Michaela Sue

It's more-or-less spring now, though it's been feeling like summer recently, so I guess it's time for the annual winter in review post.  At any rate, the Pettit National Ice Center is in the process of melting off the 400 meter oval, so the speed skating season is over. ( Read more... )

I've been spending a lot of time at the Pettit National Ice center, between the long-track speed skating and the running.  They often have the local "B-96!" radio station playing, and they seem to run "I love the 80s!" segments often.  I guess this is great for us old peoplemasters skaters, enabling us to relive our youth. 

One of the things we have now that we didn't in my youth is Google.  I heard a lot of popular songs (you could hardly avoid that), but if you just randomly hear stuff on the radio you're lucky if you hear what the actual song title is.  Filling my memory are a lot of names of famous bands, titles of songs, and lyrics and tunes, and, for the most part, no connections between them.  There are lots of really famous hits by really well-known bands for which I've certainly heard the song many times and of course I've heard of the band, but I never had any idea they did that.  And even in the case of the few groups I liked and was something of a fan of, all I knew was whatever they chose to print in the cassette tape "J-card" or the little booklet in the CD case.   It's not like there was a Wikipedia entry with additional trivia.

Now and then I hear something I remember from long ago and think to just type it into google and see what appears.  Remember "Tainted Love?"  It had a rather distinct sound, and was a big hit at one time.  Well, it was written by Ed Cobb and recorded by Gloria Jones in 1965.  Before I was born.  The version people my age who grew up in the USA remember was released by Soft Cell in 1981 in the UK.  A year or two later it was a big hit in the US.  Who knew?  I sure didn't.  I mean, it's not like it was a secret, but how would you happen to know?  Yes, the music video is on youtube. I'm so old I remember when MTV played music, but I don't recall seeing this back in the day. It is a glorious example of a weird early music video. The early days of MTV were weirdly wonderful. Everyone had to start producing music videos, but besides not necessarily having much of a budget, back then music videos had just been invented and no one knew what they were supposed to look like yet. Thus, they were fantastic.  ("Tainted Love" might not be much of an actual love song, but in my personal case what it reminds me of is holding hands, with a girl.  A witty and charming and cute girl, as I recall.)

And, speaking of wonderful music videos, I did see back in the day-but only a few times-the one for Chris De Burgh's "Don't Pay the Ferryman."  It's right here. That's truly a fantastic video from back in the day. 

I wonder if other people's experiences are similar to mine, so I thought I'd write about this and ask if anyone has any comments on how this works for them.

Lying in bed at night, settled and still, the most prominent sensation (given that there aren't many) is the beating of my heart, and the sensation of my pulse around my body.  I always find the sensation of the pulse interesting.  It's not simultaneous throughout the body and when you start pondering the actual hydraulic delay from heart to feet and then the nerve delay from feet to brain and then contemplate how the brain heavily processes our perceptions of time and simultaneity I can lie there thinking about it for a long time.  These are the things on my mind in the evening.

After a day in which I've done some hard exercise, especially exercise late in the day, my resting heart rate will be elevated, as expected.  Sometimes elevated quite a bit, and that becomes an obvious sensation.  I tend to feel restless even though tired after a hard day, and I always wonder how much of that is the obvious racing heart sensation and how much is from other aspects of post-exercise physiology.  I suspect the brain itself is still a bit revved up, and the muscles even if not really achy still feel used.

My morning lying-down heart rate is typically around 50 or low 50s, the evening lying-down rate if I haven't done much that day maybe mid-50s.  After a fun hard day it can be up in the low 70s.  Last Monday after a long session at the oval it was up to 80 for a while.  It's not surprising, it's obviously not uncomfortable in any way, but it certainly is noticeable while lying in bed.  All revved up with no place to go.  How much do you notice your post-exercise heart rate? 

I had been thinking of maybe taking it easy speed skating today.  Instead I had my highest-speed fall yet, followed by my fastest timed lap yet, followed by my fastest timed full 400 meter lap.  Then I think I finally figured out one of the big things I'm doing wrong with my right leg in the crossovers, and I think I'm improving that.  And then finally the coach sucked me into joining one of my fellow old guys masters skaters for the workout he was doing.  I ended up spending over two hours on the ice. 

Shortly after I started skating one of the Real Athletes had a fall on the front straight (no harm) and then shortly afterwards I had my own fall, which was the good kind, didn't hurt at all.  I fell entering the turn at full speed, slid along and hit the pads at pretty good speed, but I had enough time sliding to set up for it and it was pretty much a non-event.  After a few minutes rest I did a 37.1 in the inside lane, my fastest yet, followed a few minutes later by what worked out to be a full 400 meter lap, crossing from inside to outside lane, in 37.3 (I hadn't planned to do the full inside-outside lane lap, I was just avoiding traffic on the backstraight, but it worked out nicely).  Those both work out to around 37km/hr average.

I get lots of very good advice, but I often find it very hard to really understand what people are telling me about what I'm doing because I really have a hard time feeling what I'm doing.  I've been told I point my right foot out in the crossovers, but it doesn't really feel like it to me and I've had a hard time correcting since I don't really know what I'm doing.  I saw someone else skating and pointing his right toe out in the crossovers and realized that I was probably doing something similar, and the contrast with the motion of the right feet of those skaters we can confidently assume are doing it right was suddenly clear.  Now I have a better idea what to change, and I can already feel the whole motion of my foot in the crossovers is much smoother and easier now.  It's always really exciting to figure something like this out.

Oh, yeah, and then why not join in on a bunch of sets of 300-200-100 meters?  It was a chance to practice crossovers, entering the turns at speed in the draft of my fellow old guy masters skater (I need to remember to use the term "masters speed skaters" because it sounds so gosh darn great, like we're a bunch of experienced experts, rather than just referring to us as "old guys," which doesn't sound nearly as impressive). 

In an ancient ritual that I made up myself six or seven years ago (plenty of time for it to seem like an ancient ritual) I did some ice skating to celebrate the winter solstice (as opposed to other random winter days when, most likely, I do some ice skating).  On Wednesday night at the Pettit Center our coach worked over the Wednesday workout group fairly hard, which was a combination of tiring and fun.  I'm getting less bad at skating in a group and maintaining a semi-stable gap behind the person in front of me, though, really, none of our group is all that good at it.  It's harder than it looks!  Thursday I was back at the oval on the speed skates after work for a while.  I timed some laps, did a 38.5 alone and not drafting anyone (just over 37 km/hr).  After that I went downtown to Red Arrow Park, across the street from City Hall and site of an outdoor refrigerated skating rink (and a Starbucks).  I thought it would be fun to mess around on the hockey skates.  Since vacation time is starting it was a lot busier than a typical Thursday night.  I've gotten used to being on clap skates on a 400 meter oval, and being on a tiny crowded rink is different.  Speed skaters are an attentive, organized sort of group, always aware that someone on the national team might be coming around at 50km/hr and you need to be out of the way or else on a predictable path.  I'm not used to the Brownian Motion chaos!  I am, finally, more or less used to the hockey skates.  The first time I put them on this year I pretty much fell over backwards immediately, not used to the tiny short blades with tons of rocker and the high, stiff boots.  You can lean way back on the long speed skate blades.

I'm also used to the ice on the Olympic training center's oval, finished to high standards by the skilled Zamboni drivers at the Pettit National Ice Center.  The ice has been really excellent lately and at the national meet this month an amazing number of competitors set new personal bests for the Pettit Center and a new track record for the 10,000m was set by Jonathan Kuck in an amazing effort.   Over at Red Arrow, not so much.  The ice was extremely rough when I showed up and then they cleared us off to resurface the ice.  I always thought of a Zamboni ice machine as an extremely low speed vehicle, but it turns out that they can be pushed to sufficient speed that even with the studded tires they will skid on the ice.  The driver actually had the thing in full drifts in every turn he made, aggressively cranking the steering into the skid as the machine slid sideways.  I had no idea that was even possible!  On the one hand, you have to admit the job went very very quickly.  On the other hand, I've never seen such a poor resurfacing job from a Zamboni that didn't have major mechanical problems.  It was hilarious!  I'd never even imagined such a thing!  So, overall, it was a wonderful amusing time at Red Arrow.  (But today I just went to the Pettit.  Where the ice was very nearly perfect.)  After the holiday vacation time is past I'll have to go back to Red Arrow, preferably on a nice cold night that discourages most of the normal people from showing up, because fast laps on the tiny space are fun when the rink is empty, as is being outdoors at night with the city all around lit up, and maybe a nice cold wind blowing. 

Today was, as you might imagine, a relatively uncrowded day at the oval during the speed skating session.  I always joke that you can't take the coaching out of the coach.  Bob shouted some advice to me as I practiced starts, though he's not normally coaching me.  He just can't resist being helpful, and since most of the elite competitors he's normally coaching weren't around I guess he figured he might as well give me advice. 

I think I'm learning the way this works. Any workout plan the coach has that includes the word "interval" is going to hurt. "Tempo" means the workout will hurt. Tempo intervals, yes, for sure. If the coach explains the plan and asks, "does that sound easy or hard?" that probably means it's going to be hard. But we do this because it's fun! Or something like that! We're convinced it's fun! It's fun sprinting down a straight, coming to the end, standing up and coasting and leaning way over in the turn way out in the outside lane because it turns out you are going pretty fast. Keep up the training and you can go faster, and going fast is highly prized among speed skaters, as you might imagine given that our sport literally has "speed" right in the name.

I went shopping for pants that fit better.

( long discussion on finding pants that more-or-less fit me )

I've joined the Wednesday evening workout group many of my speed skating friends are part of. I think clearly the best part of the interval workout (to the extent there is a best part of an interval workout) is the part where the coach lays out the plan. The plan is something along the general lines of "You'll skate 300 meters, rest 300, skate 300, rest 200, then 200 and 200, and twice 100 and 100, and..." and so on. And I'm thinking, dude, wait, I'm still just standing here and you haven't even finished explaining the workout and I've already forgotten most of what you said. We're going to get started and our brains will stop working due to lack of oxygen and we'll be reduced to doing what we always seem to do during the interval workouts, which is shout "Wait! Wait! What are we doing next?" to each other. Somewhere in the world I'm guessing there is a coach who is a former auctioneer. "Five five four hundred three hundred three hundred two hundred three hundred two hundred do I hear five hundred?"

Those skaters are just screwed.

In the book Speed On Skates by Barry Publow, as the last item in a list titled "Interesting Research-Supported Facts about Speedskating Biomechanics," we find this:

• Speedskaters are regarded to be generally better-looking than other athletes, to train harder, to have a higher tolerance for pain, and to be more friendly than most sport athletes, in the author's unbiased opinion.
  

I'm sure that's unbiased. I will say, based on my experience looking at athletes, speedskaters sure are, on average, a really good-looking group of people. It's also a generally friendly group of people. I see speedskaters who train very hard, though I don't really see the elite athletes in other sports whereas I do see really elite skaters at the Pettit Center, so of course they train like monsters compared to normal people.

My eyeglasses are getting old and just worn out, and before buying new ones obviously I figured I ought to get my eyes examined. It's been about 10 years, longer than I had thought. I saw the eye doctor this morning, it turns out I can see somewhat better than the average and there has been no measurable change in the lens prescription that I need. No glaucoma, no sign of cataracts, my retinas look just fine. My father had macular degeneration late in his life. The doctor said that besides genetics, which you can't do anything about, the biggest risk factor is smoking. I noted that I ran to work yesterday, 9 miles (14km) each way... She said that obviously the diet-and-exercise thing is pretty well taken care of in my case! (Endurance athlete visits the doctor, says that he isn't planning to take up smoking...) The only thing I've noticed about my vision is that the extreme close focus, not the reading or the fine work inserting the nano-emitter into the tiny sleeve into the tiny fitting sort of thing but the nose-almost-touching sort of thing that isn't really a practical important ability, isn't what it used to be, but, hey, I'm 39. So, all good on that front. I'll have to go eyeglass shopping.

I suppose I really ought to schedule a general physical exam, too. I mean, if the mass spectrometers get Preventative Maintenance visits from the service engineer, I ought to as well, right?