What a crazy weekend last weekend was. Holy cow. I left Florida (JAX) late Thursday afternoon and got into Quebec City around 11:30pm. Got to the hotel and in bed by midnight. Just wiped - mentally and physically (I had been up since 5am). Slept in a bit the next morning, then packed my stuff and walked up to the oval - l'Anneau Gaetan-Boucher. It was 40min uphill in the snow (haha) but it was a nice-ish day and the weather was forecasted to get a lot nastier later so I wanted to get in for the early practice session (10:30-noon - the late was 5:30pm-7pm). It was really a surreal feeling walking in the door of the rink/oval area - the Winter olympics were on now (had watched some that morning, they were on the tv in the rink). I remember watching Gaetan Boucher win for Canada in long track a looooong time ago (Lake Placid and Sarajevo) and all the cheesey TV commercials he did afterwards :-). So to walk in a building with his name on the door was trippy (read: I am so OLD).
I got on for a solid 60min for practice in blowing snow and -7 or so. My feet were frozen afterwards. You can see the building below - the covered entrance leads to the Athlete's room - nice and WARM :-) It's an older building no doubt, the Province is planning a new building in the next few years.
The funny thing was that I have been practicing on 111m and 100m tracks which are very small compared to a 400m track, so with every corner, I would start coming out way too early - I had to learn to do crossovers in a completely different way. I felt completely uncomfortable and unnatural. I also felt very slow - likely a confidence issue. And there was one corner where the wind would just stop you dead if you didn't have enough speed - it was hard to push through to keep going. After that practice session, walked back to the hotel, stopped at a grocery store for fud along the way as we would be starting early the next day, and had a nap. Forced myself to get up from my nap, ordered a pizza (walked over to pick it up and weather was very bad at this point 70kmh winds and blowing snow), loafed and watched the idiot box, turned in early.
Come race day: perfect weather (ok, I give up on trying to fix the pic rotation grrr!):
Day 1: 500m then 1500m. I had no clue what to do for these races, so the ladies just said "go for it". I was SLOW... oh yeah...SO SLOW. But I had no clue what I was doing, and I had lots of gas left at the end. After the 500m, the juniors went, then the men. Then it was our turn for the 1500m. So I just tried to give'er and my 1500m pace was better than my 500m pace hahahahah oh man that's sad. You feel some burn at the end but I still had lots left to give. I honestly had no clue how to pace this type of racing. I was doing terrible. I had somehow imagined that I would at least be reasonable in my times, but those were all based on 111m tracks (I can easily do 2500m in 5min hint hint). I walked back to the hotel, somewhat demoralized but trying to take this as a learning experience. It was my FIRST racing experience in a completely new sport after all. Why did I imagine I would do better than I was actually doing (smacks forehead several times)? Finished off the last of my pizza, had a very long hot shower then watched TV, blogged, crashed. I was really really tired.
Day 2: 1000m. OK legs, you know what 1500m felt like so just go harder than that. And it worked! I had my best skate of the entire weekend, and wasn't DFL hahaha sigh. One of the ladies says to me "so, you can be taught..." I took that as a positive sign... but we had a long break while the juniors and men did their 1000s and then we moved on to the 3000m. This was maybe 3 hrs later and my legs were tired and my hips were getting sore. I knew this was going to suck - they usually do 3000m on the same day as the 500m (or first even) because it's such a tiring event. By this time I was pretty much done, and my time showed it. But I was OK with that by this time - i.e.: I didn't really care anymore.
After racing, they gave out swag (nice toque with a pony-hole!) and lunch, then I headed to the airport for the long slog home. I was not very happy with my times. I know I am a better skater than that. But I really had no idea how different the tracks would feel, and of course, how key pacing would be. I learned a lot and still have a lot to learn. But - there's always next year! (Calgary Feb 2015)
The rest of this week was 3x easy running and 2x skates, with 2x gym/core sessions and a token ride to work & home. My grandmother had been in the hospital for the last few days with kidney problems, and she finally passed this morning. So it's kind of a sad day around here - K and I were on our way out the door to go to the hospital when my dad called. Just missed seeing her one last time. :-(
This next week? 3x runs, 2x skates, and our club is hosting the provincial short track championships this next weekend - I am the safety officer so I won't be racing unless there's a spot at the end of day 2 (need to be on the job as it were). I will have a few days off work to help my dad out - he's sad obviously but his mother had been ready to go for a long time.
AP
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"How bad could it be?" - SimpleS