What an Experience

Three weekends, three international short track events. That has been my life so far this month of November.

Making my first world cup team was awesome but it was always a means to an end, something I expected to allow me to compete at the next level. Going into those first two world cups I had no expectations because I had never done it before. I wasn't sure how it would go.. especially because this sport is dictated so little by speed and so much by racing strategy and tactics. I've been in the sport for four years and in the US we don't have a great racing series to continue developing up and coming talent which means in those four years I've only competed in 6 events against athletes that were traveling to world cups to compete.

Through two world cups I've had a little bad luck and a little bad of everything else. At the first world cup my blade was broken off of a start by another competitor. It's not a common thing to occur but it really sucks. Our relay had a little bit of lady luck on our side in Salt Lake though and we took home a bronze medal in the 5000m relay! It is of course great to earn a world cup medal in my very first event.
In Montreal I was trying to fix a few technical mistakes I made in Salt Lake, but while trying to do so I actually forced a few more technical errors on myself that I didn't even realize. The bad luck didn't stop in Salt Lake though. My first event in Montreal, the 1500m, I was scheduled to be in the very last heat (I think heat 10) and the heats take so long that when heat one skated I still had shoes on. Well, there was a change of heats and we (USA) missed the communication so my heat was changed from heat 10 to heat 2. I realized I was in heat 2 once they got on the ice. I slipped my skates on and competed against three Olympians with my skates completely untied.. Not a recipe for success on that one. Montreal was pretty much downhill from there. Without going into to much detail it didn't go so well. By the end of Montreal I was beyond frustrated. I was ready to get home and not ready to race again a few days later.

When I got back to SLC we trained twice Wednesday and it was a pure basics day for me. Getting help from my coach to point out the technical errors that shouldn't be there, and skating to fix them rather then trying to go fast. Thursday we were suppose to skate at the sight of the Apolo Ohno Invitational that would take place Friday night but some technical difficulties cancelled our ice time so it was back to the basics again Thursday to continue working out the technical kinks off the ice. Friday was a jam packed day for us. Practice ice session in the morning, followed by lunch provided downtown, back to the arena to warm up and then to skate our quarterfinals to get down to semi-finals that were showcased during the event. Then it was go-time.

The Apolo Ohno Invitational was a great experience. It was a completely different feel then a world cup which made it a little more relaxing. It was an incredible field which allowed me to race very, very great athletes again and learn more. And it was on television so it got our sport showcased and allowed people back home the chance to watch me compete which is always nice. More importantly if gave me another chance to renew some confidence I lost in Montreal and prove to myself that I could quickly fix a few errors or bad habits created during the prior two weekends of racing.

I skated so much better this time around then last weekend and although individually I didn't qualify for an 'A' final only one person did that wasn't an Olympic Medalist and that was my teammate. In the relay our incredibly young and inexperienced team pulled off a second place finish after a fall and a penalty to other countries. One of the craziest things in the relay for short track is how bad the ice gets. It is a little difficult to explain if you haven't experienced it but by the end of a 5000m relay the ice is chopped up and has ruts in it they you can get stuck in and lose a lot of your speed. These ruts make your blade jump from where you want it to be and where it ends up being which is why the event has so many falls. The catch is the ruts are created by so many laps and skaters skating in the same place on the ice, generally exactly where you want to skate in order to go fast so by the end of the relay you are skating a different track on the ice then you normally would to avoid the ruts.

To finish up the Apolo Ohno invitational renewing a little bit of my confidence is huge for me heading into the next two weeks of training and then two weeks from today I will be on my way to Shanghai to do it all over again!

Lastly, I started short track four years ago so, after Apolo had retired from the sport of short track. I had never actually met him before but I know so much about him as a competing athlete and a training athlete as we share the same coach. It was great to finally meet the guy that we are always trying to measure up to in our training sessions.