Clinic Recap Part 1

What a great weekend I enjoyed at the Support Your World Team Clinic! Let me first recap the serious stuff we did and then I'll fill you in on all the hijinks that happened in between.

Friday was informal skating sessions around the beautiful banked track as we please. I was still recovering from two late nights on Wednesday and Thursday so I didn't skate as much as I would like to. However, it was good to refresh my memory on weight-transfer and leading with the shoulders.

Saturday we began with jogging around the track for a brief warm-up and then we did some stretching. AJP led the first half of the stretching session with some static stretches which we held usually to a count of 20 (of course nobody counted seriously except for Mr. Pauley, as people yelled out random numbers/colours/names of fruit/names of soft drinks ...this pretty much sums up the tone for the entire weekend). Next, PD emphasized the importance of dynamic stretches. Some typical moves include side way kicks, ankle roll, and front/back kicks to ensure the joints are properly warm up.

Our first exercise of the day was to practice skating on different parts of the banked track. There are three paths on the track: low, middle, and high. Due to the different elevations, it feels totally different to skate low as oppose to skate high. This drill segued perfectly to the next item on the agenda which was passing. When the pack skate low, we pass from the middle. When the pack skate high, we pass from the middle. When the pack skate in the middle, we have a choice of passing low or high where each requires different timing and effort. In general, passing low is easy because a skater only needs to skate a shorter distance to overtake the pack. We can start to pass as soon as we enter the corner. Passing high is trickier because the skater needs to cover a longer distance than the pack. This is where the banked track comes in handy. The skater can take full advantage of the downward slope of the banked track if he starts to pass just before the apex of the corner. When done correctly, he should be ahead of the pack in the straighaway. Note that a skater does not need to open up too large of a gap between him and the pack after he made the pass.

Next, coach AP wanted us to practice duck walking around the track. We lift one leg with bent knee to waist level, open up the hip, and set the foot down with toes pointing out. As one gets more comfortable with this exercise, he should be able to increase the pace from walk to trot to run. This is an important learning drill for starts. During time trials and sprints, the ability to accelerate holds the key to success. The next drill was learning how to do starts. Coach AP and PD explained many common mistakes that inexperienced skaters make during formal time trials starts and the proper technique for doing starts. I'm afraid I can't adequately explain this in words so I would suggest you to check out Barry Publow's Speed On Skates instead. We practiced our starts over and over with coach timing our starts. Hmm, it was my first time doing starts and I did on average 3.10s. For comparison purposes, the faster skaters were putting in 2.08s times. I will come back and compare my time a year from now.

After lunch, we did 300m time trails using the start technique that some of us just learned. My time was under 45s. Pictures of our time trails are availabe here. Relays are also an important aspect in speedskating. After my crash in my first relay race way back in June, I'm still not comfortable with the relay push. On a banked track, the relay happens while exiting the corner in a downward slope for even more speed. I opted to sit out in this exercise.

On Sunday, we began the day with a road skate on a newly paved asphalt road. Since I'm the slowest skater in our pack of 10, the faster skaters took it down several notches to make sure we all stayed in a pack. Everybody told me before that to make the best of the draft, I need to skate close enough to the skater in front of me so that I can touch his back with bent arm. Well, it never made sense to me before until now because I usually can't even keep up to stay close enough for the draft. During our skate, the pack was going just fast enough that I could barely keep up. Whenever I skated close enough, I could at last feel the pull of the draft. It was awesome. AH was skating behind me and giving me pointers on how to skate in a pack. It was immensely useful.

After 7km of skating, we began the echelon drill. This is an effective way to share the work load between skaters in a good size pack. We basically have two lines of skaters where each skater travel into different positions of the pack in counter-clockwise manner. The key to safety is for everybody in the pack to synchronize the push. Since everyone skates so close together, an out of synch push can easily turn into a fall which I experienced first hand.

I was skating behind SZ for much of the road skate. It was absolutely wonderful because it was a great learning opportunity for me. Like coach EG said, one of the best way to improve your skating is to mimic better skaters by skating behind them.

We also did some acceleration in pairs. I partnered up with JS since we're most similar in speed. However, even so, I was still slower than him. This drill was hard as the speed of the pack eventually picked up and I couldn't keep up anymore. All in all, it was a really great session.

After lunch, I attended AJP's spinning class. Quite a good workout, I must say but I was distracted my the road rash on my left knee. This pretty much sums up all the training I did this weekend. I'll come back with another post on the silly stuff we did as well.

Thank you to all the world team members and the volunteers who made this event successful!