Victory :)

Funny i just played in a golf tournament in November and I won! I'll tell you it was a great time. I played very well mentally the last day. I was in the moment and took one shot at a time. I started out very badly with nerves as I hadn't played in a golf tournament in 25 years and I have been playing again for a couple of months seriously. I hit two of my first 3 drives Out of Bounds. If you don't golf just know it's not good and cost me 4 shots. I settled down and played decently after that. The last day was in Wailea on a high end resort course. Shot my best score since I started playing again. If I could have made some putts would have been even better but it was fun to play for a good cause. I also made up some ground and won. It was amazing that I won almost $1500 in prizes and merchandise. Trip to Vegas with hotel, flight from Maui, car, and meals plus much more swag. It was a fun time and for a great cause. I might be settling into Senior golf now :). This was more swag than 17 years of skating and 10 years of cycling in my first tourny. I should note that I won the A flight which is handicapped. I was honest and suffered thru many bad rounds and hit trees to get my handicap of 15. I felt like a sandbagger but wasn't as my first round attested. I shot 80 on a hard course the second day. Best ball striking day of my life. The putting was always my strength but never had putted bermuda greens with grain. Only serious golfers will get that one. I'm still training with skating in the back of my mind. Way back maybe :) Good news though is my handicap is going down way down. Now if I can catch Dan Jansen's golf handicap of 2. http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/566996/Valley-Isle-Scoreboard.html?nav=11

World Sprints

For those people not in the area for the ISU World Sprint video which seems to be the entire planet Earth.

Redemption & The Boss

Two of my favs....Haven't been blogging for some time. Was in Maui all summer with skating way in the back of my mind. Maybe this will pick up a bit again. There is so much to do each day and this hasn't been a priority. I'm skating again didn't think i would be back after being in Hawaii. I realize that i missed it and doing it because it's fun. It's too hard to do it for any other reason.

Dan Jansen skating tips & more

Pretty good video by one of the guys who I admired before I started speedskating. He give some solid advice on things I'm still working on. Strong core.....you can have the strongest legs but if your core is weak it's like shooting a cannon from a canoe. Also, regrouping your knees underneath your core. He's seems like such a cool guy. Pretty funny too.



Some great clips from the European Champs by this user. Wow I can just imagine how slow this ice is after watching Bokko first full lap in his 1500 at 27.8. Watch how these girls regroup and use their full body weight. Sáblíková is a beast at the end. Until you do enough of these 5ks you don't really know how much this would hurt especially outside.



Double wow on this one. I guess that new rule is for her. She would have been DQ'd a half dozen times in this race on the straights.

Popular Science Article - Anatomy of Speed Skating

This is my 100th post of 3 years?

We may accept the fact that in England a Lincolnshire man won one hundred guineas by skating a mile (~1500m) within two seconds of three minutes. The present record is only 4 or 5 seconds better (2:56, Johnson, Jan 7, 1894).

Devotee to speed skating was Goethe, the Great German Poet, who sought by this means to drive away his persistent sleeplessness and bring back his youthful vigor. One clear cold morning in December he is said to have jumped from his bed, strapped on his skates and to have sallied out, reciting the following like one inspired: "Penetrated with the gayety that gives the feeling of health, I go to scour afar the glistening crystal....How brilliant is the ice that night has spread on the waters!"


on anatomy of a speedskater....His arms, which are kept idly folded on his back, would be small and weak, as would his chest muscles."

The Anatomy of a Speedskater from 1894

Steal from the poor and give to the rich.

Warning political rant coming! No skating covg today. Tired and will start trimming down my training so I can go fast again.

I happened upon parts of Bernie Sanders 9 hour speech Friday on C Span. It wasn't a filabuster since it's already a done deal. It wasn't the longest filabuster because that was over a day. Storm Thurman and his fighting Civil Rights were in the 50s i believe. I was excited seeing him tell it like it is. I must be one of the few that regularly watches C Span. It was refreshing to hear him. We have 350 people that represent the corporate interests of the US certainly not the people. I read the 15 second sound bites about him on the web. No real coverage of what he said. They say he's a socialist and a nut job. No coverage of this other than that. Listen to it with an open mind and tell me if this makes sense.



We need to start a third party and not the tea party. The welfare system has institutionalized dysfunction, where welfare childern continue to have children and collect checks. The Dems are stuck in what Buddists call "idiot compassion", cannot confront this situation for fear of offending their core constituents. We spend 17 times more on elections than 35 years ago. Other end of spectrum repubs shield "corporate welfare cheats" under the guise of "free enterprise." Somehow, transnational monopolies have become synonymoous with free enterprise, but when you have zillions of dollars to spend on impropaganda you can actualy blend two incompatible ideas into one big lie. We are given two choices: Vote Democrat and enable the lowly criminal (welfare system etc) or vote Republican and enable the highly criminal (wall street, big banks, insurance co, etc).


I love how HR 4853 will pass monday is called the Middle Class Tax Relief act of 2010. Write your congressman and senators. I did. Warren Buffet has said to tax us more but this is going to pass while we are at 13+ trillion in debt.

Getting it Back

I didn't get on the ice this year till almost October and finally starting to feel like the looked last year. This looked hard a month ago watching it. Now think i could replicate it. I wish i could start where I left off the year before. I did alot of cycling this summer so it was hard to get back into it. I also spent 3.5 weeks on an Indian Reservation (Hualapai/Grand Canyon West) doing dryland in the middle of nowhere. 100 mile round trip to get groceries and no gas in town.
Funny story is one day i was doing dryland near our trailer. I had The Trainer hooked up and was doing turn crossovers. I saw a guy who had a couple of flats in the middle of nowhere on Rt 66. He asked me where the nearest gas station was. Told him 7-10 miles. In the middle of nowhere on Rt 66 in 90 degree weather he said I see u are working on your turns you a speedskater. I was blow away. Turns out he was from Netherlands.

Here's a cool vid that Ryan Border did last year. I like this song don't know who it is?