If your interested in picking one up and looking fine for the spectators, give me a shout or contact our team manager (Andrew) directly.  We need to get a minimum order of 15 together.  I want two, so we just need 13 more

Back on July 1st, also known as Canada day here in the northern realm, I skated the annual Canada Day marathon in Cambridge.  This event is kind of in the middle of nowhere, and not so easy to get to, but its worth drive (special thanks to Kaye for the drive!).    The pavement is pretty good throughout, and the entire back stretch is clean relatively new pavement, where you can easily cruise in the mid-30’s (kph).  There is always BBQ hot dogs afterwords and lots of catching up with skating friends, from both sides of the border actually.

Along with driving duties Kaye took some video, I did a quick edit of it, and you can watch the race from start to finish as captured at the finish area.

Note: Peter posted results over here, and a report.  A couple of picture albums, here and here.

For me, this race was a wash out.  It started out great, but my legs/boots caved on me.  The start was actually very comfortable, I was surprised that it wasn’t faster, but I guess everyone was waiting until after the first turn.  Off the line I was able to easily slot in behind Morgane who was the first to the front.  She doesn’t provide a lot of draft (much smaller), but we weren’t skating hard either.

We cruised down the big hill leading into the finish area, and started climbing up the hill out of the finish area. The pack started accelerating, split into a couple of pace lines and I tried to accelerate as well…but couldn’t.  Yet again, my feet were squirrley in my 110mm Bont boots which had been made slightly too short for my feet.   All summer I’ve been training on my 100mm Bont Vapors, since none of the 110mm mountable boots I have fit my feet.  The Bont 3 points I have are close but still too short, so I only where them at race time.

This though doesn’t really work out For some reason last year I was able to pull off this big switch on race day.  This year though its impossible.  Over the winter I gained 30lbs (since April I’ve lost 20lbs again) and suspect that what happened is through loss of brute strength (no weight lifting this past winter), and my arch falling a bit under the increased weight, my feet spread out a little longer and it made the slightly too short Bont boots from last year, too short this year.

At any rate, after the first hill I pushed hard to stay on with the pack (anywhere in the group), but within the next few klicks I got flushed out the back after not paying enough attention to the slinky.   I tried to bridge up, but it was not use, my legs and the 110’s just weren’t co-operating.

Its extremely frustrating…in training on my 100s, I’ve got plenty of pick up and go, and can comfortably cruise at high speed.  But for whatever reason, this year I haven’t been able to translate that onto my 110mm boots on race day.

So, the plan going forward for this summer is just stay on my 100mm boots and race clean and solid.  Forget about trying to use the 110s for now.  I am in contact with the Jen Simmons, and I’m getting a new pair of boots from them.  I have high hopes for that.  Basically, now the focus turns to 2011, get the new boots over the winter, train hard in off-sesaon, and in the sprint train and and race on 110s.

So after getting flushed, I settled down into cruising mode, with the aim of picking up stragglers and building a pack I could work with.   Not long after I picked up Candy, and we then swept up Jackie and Herb.    As always, Herb was an awesome bundle of positive energy Just as the year before, I know I would be sprinting with Herb for the line, and still knew that he was a sprinter and I…am not.   Still though, I started planning for the finish.

We did the remaining laps (its a 3 lap course), and remembering the advice of Aaron Arndt – “Never lead at 100%”, I didn’t and saved some juice for the end   We rotated pulling right up until the last stretch of the loop, which comes back to the start line at the top of the big hill that leads down into the finish area.  At that point Jackie was in front pulling, and its seemed like ideal positioning, I had draft, but was still in front of Herb and could make a move when it was good for me.

I waited until we had already started down the hill, to make sure the sprint would be 500m or less (hopefully), stepped out of the pack and jammed it! I was doing pretty well at holding big Herb off, but towards the bottom, there were a couple of rec skaters straddling the road, and the only way through was between them.  If I switched lanes I thought I was going to give Herb grief who was likely trying to pass on that side as well.  So I slowed to scootch past the rec skaters, Herb went by cleanly in the other lane and at that point I just finished out the sprint kind of half halfheartedly.

Once Herb was in front I didn’t really hold any hope of being able to catch him, I’m just not a sprinter at least not yet.

Looking back, I guess I should have been a little more aggressive about moving into the other lane, it feels like I kind of gave up the position, just to avoid  a little bit of risk that wouldn’t been that bad.  But, thats racin’ – lots can happen on race day, and its easy to armchair quarterback it once your back home

While I’m disappointed with my own results, the race overall went off really well.  I got to catch up with friends, and I kept the shiny side up (always good).  Next race is Chicagoland – now called the Fitness for America Sports Festival.  Really looking forward to that.  I’ll be wearing skates I’m comfortable with, its a great course to skate, and the event is really well done.

Bigger news though: For 24hrs (Montreal) this year I’m doing a two man team with Ed Leung.  My basic goal will be to skate 500km within the 24 hours.  The most I’ve ever skated in a day is 200km, so I’m really not sure if I’ll be able to do it.  I’m sure I’ll make 300-400km, but beyond that I just don’t know.  I’m going to find out though!

As the season has progressed, not only have I managed to drop weight, despite my Coca-Cola loving ways, and my penchant for potato chips.  But despite the great progress, I’m still not where I was last year, but I’m now hopeful for some late season success.  Some good results at Defi or A2A would be cool.    New York is a possibility, will have to find a ride though

To give you a sense of the progress so far, this graph shows my 10k time trial times against my weight, and mileage in training:

The scale on the left is the total kilometers skated since April 1st, and the red line shows the accumulated mileage. The scale on the right is Kph, and shows the average speed over a 10k time trial (the sea green line). Essentially my speed up has gone from an average speed of 24kph to 32.7kph. I’m hopeful that my 10k time trial time will get into the 34’s in august. At that point will consider myself in pretty good shape.

My best ever 10k with a pack (actual race), on perfect pavement with a downhill course, 16m 17s (2008 Ottawa Festival), which is an average speed of 36.8Kph. But that was with better pavement, a pack, and not having to dodge cyclists, tar snakes, or slow down to make two turns. If I can get above 34Kph for the venue I train in, I’ll be very happy.

If you want to see what one of these time trials looks like, with heart rate, take a look at this graph:

The red line is heart rate and it goes from 150bpm on the left, to the peak on the right which maxes out at 184bpm.  Fun fact; at 184bpm, my breakfast starts thinking about seeing the light of day again.  My time trials are done on a parkway with good pavement, not excellent, but pretty good.  The center  line has tar snakes all the way, and you have to get around cyclists and such, so there is a lot of speed variation due to just trying to avoid “railing” the center line tar snake.   The parkway that is closed off on Sundays is 3km and change, so to make 10k I have to slow, and do a 180 twice (it a point to point venue).   You can clearly see these turns where the speed drops off to 10-15Kph.

The fun doesn’t end there though. Through the summer I’ve been doing other workouts.  In general trying to mix things up and not get worn out on training (mentally).    My  priority is drop weight and get back into shape, but my other priority is be ready to support my team mates (Schankel Canada) at races.  My role on the team is support; work for the sprinters, bridge gaps, get our sprinters to the last 500m with fresh legs.

To that end, a lot of my training is focused on high pace, and being able to recover from attacks.  One workout that’s been a big focus is just taking 5km and repeating 4times, trying to skate it as fast as I possibly can, with a couple of sprints thrown in.   Here is what one of these bad boys looks like:

These sessions are done on city paths, where the pavement quality is anywhere from bad to good.  The main limitation is that you have to slow down for a couple of intersections that are not lit or signed, so cars can go sailing through at any time.  On top of that you have to dodge cyclists, walkers, rec skaters, dogs, gnats, squirrels, ducks, geese, and poo, lots of poo (mostly from the aforementioned ducks and geese).

Still though this and other workouts can be satisfying, I do wish we had some kind of track to work with, I’m sure I could push the pace a lot higher.  We do have a 400m track across the river, but getting there is 40min bike ride, and you never know if its in use or not by the school kids/soccer league, and its not exactly in top shape (rough patches of pavement and more than its share of sand on the corners).

One other workout worth mentioning; hill repeats.  I’ve been working this one through the summer to try and make sure I don’t drop off completely on hill climbing.  Basically I skate out to a hill on the other side of the river that gives me a about 500m of climb and I think it rises maybe 15m, so not a killer hill, but when sprinting up it, it will give a decent work out:

So, overall the training is going well. I’ve lost 20 of the 30lbs I need to lose, my speed has gone way up, average cruising speed is much higher, and my sprints are snappier, although I can always improve on the sprints. I’m feeling good, and look forward to being properly back in the groove sometime in August.

If things go really well, I’ll be in great shape for Chicago (end of the month). Not sure I can lose another 10lbs by then, but I’ll try. Even if I do, its a mixed success; dropping that much that quickly would likely burn muscle and fat…which ultimately slows you down. But then again, as a skater we fight friction, and weight leads to friction, so less weight is always a good thing.

I wish my progress was faster, but I have only myself to blame for slacking off last winter so badly. Blame isn’t the right word, but whatever the cause, the result is the same, I had (and have) a lot of pudge to work through, but I’m on course and determined to get there

The results; you can view the results online here.  Top dog of the day was Robin Sigl.   Fellow  Schankel Canada team skater Sylvia Lee was in attendance; like me getting a training race in preparing for races further down the calendar.  Not many female skaters, but apparently we had an Olympic level skater among us; Eva Rodansky, Eva was out on her inlines, and getting right into the action, taking pulls up front of the lead pack.

On to the action!  The start is a up a slight incline and then dips into a valley; the start is actually in the middle of two valleys, and when you crest each of those you get to the 180 turns at either end of the course (the start/finish is in the middle of the loop).  So no shortage of hills, its basically all hill.  But, the pavement is so good it doesn’t feel quite so bad. The start felt slow, but I topped out at 40Km/h before settling into 4th or 5th position.

As we made our way down to the short end of the loop, there was jockeying and I drifted a little further back  in the pace line (which at this point hadn’t broken up too much).   We made the turn at 4km, a little acceleration and regrouping and we cruised through short end valley with some nice downhill train action.

Through the start/finish area and into the valley on the long end of the loop; we topped out at 43Km/h  gliding the hill, climbing out of that valley some of the boys up front got froggy and jumped a bit, everyone spread out trying to regroup, and unfortunately during that sprint, I just lacked the gaz to get quickly back on.  It was discouraging, I really didn’t want this to be yet another skate your own race.

Fortunately the valley on the long side is kind of a double hill, so on the second downhill (which is fairly long), I mentally re-grouped, focused on my form just put the hammer down to try and sustain as high a pace as I could.  Coming off the big downhill I was able to  get some 50Km/h action, and then over the next 4km to the long end turn,  cruise at 36Km/h  and then eventually ran out of juice and dropped to 33Km/h.

But along the way, I passed some other skaters who had dropped off the back as well.  One of them (I think his name is Lyle?) from Team Napa hooked up with me a couple of Km from the turn and we helped each other get there.  As we hit the turn we could see the lead pack piling up at the turn just 20-30m in front of  us.  We had worked hard, and we were about to re-join the lead pack.  Being a chase pack of 2 might seem cool, but its not!  Much better to be with the lead group and be there for the field sprint at the end.

As we rounded the 180 though, Lyle’s legs cramped up and he crumpled, I skated wide to get around him, and hit the grass…running, but caught something and tumbled in the grass.  I popped up and looked back, but Lyle was out of action, just too cramped up.  He said to go on so I took off, hammering as hard as I could but now the lead pack had opened up a sizable gap again, and I just didn’t’ have the same energy any more.

Still not wanting to give up, I skated as hard as I could all the way to the other end of the course (about 10Km).  As I much as I didn’t want a solo skate, there I was solo skating, sweating it out and just hoping I could catch someone else from the lead pack to work with.  Being a chase pack of one, might seem cool but…

About 3km from the long end turn  (where the big downhill ends), I now had a big climb, this is actually the biggest climb of the course.  As I worked my way up, I did catch another skater, I waved to him to hop on but he chose to wait for a bigger pack behind me (more on that later).  So it was I did my own little 10K time trial through both valleys and to the short end turn on the other end of the course.

At this point I was 24km into the race and the lead pack had a good minute on me.  I made the turn but about 500m out of the turn I saw a pack coming down to the turn on the other side.  Everything considered, I decided it was time to stand up.  I grabbed my Gatorade and happily chugged that.  Then just skated easy until they caught me.  We were now officially an actual chase pack!

I didn’t know these skaters, except for John Charbonneau (Asphault Beach).  But we all had a common goal at this point, close the gap to the lead group.  So we rotated pulls and worked together on keeping the speed up.   With lots of draft in the pack I was able to recover and get my energy back.  After cruising through the start/finish area and hitting the second valley, and then the “big climb” (in this direction a big downhill), I was up front and and let ‘er rip downhill.   Got some nice 52Km/h sub-max sprinting…could likely have pushed it harder, but I wasn’t feeling so confident in my 110mm boots (my Bont 3 points).  I only used them twice this year; once at Montreal and once at this race.

We cruised to the far end turn, the lead pack went by on the other side, out of reach now, but it looked like they were just cruising.   We made the far end turn and continued to work together to keep the pace up.    As we came up to the big climb, John pulled off the front, and my turn to lead came up.  I hadn’t planned this at all, but it turned out to be great positioning for me.

I was struggling on the hill, but I could hear the guys behind me struggling even more.  So I looked at my Garmin…3Km to the finish, nearly at the top of the hill, and then thought: you’ll never get a break away opportunity handed to you this nicely again.  So when we crested the hill, I sucked up the pain and kept the pressure on.  Through the flat to the next little climb leading up to the turn before the decline to the finish.

At this point I had opened a 30-40sec lead on the rest of the chase group, burned the remaining gaz sprinting up the little hill to the turn.  Knowing that once I hit the turn, as long as I’m in front of the others there would be little chance of someone having enough energy to get past me on the downhill.

The breakaway lead  was enough to secure a finish in front of my  group though, I was able to maintain the 30-40sec breakaway and didn’t have to fight for positioning at the line.

Looking back, that was the hardest part of the race for me, but also the most enjoyable.  I was able to actually practice a break away attempt in true race conditions, and test my pain tolerance a little bit…all good!

So although I dropped off on that first lap sprint, I’m still quite happy with the race.  I got a lot of training value from it, I feel better on my 110’s now, and can now add breakaways to my bag  of tactics.  Of course, with faster skaters I’ll have to muster more speed and stamina, but still worth trying My guess is that like in cycling, break aways often fail, but when they work, they work great!

Overall, a good race, would have liked to have stayed on with the lead pack, but given that I’m catching up with other skaters in terms of training and dropping my weight, it went pretty well.   I’ll be training hard between now and Chicago, and I’m hoping to be fully up to speed by then.  In the larger picture I’m plan is to peak for Deluth.

If you haven’t tried Napa yet, I do recommend it, the hills are hills, but the pavement quality is some of the best you’ll get at any inline race.  Being able to skate on smooth pavement really makes it a lot more  enjoyable.  There is always a BBQ afterwords during the awards and its a not a bad way to spend a sunny California day

The most obvious improvement is just feeling good on my skates again, but more than that I’ve found my form again and started to tweak and improve it over last year. Although I’m trying not to get too obsessive about the numbers, its important to recognize where you’re really at (I think). From that standpoint the numbers are good objective indicator. Kind of like hill skating, you can’t cheat the hill, your favorite big hill will never lie to you

At the moment my numbers are improving; my body fat percentage has dropped from 34% to 26%. My raw weight is down 10lbs to 190lbs, but I haven’t been able to get into the 180’s. I’m expecting this to happen now by July…unfortunately it just takes time. I’m trying to be careful to not starve myself and hence not build the muscle, or likewise burn off muscle and fat…the muffin top is the only thing I want to loose

Other numbers are improving as well. My 10K time trials have improved a lot (see graph below). While the improvement is great, there is still work to do. A decently respectable 10K (for me) would be around 17:30, I’ve done it before, so I know its in me…just have to dig harder for it. Once I can get back to that level of performance, I’ll consider myself back in shape. For now its going to be all about choking down more intervals, hill repeats and core conditioning.

One other “big” number is that my cumulative mileage on skates so far is about 1,400km since April 1st.  To put that into perspective, its about 175Km  a week.

This year I’m really trying hard to do my maintenance training as well though;  plyos and core conditioning and I’ve been doing running and even did my first running race.  It was only an 8K run, but it was gratifying to have a running race not completely floor me.  I was running it just to try it out, and didn’t suffer, but could have ran a lot faster, with a matching higher degree of suffering   I’m not planning on becoming a runner, but it would be cool to build up to doing a half marathon.  Beyond that…who knows!

I’m also now considering getting back on my bike (well after buying a new one).  Its been years since I trained hard on a bike, and I think it might be time to hit that again.  Just to keep things fresh and not get tired of the same training all the time.  We have some great hills here in Ottawa for cycling so I’m sure it would really help with my power and cardio.

While my progress isn’t as immediately gratifying as I would like, things are trending better and better.   Chasing bikes is a lot easier now, and my cardio is back, I’ve already done an 80K session with plans for much longer calorie burners.  I’m now planning to team up with Ed Leung at 24hrs to skate as a Duo Team (no team name yet).  Basically we’ll be trying to skate as much as we can in 24hrs.  I’ve never done a solo or duo, so I’m not sure how I’ll do, but I imagine I’ll burn more than a few calories.

I’ve done races like Defi and A2A so I know what kind of mental game is involved.  You might think going a slower pace is just a matter of grinding it out.  But after the first two hours, its a whole different story.  There are a multitude of kinds of pain you can be beset with.  That’s when mental toughness becomes the determining factor.  Even in a normal 42k marathon, sometimes the outcome is decided just by who can stomach the most suffering.  At any rate, I’m really looking forward to trying my first duo effort at 24hrs.

In related news, our team (Schankel Canada) has set its strategy for the coming months and we’re now focused on training towards that.  I’ll be doing my first training session with that focus after I complete this posting   Our new skinsuits haven’t arrived yet so I’ll be skating Nappa in my club skinsuit.

Some of the fine selections on my suffering menu as of late:

• 1000’s – basically 1min on max effort and and 1min off.  A set of six reps usually puts me in the hurt locker.  I’m planning to start doing two sets with a break in between.
• 10/30 workout – this workout is a race simulation, its kind of hard to wrap your head around and I use my Garmin to get me through it.
• 500m hill repeats – sprint up, coast down, rinse and repeat. I’m up to 12 repeats, and plan to work my way up to 20.  There is a certain race with 19 hill climbs that I want to do at the end of the season
• 10k TT – these time trials are basically how I’m grading my performance.  It gives a solid indicator of where I’m at in terms of race pace.

Although I’ve done a lot of distance, its been mainly to get back into the groove.  I’m feeling good on my skates again, if not as fast as I want to be, and now I’m moving into much more speed work.  My training sessions will now be pretty much 30K or less and focused intensity, higher heart rate,  and reaching fatigue rather than just burning  calories.

As the say, train like race, race like you train, so now its going to be much more about race simulation.

My next race is Nappa, and while I’m really looking forward to doing this for the first time, I suspect I’m still too far behind in training to come away super happy from this race.  But, I am now very hopeful that my July race in Chicago (July 25th) will see me fully back in the groove.  Fingers crossed!

Ok, time to shut up and skate! …will post when I’m back from Nappa.

I’ve dropped some poundage, but going into the Montreal marathon, I still hadn’t dropped enough, in fact the pudge-o-meter, didn’t even sink below 190lbs (very disheartening).  Still a good 20lbs over race weight, and still far behind in my training, I decided to sign up for Montreal anyways, and use it for training and calibration.  There is no better way to honestly find out where your at then an actual race. 

Oh, did I mention the race conditions were 3C, raining, and snowing!  That’s right, snowing in May! Less than ideal conditions, but actually I feel rain races give me an edge, I’ve skated a lot of rain races, including technical ones like Berlin and the rain doesn’t really bother me as much as many skaters.  Unfortunately my perceived advantage wasn’t enough to make up for 20lbs of dead weight and a training debt that had yet to be paid.

Still though, I feel its important to put your best foot (skate) forward, even when you don’t think you have every advantage or when you’ve got a shot at a top ranking.  Finding out where your training really is at is important and its good to just be there with your skating friends, misery loves company!

For most skaters I think the race was pretty normal despite the rain.   As expected Oliver Jean handily whipped everyone.  Something slightly less obvious from the results is that Benoit Letourneau from our club was the only non-Olympian skater to have a sub 7:50 lap.   Having watched Benoit’s progress from scratch 3 years ago at our club, its not surprising, just impressive   Skaters have come along that have made great progress really quickly, but never to that level, and never at his age.

My own race was a little less stellar.  At the start line, I didn’t want to take any risks, not having rain wheels (I had Bont Mints), and with a lot of painted areas on the wet pavement, I really wanted to be conservative and not crash just trying to take off.  All that hesitation really cost me though, we started, and before I knew it everyone was flooding past me and I got jammed up in the middle and could not get around other skaters (while trying to avoid the paint).

So even before the first hill, I was already well back and trying to figure out how I could climb up past skaters to get back to the front.  This was an effort with no reward though.  From the first corner I manged to get into a pack, but I could see the gap to the lead pack was already too big and the race was all but concluded, now it was just about churning out the 10 laps.

Fortunately our group had plenty of spirit.  As we turned the first few laps, fighting the cold, rain and snow (yes snow!), we were co-operative, taking turns at the front, but also competitive.  Lots of testing the pace throughout.  I think it was the 4th lap or so, on the hair pin (clockwise), when things started to pickup more.  I was feeling froggy, so slide out a bit and started cross-ing over to build speed past the other skaters coasting the turn.  As I was doing this, 2-3 skaters behind me decided to jump as well, and they popped out, coming out of the turn we all accelerated into the back stretch.

The back stretch along the water was definitely the fastest part of the course, a nice tailwind and a slight downhill.  After this break, every lap saw big accelerations coming out of the hair pin.  I should point out that some of kids from south of the border were pretty awesome.  One of them was in our group and I don’t think he was more than 15, and I watched him go on huge (fast) breakaways on the back stretch, and with great form.   Its great to see the sport still pulling in younger blood that will doing some great racing in the future.

I think this is where our pack started to separate, and within the next two laps we picked up some skaters that had fallen off the lead/chase packs.  With them on board and recovered a bit, we picked up a little more speed   I think our race actually got faster as we went, but it wasn’t enough to pull us up to the lead or chase packs.  I think it was about lap 8 just before the hair pin when Oliver Jean went cruising by, all on his and clearly well away  from the lead pack.

For the most part it was a pretty clean race, even with the rain, I didn’t have’ t any traction problems with my Mints and never saw anyone in our group have problems or eat some asphalt or one of those deadly little blue signs in the middle of the track.  After the race I head about a few crashes though.  All in all the rain and snow seems to have just slowed everything down.

The F1 track is always a great venue.  When it rains its better if its been raining for a while though; it washes off the grease/oil from the cars.  If your racing when its just started to rain you get water + grease, which is another level of lethality. It has some nice twists and turns but its not a super technical course.  Its a great venue for beginners and advanced skaters alike. Plus there is always lots to see, do and eat in Montreal Before bolting for Ottawa, I made sure to pick up some awesome smoked meat.

For me the race was a wash and I took it just as training value.  After my not-so-awesome start, I did skate reasonably well.  I would have liked to have more acceleration for the attacks and stuff, but I’m still catching up on my training.  My aim now is to hopefully be race ready for the Nappa race in early June.  Even for that race though I’m not fully sure I’ll be ready.  I’m sure gonna try though!

I’ve been increasing my training intensity, and now doing morning and evening workouts and adding in different stuff to beef things up, plyos, general conditioning, cross-training, hills, and even watching what I eat.  For the first time ever I’ve given up Coca-Cola.  This is probably the hardest thing for me to do actually.  Somehow grinding out miles on the path and beating my legs to a pulp is easier than not reaching for a bottle of Cola.

Only time will tell but I’m hoping to be race ready in June.  Skates crossed!

You might not think it to be the case, but there is a good dose of math implicit in skating.  Consider this simple equation:  A + B = 4.   What values of A and B can give you 4?  That’s easy! They can either be equal (2) or asymmetrical (1 and 3).  Of course they could be really unbalanced if you had values of 0 and 4.

Nothing to do with skating?  Maybe.  Lets say A is conditioning and B is technique.

If  4 is some level of skating ability, and we can get there by having both technique and conditioning, then its easy to see that you can have an equal amount of both, or you can rely more heavily on one then the other.  In our example  you could for instance have 1 unit of conditioning and 3 units of technique.  This would be good place to be in; you can skate well but don’t have to work so hard for it

If only things were so simple!  Skating involves many variables and these are two obvious ones.  Even with these two variables, its not an entirely linear relationship.  Remember our level of ability – 4?  What if you want to go to level 5?   Perhaps you would keep your technique at 3 and just just train harder to move your conditioning up to 2 (from 1)?  In theory that sounds great, but in practice it doesn’t quite work.   To move the next level up, the minimums for both variables increase, and you have to increase both.

Here minimum means that some technical skills can only be done with a certain amount of strength or a certain amount of speed, or a certain amount of balance.  Until you reach that minimum of physical conditioning, its not possible to do that particular technical skill.   It works in the other direction as well.

This means that while you don’t have to have the variables perfectly balanced, you can’t rely completely on one or the other either.

In this example moving to level 5 isn’t really that big a challenge but what if your aiming for level 7 or level 10?  Its no longer the case that you can just be really good at technique or really well conditioned.  Being a super technical skater or a super mileage skater will not help you.  You need to move both yard sticks forward.

In my case I have an added variable: A + B  + FLUBBER = 4.  Obviously I’m working hard to reduce FLUBBER to 0 But I’m also working equally hard to bring A and B into a balance.  When I’m skating (even just distance skating) I try to make a conscious effort work technique, weather its focusing on my recovery, compression, balance, weight transfer, etc, etc, I’m always consciously trying to sharpen the technique while I hack away at FLUBBER.

Another aspect of the asymmetry in skating arithmetic is sea of detail.  If you try to count off all the things that you can watch for while trying to skate clean, you will quickly run out of fingers and likely toes.  But of those 20 fleshy appendages, only two really, really matter.  Are you skating low, and are you pushing with all your wheels?

Yes its true everyone can improve a dozen different things about they’re skating, but those two things have more impact than just about everything else, and when you do those two things poorly…it can wash away any gains made be improving all the other little details.

So, skating has nothing to do with math.  Maybe.

You want to go faster, but the single biggest thing you can do to go faster is skate technically better by skating lower (compression, sternum down etc.)  But, to do this well, and over long distances (like say 42km), you need physical conditioning.  You can’t just decide to do it, you can’t just rely completely on technique (it won’t last long enough).   Plyometrics, weight lifting, cross training, and of course quality time on your skates are all ways to prepare your body to handle the technical task of skating lower.

In essence you have to advance yourself both physically and technically.  A + B = BALANCE.

With this in mind, I skate my distance to  burn calories, but I’m always trying to evolve my technique at the same time.  Just like being super technical won’t cut it, being super fit won’t either.  I have to sharpen my game on both fronts.  This is really my focus for this year.  Flubber aside, I hope to clean up several technical issues (more on that in future posts).

Time now to get some pavement under my wheels and do some theorem proving. Skating + Sun = Happy.  Math is good.

Suffice it to say that my spare time (and motivation) for training completely disappeared for several months.  The result?  Not so good.  A 4month old baby, but not the kind that brings joy and wonder, the food baby kind that makes that last notch on your belt hurt.

But all is not lost, with some effort I should be able to put the food baby in the hurt locker and get back into race shape.  I will have to sacrifice some early season races that I was kind of hoping to attend.  The upside is that I’ll be trying to make it to some of the mid and late season races that I haven’t attended before.  So I’m definitely looking forward to some new experiences.

That said though, I do have some tough training ahead of me.  I’ve started a Pudge-O-Meter (left)  to track my progress towards race weight.  I’m I’m spinning up the training hours now to try and start getting the old calorie burner in shape.

Not everyone responds well to exercise, but fortunately I do, and I can drop weight easily enough, but it takes some serious sweating.  So, while the days ahead will not be super-happy-fun-awesome, they will be productive.  If character was built in times of plenty and easy riding, character wouldn’t be as interesting

Amidst all the negative vibes, there were some positives; a month or so ago, somebody tossed a 8ft circular mirror in the garbage downstairs (without a scratch on it).  They must have been re-decorating or something.  I took the opportunity to combine that with my slide board, and I now have a makeshift slideboard studio So rainy days will no longer be any excuse for going easy on the workouts!

On top of that, I’ve also started cross-training. Through the winter I’ve been running off and on and I now plan an additional goal of running a half-marathon this summer.  If as a skater you look down at runners because they do everything they can to exclude us from their events; step back a bit…politics aside, running is hard.  Doing a 10K run followed by an hour of solid skating will exhaust you.  If you want a challenge, give running a shot.  Don’t stop skating!  …but as cross-training running can be very effective, even when combined directly with your skating training.

Here in Ottawa the spring snow has cleared up early, and a light winter of snow means we do not have flooding on our riverside paths, which in turn means I can skate earlier outdoors.  I’ve already done a 35K road skate with skating pal Dan Thompson, and now its time to really get my road wheels going again.

Of the several years I’ve been skating this is far from my best training start to the season, and in fact a pretty humble start.  As they say though, things can only get better

I had originally been planning to attend the Houston Inline Marathon.  I was even helping out Justin with some web design for his web site for a little bit earlier in the summer.  I had planned Houston as my last big competitive race for the season and was looking forward to it a lot.   But, after finishing Deluth I just felt that my competitive season was at a close and that the season had been long enough…time to focus on fun and recovery.

So my plans changed.  For the first time I did the Defi, that was a blast, and I brought home a good pound of Montreal smoked meat…the kind of left over sandwiches I don’t get tired of!  In addition Brian Shicoff offered me free hosting for an entire weekend in Austin over Halloween, allowing me to skate the Veloway for the first time (really great by the way!), have fun around Austin and then on Sunday November 1st, skate the Tour de Doughnut for fun.  This was too tempting an offer to turn down, have some fun, see the sights and hang out with skaters for the weekend.

The weekend started with a slight hiccup, my connection through Denver got delayed by two hours due to a snow storm and my arrival time was pushed back from 2PM to 11PM…not ideal,  I was able to wrangle up a different inbound set of flights though, and still turned up in Austin at 3PM, Brian was waiting for me and we took off from there.

First order of biz was to get some skating done!  We hit the Veloway, had the grand tour and then settled in for some laps.  Over the next 25K, Brian and I traded pulls, and found some local cyclists to skate with.  The Veloway is a great technical course; lost of turns – both ways, and a very short and steep hill that sneeks up on you via a 90 degree turn, actually there are several 90 degree turns.  Its definitely a course where you want to pay attention pavement quality is good to great, but most importantly, it was built for _only_ wheeled sports.  Nice.  After refueling with some spicy Indian food we hit the coffee shop to hang out with other locals.

Saturday morning was some more quality time on the Veloway.  This 30K (6 laps) rolled by quick, we had other local skaters there and we broke into little groups to have some speedy fun. Afterwards Brian gave me the tour of some of the sights around Austin and in particular we went to see the Drew Barrymore roller derby movie “Whip It” at the Alamo Drafthouse.

The Alamo is, in a word, AWESOME.  Unlike most theaters, there is a small counter between your row of seats and the next row.   This counter comes with a menu, and the menu is a complete menu…perhaps you see where this is going? Not having to haul your ass out to the popcorn counter is one thing, but having someone actually bring you beer and pizza while you enjoy the movie…priceless.

The movie (Whip It) is a fairly pedestrian teen coming of age story.  As a skater I can identify with it, but outside of the Alamo I’m not sure I would want to pay for a ticket.  Still though, it was a great addition to the weekend of skating.

I also picked up a couple of T-shits, they do awesome T-shirt prints while you wait, you can pick from movie posters, album covers etc.  I ofcourse went with the giant robot T.

To top off an amazing lunch/movie, right next door there was a little guitar shop that had a mix of off the shelf axes and some well used axes that had clearly seen some glory.  There were at least two (priced over $2,000) that I was immediately drooling over.  If I go back, I’m bringing my Amex!

The evening was a little bit of computer gaming, hey whats a great weekend without some zombie blasting? Quick dinner at the Firebowl (Asian cuisine), and then a two hour driver over to Katy Mills to stay overnight, since the race was at 7:30AM.  All typical skater logistics, except that, Brian provided yet more entertainment in the form of Eminem wrapping along the way.  I also have to give credit to Brian for introducing me to Charlie the Magical Unicorn…a bottomless well of potential jokes.

Skaters at the Tour (photog: Renee Coffman)

Sunday morning was the main attraction, what with free doughnuts and all Things were delayed at the start a bit, but otherwise a smooth easy start.  Everyone was jazzed up and ready for co-operative fun skate.  Most the skaters were local, I think I was the only skater to come from out of state (way out of state!).   More details below, but if you prefer immediate gratification (like me!) check the footage from my new camcorder:

The race benefits a Charity (Make a Wish foundation), and the corporate sponsor Shipley Doughnuts provides the doughnuts.  These are a key ingredient!   These tasty doughnuts are not greasy and actually easy to eat and digest while your skating.  More importantly they make for a lot of unique strategy.  Each doughnut you eat at a rest stop gives you a negative 5min time bounus.  With this race is should be possible to do a sub-hour marathon time!

Simply having the best wall clock finish time will not win the race for you.  I was first across the line among the skaters, but failed to eat enough doughnuts, and so I was relegated to 3rd place.   In addition there are two routes; a 28 mile route and a 55 mile route.  The skaters all opted for the inner loop, but the outer loop has two additional stops, allowing for more doughnut eating.    Depending on whether you decide to draft skaters or cyclists you have many possible ways to lower your time.

Everyone we feeling co-operative so we elected to stick together.  Some of us were chomping at the bit to dial it up, but we all kept things in check.  We also consciously made an effort to skate among the cyclists with as little obstruction to them as possible, keeping things safe and positive.  It was hard to resist getting on the wheel of some of the faster cyclists passing by, but today was about fun    We all stayed together until the first rest stop.

At the first rest stop I snaked a couple of doughnuts, and our train was once again chugging down the track.  We found a cyclist just above our existing speed though, and some of us switched tracks to draft him, while others stayed back in a second group.   I think our  group at that point was myself, Robin, John,  Wayde, J.D. and William. Our group drafted the cyclist for most of the way to the second rest stop.  I was really surprised with how easy, comfortable and quickly the race was going.  Perhaps it was just the sugar from the  Shipley’s?

At the second rest stop we just kept cruising, the group had gotten paired down to just me, J.D., John and Robin.  Shortly after that we hit the one section of bad pavement on the course, 5-6K of gator back.  Its bad, but not un-skatable.   You won’t like it, but it will kill you either

At the next turn we skated up over an overpass to get back accross the highway and make the final stretch back into Katy Mills.  J.D. filled me in on who was a sprinter and who was endurance.  No sooner had he given me the lay of the land then the fun and games started! John and Robin (in the Bont suits) bolted from the front, I went with them and we started trading attacks and counter attacks.  About 1-2K from the mall J.D. locked up and had to drop back because of cramps.  On the second last attack coming around the bend to the mall, John and I were duking it out to come up to Robin, and he pulled a groin muscle, then had to drop back.  I caught Robin and we traded one last attack, but he cramped up as well, and had to stand up.  I rolled past and 50m from the line we both gave it one last kick.  I was a little ahead already though and was able to edge him out at the line.

I attribute my lack of cramping to the Shipley’s…should’ve had some doughnuts boys!

Congrats to Art Garcia, top skater of the day, his three doughnuts trumped my two Kudos to all the skaters who showed up and made it a fun/positive skate.  Special thanks to Brian Shicoff for being an awesome host, and to Charlie the Magical Unicorn…for the all the giggling.

If you need an excuse to eat doughnuts, this is it!  I highly recommend attending as a skater.  If you skated with the intention of a sub-hour finish time, it would be entirely possible.  If I’m there next year I’ll be aiming for that.   I hope I am there next year, The Alamo offers lots of great shows.

That said, my outdoor season is now at a close.  The hail/snow/rain is setting in good, and the bleakness of Canadian November has arrived.  I’ve already started my indoor/off-season training.  I have to say though, this weekend was  a huge injection of much needed positive energy.  Now I’m stoked to get my feet on to Miami pavement in February

Let me rewind a bit A couple of weeks ago I decided (after some cajoling from skater friends) to try out the Defi race for the first time.  In the past I had always avoided this race; its after my main competitive season, and right before off season training, so I typically just take a rest.  Also, I had heard so many horror stories, bad pavement, pot holes, crappy conditions like rain, freezing temperatures, wet leaves etc.   But I thought I should finally give a try.

After a 4:30AM wake up (this in itself is painful!), we got to the Verdun auditorium a little ater 5Am, signed in, got an event t-shirt and then geared up.  Fortunately this is all inside the arena where its warm Several of the usual suspects were in attendance, skaters I know from either Toronto, Montreal or the US.  Lots of local skaters from Montreal showed up for the “little skate” that was about to start.

Officially Defi is not a race; its a tour around the island of Montreal.  But, with a good number of competitive skaters in attendance its not long before the pack gets the itch to go a little faster.  Defi was no exception; even though it was pitch black outside (sun doesn’t come up until 7AM), skaters were eager right from the start line.

This is not to say they were hyper competitive though.  Defi is a different kind of event.  The atmosphere is just a lot more co-operative and skaters seem to be more focused on having fun and enjoying the course rather than being outright competitive.  This is part of what makes Defi a great event to attend.  The group as a whole tries to be safe and inclusive before being competitive.

Despite the fact that the first hour of skating is at race pace, highly technical and in the dark, no one had any falls or collisions (that I know of).  I fell later in the race but not during the first hour.  The first hour is hairy.  The path is mostly lit by street lights, and skaters are carrying head lamps and reflective lights etc.  But even still visibility is far from 100%.  On top of this, you have to deal with; the usual pack jockeying (but on a narrow path), obstacles like poles in the center of the path, patches of leaves/twigs, tight turns, wooden bridges, intersections with curb jumping, cobble stone and just general anxiety about something jumping out at you that you can’t see ahead of time because of the darkness.

So, for the first hour I skated very conservatively, often mid pack or more towards the rear, leaving lots of space between me and the skater in front of me.  A couple of times this meant having to work harder to deal with the slinky effects of  the pack, but the last thing I wanted was to fall and get dropped then not know where to go.  The course is a 129km city course that is weaves through steets and paths, all of which are unfamiliar to me.  My greatest fear was just getting dropped from a pack and then getting lost.

The first hour, while nerve racking went well though.  No major issues aside from the 0C temperature and the -4C wind chill.  The pack was moving very quickly, but also slowing down on some of the tougher hairpin turns or maneuvering through gates etc.  Safety was given a priority and a pack of 20-25 skaters had formed that was sticking together nicely.    If I recall correctly there was only one very small gravel section at one of the turns, a small foreshadowing of what was to come later in the course.

By 7AM the sun had started to come up and we made it to the first checkpoint.  The pack was together and skating well.   We had moved off of the paths and on to the streets.  Throughout the course there is skating on both paths and streets, its another technical element because you have to deal with curb jumping and then the usual road skating stuff, pavement quality, traffic, gravel etc.

Over the whole 129Km I think we had to deal with about 1km of gravel all told.  Believe it or not we started to develop gravel skating technique!  Running through gravel (think 300m starts) it one method, also if you can find hard packed dirt on under light gravel you can just scissor and glide through (keeping your weight on the heels), or you can even skated through it if the gravel is light enough.  It still slows you down quite a lot though.

The roads offered other technical issues; turns at the bottom of down hills, lots of lighted traffic intersections, general construction (and lots of it).  Several railway crossings, I think 4 or 5 in all.  The rail way crossings were very flush though so scissoring was enough to get over them easily.  A little more than half way through the course we got to one set of tracks and as I was crossing I heard the bells start up; I looked to my right and saw the light of an engine about 1km away.   As I was skating away from the tracks I watched the train go through the intersection…thinking if anyone was behind us trying to join our group they just got shutdown!

Back to the play by play – a little while after the first checkpoint I decided to finally go up front and try out a pull.  As I was skating up, one of the Montreal guys warned the skaters up front “attack! attack!” …I was only going up front though, and dropped in directly in front of Damien (from our Rapid Lap Dogs 24hrs team) and made it clear that I was only intending to do a pull.   I pulled for a couple of minutes (not at 100%), then came off again.    I wanted to start contributing to the pack, but also wanted to pace myself.  From previous ultra-marathons I know I’ve been prone to cramping up later in the race.

Somewhere between there and the second checkpoint (there are 4 checkpoints), there was a small hill, a decent enough climb angle, and about 150-200m long.  Not huge, but enough to get you breathing At the time I was in front pulling, and Damien decided to attack…I jumped on his wheel and chased him down to the top of the hill and then we skated for a bit after the top.  Looking back to see who came with us, there was no one, but we also weren’t so far ahead of several other skaters who had climbed hard up the hill.

So we skated easy and were joined by 5-6 other skaters.  At this point the main group had been split up.  Later on our group would get whittled down, but this was the biggest split.  A little further on Damien, myself and Stephane (skater from Montreal) had slipped away from the pack on a bit of a break away (not really intentional), we talked about it a bit, and then decided to wait for the others.  Its a long race, better to keep more people together to share the work.  At this point there was Joel and Ed from Toronto, Damien and Stephane from Montreal myself and two other skaters from Montreal who I don’t know (guys if you read this, let me know who you are!)

We skated together for most of the rest the race.  Dealing with all the technical stuff on paths, off paths, lots of gravel and lots of intersections, most of which were not at a green light when we went through them.  I have to say, the Montreal drivers were VERY forgiving us   Although I complain a lot about the gravel, 95% of the course is excellent and much improved over previous years.  Most of it is great quality paths, or streets with good to excellent pavement.  Some sections were recently paved and you could still smell the paving oil.

About 20min before the third checkpoint we were transitioning from the street to a path, jumping up a curb, at the time I was also carrying a couple of empty Gateraide bottles and looking for  a trash bin to toss them near.  I guess I wasn’t focused properly and I stepped up on to the path and I caught something and went down on my right knee pretty hard.  Tore a big hole in my Bont tights, and dug in some nice road rash on the top and outside of my knee.  At the same time my calves decided to cramp up, and it took me about 30 seconds just to be able to stand up.

The Joel and Stephane helped me up, Ed got up after taking a tumble on the grass (he was behind me), no damage to Ed as far as I could tell. Ed gave me an Advil pill, we regrouped and carried on

At checkpoint three we stopped, fueled up and had 1-2 min rest, then got moving again.  From there until the end it was non stop skating! About half way to the fourth checkpoint Ed’s cramps got the better of him and he dropped off.   My legs were starting to cramp up as well.  Through the race though, I had been drinking lots of Gateraid and I was chewing on Shok Bloks about every 20-30min.  I am now a firm believer in using these during a race.

I could feel my legs twitching on the edge of cramping, and within 15-20min of wolving down a Shok Blok, the cramping would turn into just burning legs.  Burning legs are no fun, but you can deal with it and keep skating.  If your leg just locks up and goes into spasm-ing pain mode…your boned.   I personally don’t like the gels, you need to wash them down with a lot of water.  The Shok Bloks are easy to digest while skating at speed and they work quickly.  I highly recommend.

After the fourth checkpoint, we were all pretty tired, but by this point it had become obvious that Damien and Stephane were doing a lot of work at the front and didn’t seem to be suffering as much as the rest of us.  In fact Damien kept getting calls on his cell phone and was skating with us at pace while leisurely talking on the phone.  Obviously we weren’t going fast enough!

In the last 10K of the race, Damien and Stephane picked up the pace and the rest of us were working hard just to stay on.  One of the other Montreal skaters droped off, and then I was at the back behind a Montreal skater and Joel, who was then behind Damien and Stephane.  This last segment is a dozen small segments of path that cross intersections some-times straight across sometimes diagonally.   This start/stop action is hard on the legs, especially when they are already burning!

The other Montreal skater between Joel and I got tired enough that he dropped back and then I was chasing down Joel to rejoin the pack.  After that it was Stephane, Damien, Joel and myself.  We skated the last 5K or so sometimes apart sometimes together.  Mostly Joel and I (with Joel leading) trying to catch up with Damien and Stephane.

It was tough, a lot of urban skating, dealing with intersections, railway tracks, small ramps, tight pathways, pedestrians and cars.  At one point a car cut in front of us to go into a parking lot, and Joel gave him a thump on the trunk for his consideration.

In the last 1Km Stephane and Damien eased up and decided (apparently) that a co-operative finish would be more sporting, and the four of us crossed the finish line together.

All in all a great event.  My legs were completely baked and even a day later I was limping around with fatigue, but I hadn’t actually cramped up during the race.  Eat something during races!  After the race a food reward was in order; Frit Alors for some awesome burger and fries and back in Ottawa, Earl Grey tea and Blueberry Lemon cheese cake at Oh So Good Desserts (best cheese cake in Ottawa yo!)

I did hear that a couple of skaters were advised to stop due to hypothermia, but so far have not heard that there were any major injuries, even with all the gravel.  Next year the course should be even better with fresh pavement in place of the gravel.  I look forward to trying it again.  If the conditions are wet or rainy, I think I would probably not skate it though.  For me personally that first hour of technical path skating in the dark is enough risk.  Doing that on top of ice or wet leaves is more risk that I can digest.

I highly recommend this event if you are looking for an ultra-marathon to try.  Unlike other events, Defi seems to have a much more laid back, inclusive and fun atmosphere about it.  Just seems like a friendlier race than any of the others I’ve been too.  Try it out, you’ll see