beige_alert | Thoughts on Speed Skating

I've been learning to speed skate recently.

I did a small amount of ice skating as a child, which I guess is pretty common in this part of the world, but it was never something I did seriously. Much more recently, I bought some hockey-style skates a few years ago and added messing around on skates to my winter activities. Mostly, what I like doing is going fast.

Milwaukee is home to one of the fairly few indoor 400 meter long-track speed skating ovals, the Pettit National Ice Center. In the USA the other indoor oval is in Salt Lake City. There are currently 12 in the world, plus some number of outdoor ovals more dependant on the weather. If you want to speed skate, this is one of the places to be.

I've been thinking about taking the beginner speed skating class for years, but this year all the time I've spent at the ice center's running track, watching the speed skaters, got me motivated.

Speed Skating 1 is intended for people new to speed skating, though with some amount of ice skating experience in general. Speed skates are not like hockey skates! It's very odd to put them on the first time and go out on the ice and suddenly find that you don't have any idea how to skate after all. The long skate blades extend well beyond both toe and heel, giving new opportunities to trip over yourself. The boots don't extend up past the ankle. The blades have very little rocker and are sharpened perfectly flat on the bottom, giving no grip at all if you aren't on an edge but gliding very efficiently. The speed skater's basic position is down low with knees bent and bent forward at the waist. It's not only aerodynamic but also the position you need to push properly, but it's not easy for the legs.

I've been enjoying the sport. Pretty well the only way to go faster on level ground under pure human power is on a bicycle, and not much faster at short distances (for long distances the advantages of having the bicycle support your weight instead of holding yourself up in an awkward bent-knee position are large) and without all the machinery you get a good sensation of speed even when, like me, you're still pretty slow. (The sensation of speed is even stronger when you wipe out and s-l-i-d-e along on the ice...) It's fantastic exercise. More than anything else I do it almost demands a high effort. Once you're down in the basic position, your legs are going to get tired in a hurry anyway, so you might as well go like hell. You can go all out or you can back off a bit, but you can only back off so far before you're just standing up circulating around the rest lane waiting for your heart rate to come back down.

Speed skating requires good technique and form, and the strength not only to propel yourself but to maintain good form while doing so. One of the skaters I've talked to said that when he started skating he met someone who had been skating for fifty years. He asked him if he ever got tired of just turning left. His reply was that no two laps are the same. Cliche though it sounds, there's always something to work on improving. I suppose that makes it like swimming, though I don't swim with any seriousness. Running isn't without anything to think about doing correctly, but it's not really in the same category of something you spend endless hours trying to get just right. I like running on the running track there, but that does have much more of a droning in circles feel to it than the skating does.

The classes are $100 (plus $18 to rent skates) and run one hour a week for six weeks. The Pettit Center's open speed skating sessions are open to anyone with (currently) $10, and they will rent speed skates for $3 during the speed skating sessions. They don't rent speed skates during the regular public skating because people going very fast don't mix so well with people practicing figure skating....