Salt Lake City Weekend World TTs

The World is in town and skaters from NED, SWE, GER, RUS, KZK, NOR, FRA, BEL DEN, SWI,FIN and USA raced today (12 countries). Results here.....


http://www.olyparks.com/uoo/competition_results.asp

http://speedskatingresults.com/


Highlights today in racing was seeing Bokko fail in his WR attempt on the 3k but skate a 3:40. Man that was great and this kid is flying right now. Expect big things out of him this year. Pechstein skated a 4:00 like clockwork as well. Kipper (Kip Carpenter) won the 500 with some fast looking turns and the other Norweigians Sverre Haugli and Oystein Grodum had what i would assume were good 3k's.



My pair mate who I didn't see after 200m was Pascal Briand who skated a French record on the 3k with a 3:49 only to see it beat by his countrymate two quads later with 3:46. My legs were feeling tired today.

Did I mention that i got passed by all 3 guys in my quad skating a 4:17. Last time that happened to me was back in 1996 in Roseville during a 5k when I opened with the fastest 1st lap (with KC Boutie, Matt Kooreman and Dave Paul). Limped in with a 9:15 i think back then.



I wonder why my legs didn't feel good?



Let's see skated all the races last 3 day weekend (500x2, 1000, 1500, 5k, and 10k) took one day off. Then trained all week with the Norway guys, plus weights, and dryland.

Then couldn't take Thursday off cause I felt so good on the ice. Skated with fast old man Boris Leiken and his inline cronies. Blew my load bigtime Friday ripping out fast laps. Oh yea did I mention I'm on antibiotics as well for a cellulitis infection in my thumb. Excuses, excuses. Champions don't make excuses but that's the truth.

Warming up today Mark Chrysler asked me how were my legs. I responded tired as we did easy laps. I hate to verbalize that and was hoping for the magic cure for tired legs warming up. It never happened. A month ago 7 laps of 32s was easy today 33s/34s were hard. My muscles actually hurt bigtime during my 3k. Proud I could keep a flat race with how I felt today. The timing was screwed up during my 1st two laps. Thought I was doing 32s but really was 33s then 34s and high 33s last two. At least it wasn't a bomb like my 5k last week. I did a 32, 33, 34, 35 then punted. Peter Schotting said you should do more crappy 5k's before your 1000m. I don't think he's seen that before with the level of skaters he's coached.

Afterwards, the cooldown laps felt good though. I got a lot of training in the bank this week though for later. I know the deal after doing this for a while. This was supposed to be a rest week for me but I'm keeping it going because I'll probably be shut out of working out with NOR next week on the World Cup ice.

I'd rather not talk about my races as I wasn't too happy with them but it's part of the process for me. Weights, trainer turn cable and some dryland after. No secrets to going fast other than hard work followed by rest.

Highlight memories from today: Seeing Enrico Fabris skating around the oval. I've always like his technique. Man that guy skates LOW. Doing cool down laps during the last pair (5k) he was actually drafting off ME for laps at a time...hmmm. Then I think he got bored and took off. He looks so good. I saw a Green guy from TVM come flying by while I was on the bench. I thought it was a sprinter because he looked so explosive and FAST. No it's Sven Kramer the distance guy....wow. Later the Koreans were training and those guys all look soooo low and explosive.