that it was time that Greasy Dog had a bath (she hasn't had one in, oh, four years.).  Since it was a bit chilly to do a full hose-and-shampoo job outside, and the Hubster wasn't thrilled with the idea of 75 pounds of hairy dog clogging up the shower drain, I decided to try a waterless dog shampoo--just spritz, towel dry, and voila! No more dog stink.  Nice in theory, and it actually worked pretty well, but I'd like to know who decided that it would be a good idea if this ...

         ...smelled like this...

Yes, the waterless dog shampoo is Blueberry Muffin scented.  I'm not sure I can describe the damp-blueberry-dog smell that continually wafted from the back seat on the drive up to the cabin, and I'm not sure I should try.

• Saturday night it snowed at the cabin, and I got the idea that the Hubster and the dog and I should go for a midnight stroll in the snow.  After a few mild complaints from hubby and hound, we all went out and had a wonderful time wandering through the snow in the dark.  We paused to take several pictures; the snow and some filtered moonlight made flashlights unnecessary, and the snow made flash pictures quite interesting.  Also, apparently Keira is actually laser-eye-devil-dog in disguise, as this photo reveals. 

And that's pretty much all the excitement at the Long Track Life lately.  Next up: four weeks of work and skating before the Christmas break.  Should be interesting!

Hard Day

It was a hard day at the Oval yesterday.  Not because of the slow ice or the wind or the tired legs or the bad times, but because of what we found out after we finished skating.

The Minnesota inline skating, broomball, and long track ice communities had lost a great guy Friday night.

I have referred to him here as Broomball Guy, because that's where I met him years ago.  His real name was Andy. Andy was a talented inliner and new but fast long tracker, a broomball player, a husband, a dad, and a genuinely nice guy.  He's the one who led the ice and dryland workout last weekend that I wrote about here; he was always happy to help other skaters, and he was excited about working toward MAT I again this year.

Andy was signed up to race Saturday morning.  He and Sprinter Boy had been texting back and forth about it Friday night, so we were all surprised and a bit worried when he didn't show up yesterday morning and didn't return Sprinter Boy's texts.  Finally, a couple hours later, Andy's wife texted back; she said call me, it's important, and she left her number.  Unfortunately it was a wrong number.  By now we were very worried, and Sprinter Boy and Inliner Boy began texting and calling anyone they could think of who might know Andy's wife's phone number.  Sprinter Boy finally reached the girlfriend of another inliner/ice skater, and we could tell that the new wasn't good.  When he hung up, in shock, he told us that Andy had passed away Friday night.

We are all still in shock.  Andy was a young guy--early thirties--and incredibly fit.  He raced inline marathons all summer and was hitting the ice workouts hard already this fall.  We don't know what happened yet; all we know is that we lost a great guy.  I can't imagine what his wife and young daughter are going through, so if you can, send some good thoughts or prayers or whatever kind of positive energy you personally believe in their way.

Advice

It was a good week of skating, and I got some great advice from two skaters that I deeply respect.

Unfortunately, the two pieces of advice directly contradict each other.

On Tuesday night, I got to skate with Mr. Smooth.  (I call him that for his skating style, not his pickup lines.  I have no idea what his pickup lines are like.)  Because I had to work late, I ended up getting to the oval for just the tail end of the usual practice time, and had to skate the entire late-night (9-10:00) adult open speedskating session as well in order to complete my workout.

The open speedskating session has the advantage of being lightly populated; instead of dodging Midgets (yes, that's an actual age group) all night, I got to share 400 meters of freshly Zamboni'd ice with just three other adult skaters--one of whom was Mr. Smooth.   Despite the fact that he'd already skated the entire afternoon adult open speedskating session, Mr. Smooth joined me for my remaining four sets of five laps.  Knowing I like to lead so that I can keep track of my un-draft-aided lap times, he was kind enough to follow me for the 20 laps.  Midway through the first 400 meters, though, I heard an exclamation of surprise from behind me.

"Wow, your knee drive has improved incredibly.  It looks really great."

Or words to that effect.  At any rate, it was a sincere compliment and it made my day.  I've been working on my knee drive...

The advice came when we got back into the warming house.  My armswing, Mr. Smooth said, needs some work.

"Try to swing your arms straight front-to-back," he said, " and not so high on the backswing."

This didn't come as a surprise, because Coach TieGuy has chanted "front to back, to the hip" into my earbud more times than I can count.  Apparently with not as much effect as he or I would like.

So anyway, Tuesday was fun.  Then on Thursday, I talked to Mel (who was on the ice for her new long track coaching gig) a bit about technique.  Like Mr. Smooth, she said that my general technique--including knee drive--was looking good, but that my armswing needed work.

"What you need to do," she said, "is swing your arms more side-to-side."

This actually didn't come as a surprise either, because it pretty much mirrored what Derek Parra had said at camp last month.  So two bits of armswing advice, totally opposite, each supported by a skater and a coach who know what they are talking about.  Great--now what do I do?

I think it probably comes down to doing what feels most comfortable for each individual; probably one technique works best for some people and one for others.  Unfortunately the only armswing that feels natural to me is...well, come to think of it, no armswing really feels comfortable to me, even my current stiff-and-ineffective one.  So clearly I have some figuring out to do.

I also need to figure out one critical component of my new, this-is-how-the-real-skaters-do-it technique--I really don't know what to do to go faster.  I can do the approximately correct technique at 70-80% pace, but don't know how to get to 95-100%.  With my old "Bunny on Crack" technique it was simple--I just moved my legs faster and more forcefully, like you do when running.  That's not going to cut it with the standard use-the-glide speedskating stride, though.  And "faster and more forceful" is really the only strategy I know.

I asked Mel about it, and she had some advice.

"It's all about pressure to the ice," she said. "Get lower, and imagine that you weigh more..."

Well, that's some advice I should be able to take.  In fact, I don't even have to imagine that I weigh more...

(For the record, I'm predicting slow for tomorrow's 500 and 1500 meters, my first official time trials of the season. I'm really sore from yesterday, and with the not-being-able-to-figure-out-how-to-go-faster thing, I'm thinking times will be slow.  All just part of the learning process, though--not to mention the getting-back-in-shape process)

The Curse of the Stretchy Pants

So the skating season seems to be off to a good start.

The diet season, unfortunately, is not.

I'm blaming my stretchy pants.

Not really, of course, but they're certainly not helping.  See, I'm not typically a "girly stretchy pant" wearer; I tend more towards jeans, and not fashion jeans either--Carhartt and Cabela's jeans, with buttons and zippers and waistbands that hold their own against expanding muffin tops.  My "kicking back around the house" jeans are just older, grubbier versions of my "Fridays and any other days I can get away with it at work" jeans; in other words, they still exert the same "no, you can't cram any more PopTart fall-out into us" influence as my "nice" jeans.

These stretchy pants, though.  They're something else.  I never expected to like them, and in fact, never intended to buy them.  But every time I went into this particular outdoorsy-gear store (in search of winter jackets or warm gloves or whatever), the happy salesgirls would accost me and enthusiastically extol the virtues of these particular stretchy pants. Most comfortable thing they'd ever worn, they'd say.  Incredible fabric, they'd say, you've got to try it.

But stretchy pants are not, as I've said, my thing.  Especially not $40 stretchy pants.  Until one day I went into the store and some of them (the less popular brown ones) had become $10 stretchy pants.

So I bought a pair.  The ol' Cabela's jeans were becoming a bit snug for comfortable wearing around the house, so $10 for some comfy "temporary fat pants" didn't seem like a bad deal.

But it's quickly becoming apparent that it was a bad deal.  A very bad deal.  Because these pants are way too comfortable.  Soft, warm, with a nice friendly waistband that stays up just perfectly but doesn't ever feel tight.

And therein lies the problem.  When I wear the stretchy pants, I don't think I need to lose weight.  All other evidence--the fact that I can only fit into two pairs of my jeans; the fact that my new Mat I skinsuit will not see the light of day with me in it unless something drastic happens; the visual I subjected myself to on Saturday when I positioned myself in front of the full-wall mirror in the oval weight room for our dryland session --points to a distinct need to shed some home-grown insulation.  But when I wear my forgiving stretchy pants, all is right with the world and I reach for another PopTart.

So something's gotta change.  Unfortunately, I've never been good at dieting by brute force willpower.  As with my skating, I can't just decide that I want to do it and then do it; I have to be somehow motivated by an internal change of heart.  Or, since I'm a behavior analyst, I'll put it in behavioral terms--the reinforcement contingencies need to change.  Somehow, losing weight and fitting into my skinsuit again needs to become more reinforcing than a Brown Sugar Cinnamon PopTart.   I had the change of heart with skating--suddenly, skating hard again became more reinforcing than sitting on the couch.  Now I just need it to happen with eating.  It's happened before, I know it will happen again; sooner or later, my lame attempts at dieting/changing my eating habits/whatever you want to call it will last longer than a day, and I'll start to head back toward "skating weight."

And the stretchy pants will head back to the closet.

For now, though, it's fat and frustrating in the ol' long track life kitchen.

That Was Fun!

First day of ice for the 2012-13 season today.  Last year I was out of town (at the SLC Masters Camp) on the first day of ice, which is typically a Saturday, so my first day was the following Tuesday. I had this to say about that--and I'm guessing, when the first nighttime skate of the season rolls around next week, that that's exactly how I'll be feeling.  Nighttime skate practice at the John Rose Oval is the quintessential skating event for me, and I start looking forward again to that first glimpse of the rink lights through the trees pretty much as soon as the oval closes for the season in the spring.

Today we had morning ice time, though, which always seems a little weird to me.  Usually, if I'm on oval ice in the daylight I'm racing.  Today was just a "get reacquainted with the ice" day, which turned out to be a good thing.  The weather was less than ideal--50 degrees and drizzling.  Even with the refrigerated ice, it looked like we were in for a damp, slow-ice skate.

Here's the oval, all drizzly and frosted, waiting for a fresh Zamboni-ing and some skaters:

I ended up having a blast, though, even with the questionable weather.  I started by doing one set of my own workout, a slow interval thing, then got to talking with Sprinter Boy (whose name may have to change to AllAround Boy if he continues the distance skating precedent he set in the 5K in Milwaukee last weekend), Broomball Guy, and Cop Guy during my break between sets.  They were doing more of an endurance workout--10, 8, 6, 4, and 2 laps--and invited me to join them.  That sounded like more fun than battling the slow, frosty ice and the wind by myself, so I jumped on the back of their paceline for the 8 lap set.

Unfortunately, the 8 laps were cut short at 5 when Sprinter Boy, who was leading, crashed.  Although I was last of the four skaters in the paceline, I immediately reacted with the catlike reflexes that are my trademark, and promptly crashed as well--although I hadn't actually run into anyone or been interfered with in any way by Sprinter Boy's crash.  I simply saw someone fall and reacted by falling myself.

We both emerged unscathed, though, and restarted the 8 laps for the final three.  However, it seemed that my ability to hang onto their pace had been exhausted by the first five laps, and I was dropped pretty quickly.  I tried a bit more of my interval workout, then a couple more laps trying desperately to get back into the guys' draft for their four lap set, and then decided I'd better call it a day.  I was tired and getting a bit sore already.

Post-skate, complete with bad hair, misted glasses, and a big smile

Except...I had also told the guys that I'd join them in their post-skate dryland workout.  And then Melissa and Inliner Boy came in off the ice and said they'd do the dryland, too, and, well, suddenly I ended up doing 12 minutes of downtime.  (I decided, midway through a set of compression jumps, that I had definitely found a great group to work out with when Inliner Boy suddenly said "man, I'm regretting that PopTart right now.")

So the season is off to a great start.  Due to some unfortunate inappropriate button-pushing, I cleared my stopwatch before I could see my lap times (and how slow they undoubtedly were) and thus am feeling optimistic about how the workout went.  It was a blast skating with the guys, and I hope to do more of that this year--if they don't get sick of me tagging along and don't kill me with their workouts (Sprinter Boy and Broomball Guy are both in their early 30's, so their energy level and speed does not exactly match that of a 49-year-old hypothyroid woman).  So...so far so good!

(By the time the ice time was over, there was so much frost on the ice that the last few skaters--who were short-tracking in the infield--shoveled the track and then had a snowball fight with the resulting pile of snow. If you look closely, you can see Aussie Boy about to fire a snowball at the little kid who is busily gathering his own ammo. Weird weather!)

Workout Number One

Today was workout number one of the "I want to get serious about skating again" plan.

I was more than a little nervous.  It's pretty easy to be excited about working out hard and getting serious again when you haven't actually worked out in a couple weeks; it's easy to forget how bad things were.  But if I exert a little effort, I can remember that almost all of my September workouts--except, for some reason, the North Shore Inline Marathon--were horrible.  If today's workout was as bad as September's, the whole "get serious again" thing might be out the window in a big fat hurry.

So as I drove to the Dome after work today for an inline workout, I was fervently hoping for a good skate.  I wasn't expecting fast lap times; I'm more realistic than that.  What I wanted--and what I had far too little of this summer--was a workout that felt "normal hard" instead of "weird flat undermedicated hard" or "weird shaky overmedicated out of breath hard."  I don't mind workouts being hard and painful; I just want them to be normal hard and painful.  In fact, in a sick-somewhat-masochistic-athlete way, I miss hard painful workouts.  So I really just wanted a good, hard, normal skate.

And...I got one .

My laps weren't fast, and my heart rate was pretty high, but I felt normal.  I had that happy "wow I'm having so much fun skating, gee this is easy, I want to go faster" delusion that I used to get early in the season.  Unfitness always rears up and bites me in the butt after a few sets of laps, but feeling good and overconfident the first part of the first dome or oval workout of the season is kind of a tradition--a tradition I haven't been able to experience in a while.  And it felt great.

I ended up doing  three sets of two laps hard (ish), one lap easy, two laps hard (each lap is about 600 yards, so the equivalent of 3 laps/1.5 laps/3 laps on the oval).  A relatively short workout--I had originally planned five sets but realized quickly that I was a bit optimistic in that--but enough for someone who hasn't worked out much this past month (except for camp, of course.)  I felt like I managed to do my "new technique" fairly well, which is interesting because last year at this time--when I had only been doing the improved long track technique for a couple months--I wrote in my workout log that I couldn't do the technique in the Dome because of the slippery floor.  I didn't have a problem this time, so either a) I'm better at it; or b) the floor is cleaner this year or c) I'm not doing it right anymore.  It felt like I was doing it right, but we all know I'm notoriously bad at sensing what I'm doing (Derek Parra bent my long track blades for me when I was in Salt Lake--apparently long track blades need to be bent as well as rockered now--and was quite surprised when I reported that I couldn't detect any change).

So.  It was good.  My heart rate was, as I said, pretty high, but I think that was due to lack of fitness.  My usual rubric goes like this: slow with a low heartrate means I'm either overtrained or undermedicated (unless I'm just taking it easy; I can do that with the best of them.  Today, in my warmup laps, I was passed by a woman wearing a dress, jeans, and quad skates.  Yes, all three "kiss of death to speed" factors at once.  So if I'm taking it easy I expect slow/low heartrate.  I just don't want it when I'm trying to skate hard.)  Slow with a high heartrate means I'm either underfit or overmedicated, and since I didn't have the horrible "shaky legs out of breath" feeling that means overmedicated, I think I'm out of shape. ( At least for now I'm not overmedicated; I'm still in the process of adjusting.)

Anyway, out of shape I can deal with.  Needing to lose weight I can deal with--BTDT many times.  Thyroid adjustment is more of a wild card; I haven't nailed it yet this med-adjustment-go-round, but I always have before so I'm optimistic.  I guess the big wild card is the PVC's; if I get them regularly in races I'm likely to get pretty discouraged pretty quickly.  For now, though, today's workout was great.  And the best part is, after one more Dome workout on Wednesday, the oval opens for the ice season on Saturday.  And I'm happy to report that I'm excited about it and ready to work hard.

A Direction

I think I finally have A Direction. (No, not One Direction.  That would be creepy).

As you'll be all too aware if you've spent any time at all in the Long Track Life during the past, oh, six months, I've lately been floundering aimlessly as far as my skating is concerned.  If you haven't been around lately, check out this post; it will explain things nicely.  Physically I'm fat and slow and on a thyroid rollercoaster; mentally I'm flat and unmotivated and discouraged.

As fellow skate-blogger Sharon says, I've lost my skating mojo.

So for the past couple weeks, I've been thinking hard about what direction I want my skating to go this season.  At the beginning of October I had decided to take it easy until the oval opens Nov. 9.  Now it's almost Nov. 9,and I need to decide what to do with the ice season.  Back off, focus on technique, and basically just goof around; or get back into the groove, focus, work hard, and see if I can make my improved technique pay off with some faster times before I get any older.

I think I'm going with the latter.

Yesterday,  I had a kind of epiphany, maybe the epiphany I was hoping for when I wrote the "Blah" post in early October.  I think there were lots of reasons for it:  Coach TieGuy called out of the blue to see how things were going (I think he feared that, since ice season is less than a week away and he hadn't heard from me, I was perhaps dead), which got me thinking seriously about the upcoming season again.  The American Cup race in Milwaukee is happening this weekend, and many masters friends are just killing it (a new and very talented skater just earned Master's Category I; Sprinter Boy, who prefers distances of three laps or less, absolutely crushed his 5k; Marty Haire, a very fast skater in the 50+ class, just qualified for the US Championships in the 5k; and Mel, in her first time on ice since breaking her jaw, qualified for the US Championships in the 3k.  Congrats, guys!).  I usually do the Milwaukee Am Cup, but skipped it this year due to a combination of logistical issues (I would have had to bring Keira with me, and she is not a fan of that) and general skating suckiness. And I found, when I started seeing my friends' pictures and results and Facebook posts, that I really missed it.  I don't like being aimless and lazy and unmotivated.  And I want to skate hard and fast again.

So I have a direction.  Screw backing off and goofing around--I am going to try, one last time, to make the qualifying time for the Olympic Trials next year.

For a full report of how that happens, check this post from last year.  Yes, qualifying for the Trials has been a goal before; in fact, it's been a goal for five years.  I've never come close to the required times since they were lowered in 2008, so the big question is, do I actually have a chance?

I think I do, although it is a HUGE long shot.  Here are the stats (it's going to get a bit technical here, so feel free to let your eyes glaze over, wander to the fridge for a snack, check your email...):  my only hope of qualifying is in the 5k,where the time is 8:02.03.  My PB in that distance is from 2007; in only my second 5k ever I skated an 8:16.0.  Fourteen seconds is a lot; it's over one second per lap.  And I have never actually come close to that time again, although I've gotten significant personal bests in all other distances.  The 5k is what I need to improve, and it also seems to be the race that I've had the worst luck in.

My 3k time has improved 10 seconds (Milwaukee PB) since 2007.  A corresponding improvement in my 5k would put me just under the qualifying time.  But, my "fast ice" 3k PB has only improved 5 seconds since 2007--a corresponding improvement in my 5k would put me several seconds over the qualifying time. Now, since I didn't get to fast ice for a 3k last year,  my "fast ice" 3k PB is from my "pre-New-and-Improved-Technique" days, so it was skated with Bunny On Crack technique.  So maybe the Milwaukee PB is more relevant as a benchmark, since that one featured my new technique. But, again, I haven't skated a good 5k on "fast ice" since 2007.  Calgary and Salt Lake are the "fast ice" ovals; the altitude makes the times faster, and I would definitely need to go to one of these ovals to have any shot at making the time.  Problem is, I have a four-year history of having epic fail races at Salt Lake, and I don't know why.  I've done better at Calgary, but it's a much more expensive place to get to so I don't go there as often.  So maybe I wouldn't even be able to skate a good 5k on fast ice--and with out a good perfect race, an 8:02.03 ain't happening.

And then, of course, of there's the issue of my body perhaps not cooperating.  There's the whole "optimizing the thyroid meds" thing, not to mention the fact that many of last year's competitions featured a heart arrhythmia that seemed to be brought on by maximal exertion and adrenaline--the exact factors that one finds in an important race.  And then there's the not-insignificant fact that I'm 49; I'll be 50 by the time the Trials roll around.

But still, I want to try.  If I try and fail, oh well--I'm getting pretty experienced at that, so no big deal.  If I don't try, well, I'll always wonder if I could have done it.

So I think I need to try.  Maybe I'll change my mind after I start skating again, if I find I'm still really struggling like I've been for the past six months.  But right now I want to try.  And so I've spent the weekend figuring out my November skating plan, as well as thinking about non-skating peripherals such as stretching, core exercises, and reducing the size of my ass.  Now all I need is ice.

I don't know where it will lead, or how long it will last, but it's nice to, at least for now, have a direction.