2004

More memories, more skating.

2004 was a bittersweet year for me. Those years we had a lot of skaters around my age on our team which meant that competition was always close by. When you have lots of competition in team, you have controversy.. Naturally.

That year (believe it or not) I started growing a little, got a little bit taller, started developing a lot more muscularly. When I skater that gets use to skating a certain way grows it can often throw them off, usually because of flawed technique somewhere. I got taller, bigger, stronger, faster in a short amount of time. What that meant was I had a lot more speed then ever before and trying to skate like I did before caused me to fall way, way too much. Focusing on my technique, we tried to months to figure out what was going on.. which I don't remember at this point. But I fell everywhere I went, except for the Philly Challenge that year.. I got second place behind Chad Horne I think. And then I started falling again. Every big race, every invitational we had that year I pulled it together enough to get top 3. Whether that meant winning one race and falling down in the other I placed.

Well, falling down doesn't prove your speed or potential. Our team operates out of three rinks in Pennsylvania all within about 90 minutes of each other. It came time for Regional paperwork to be filled out. Well, I remember Jeff had to call me out of our beginning warm-up/paceline/catch-the-pack drill to sit me down and talk to me about regionals. He said, a lot of people don't think you should be in the top relays. Their argument was that in our league I wasn't winning and not doing that well.. because I was falling. My first reaction, was to point out that when it mattered, the bigger races I was on the podium. Jeff told me he didn't think it was right, but I would be sitting out the 2mix and 4mix relays at regionals and nationals.. skating in the A 4man and the B 2man. I was naturally upset, not because relays meant a whole lot to me but the pride factor. Even if that relay was going to be the worst one at nationals, I was still suppose to be on it.

I've always been a self-motivator but I always accepted additional sources of motivation. That year I was training hard anyway. I had just moved into the Freshman Division and everyone older than me at practice was telling me how much faster everyone was than me that I would have to race at nationals. That year also happened to be the first year I would compete at Outdoor Nationals and my last year of the freshman division there. First was regionals, where I fell down again in the 1000m heat but won the 300m and took second in the 500m to get second overall. Next, I went to outdoor nationals, won three medals.. one of each color.

Then there was indoor nationals. In my division, I qualified for the 500m final. Took third off the line and in the first turn second place fell down and I soared over him.. Not an ideal situation. One other skater on my team qualified for that final, and also fell down. The 300m I think I took 3rd or 4th in the final.. the only skater from my team. Then the 1000m, which was still my worst and most hated race. Somehow I qualified for the final and then I took 4th.. the only one from my team in the final. I didn't medal individually indoor that year but I took 5th overall which wasn't bad. At the end of nationals Jeff came and told me that after division one of the other coaches admitted they had made a mistake, that I was the fastest one on our team and I should have been in the relays. In the two relays I did skate, we won the 4man and then took 4th in the 2man final.