Another ODN Post

Ok, the dates have been released: June 26th- July 5th (Including rain dates and practice days). Now for the good stuff, my take:
Initial Reaction
Well, first reaction is good. I like it. Not for this particular year because it is such short notice but if it was like this every year then I would enjoy it. I enjoy it because it gives me that much more exceptional training days. For the first time I will be out of school by the time ODN is held. In the summer I normally skate outdoors twice a day, so having three weeks of that before ODN will get me that much closer to the shape I usually am at residency (in simple terms, the past two years my residency 300m has been 0.3 seconds faster then ODN). Being in better shape means better results for me!
The Bad
Hate to seem like a downer but I'm afraid this section might be the largest. To start the bad off, it is only a two week break between outdoor and indoor nationals. The problem is for the money payers, that's a lot of money in a little bit of time but more importantly managing to take time off for ODN, and then having money to go to IDN (if you can even get off) is a hard task to pull off! On a skater level, we will spend two weeks solely on 200m+ size tracks that you get used to with the big turns. Then to realize you have two weeks to prepare yourself for the 84ft (I think 84 for the traveling floor) 100m track with tight turns might at a degree of difficulty to everything.
Yet another problem.. At ODN you need to be in tip-top shape in order to perform your best and try and make the world team. Normally, we call that a peak. You train real, real hard and then a week before trials you calm down the skating and you 'plateau' or 'peak' allowing you to skate at your best. Normally after that you come off of a peak, but with IDN so close you have to peak for ODN, and try to maintain the peak for IDN. This could propose a few problems. If you can't do it you may crash halfway through IDN and your legs will feel completely shot.
But they are not the only problems.. For those that go to ODN and DO make the world team they have the most problem. You of course want to skate good at IDN but most years there is only about a week (if that) between IDN and residency. So if you peak at ODN, maintain it through IDN you have to realize something: you cannot maintain a peak from June 28 (ODN) through September (26, the end of worlds) You will fail miserably if you try that. They either have to sacrifice IDN, which no one is going to do so things become more complicated. After IDN, you have to come off your peak no matter what. You have to if you want to succeed. If you try and maintain that peak then at the beginning of residency you will be flying and skating awesome, but halfway through and towards the end you will be burnt-out. You wont have anything left in the tank and you will not be able to peak again for Worlds.
Another negative is that numbers may be done because of the new dates this year. I do not believe that QUALITY will be low but numbers probably will. You will still have a number of great contenders but overall you won't see the same numbers we are accustomed to (which are bad to begin with). With trails in the summer you might get a few lazy skaters, which means that they didn't stick to skating as much in the summer and turn out to not be as good as ODN and potentially not make the team which may not be such a bad thing because...
The Good
Onto the good! .... The good thing about have ODN in the summer is you get rid of the lazy skaters!!!!!! Think about it, you can't make the team and decide to stop training because you have IDN and then only a week before residency so you know that you are getting the best athletes for residency and worlds because they are the ones that trained hard throughout the summer! We all know the story where skater A skates great at ODN and makes the team but at residency and worlds skater A looks bad, really bad like after ODN they crawled in a hole or something.
On a personal level, it is very good because I realize that I need to skate PB (personal best) in every race in order to make the SR team. And I've got a good feeling that it just became that more likely for me to skate PB every race, especially the 300m. I will not tell anyone what time I am aiming for in the 300, because no one will believe it until they see it.

Well train hard skaters, make team but remember making the team is not the ultimate goal!

P.S. I am thinking about doing a few Q&A's with some skaters. If anyone has a particular skater they would like me to Q&A then let me know otherwise I'll just be picking people of my choice.