Coming Out Of My Relay Hiatus

I had my rest day yesterday to recover those jello legs. It's amazing what a day of rest can do. I felt great on skates today at practice. All those sluggish feeling on Sunday? Well, they were replaced by much snappier strides and I was able to pick up my tempo without feeling like I was lifting two blocks of lead! How cool is it?

We skated two 3k pieces with alternating "medium" and "hard" effort. Considering that my pack has a bit of discrepancy in speed and I was right at the bottom of the totem pole, they felt more like "hard with no arm swing" and "harder with arm swing" to me. However, unless I skate by myself or if I am smack in the middle of the speed range in the pack, this is something that I'll have to learn to handle anyway. At the end of the day, I would rather push myself harder to stay with faster skaters than not be challenged enough by the drills anyway.

In between the 3k pieces, coach PD had us practice some half lap and one lap accelerations. Perhaps I misunderstood PD's direction but I was under the impress that he did not want us to begin the accels with any running. Honestly, I was at a lost of getting myself up to speed from a standing start in a gradual manner. We began at the start of the straightaway and for the length of that straightaway, I stumbled and fought my way to stay low, maximize weight transfer, drive my knees, etc. Suffice to say, it was not pretty. Luckily, by the time I hit the corners, my arm swing felt natural and it really drove my tempo up. My push was devoid of power though. See what I meant by not having everything coming together yet? I am confident that it will eventually happen.

We received the details for provincials today. I am soooo excited! I'll be racing in the senior women category this year and the distances are 300m TT, 500m, 1000m, 10k points and elimination, and 15k elimination. Well, my long term goal is still the masters women category so I was of course curious with their distances as well. 300m TT, 500m, 1500m, and 2k points?! That really put a twist in my plans...looks like I'll need to specialize in shorter distances! The most exciting part though is the open relay races. These are single gender teams with three skaters in each team. By the end of practice today, there was already lots of buzz of who will be forming a team! Of all the TISC girls, SaH, ShH, and me will be racing provincials for certain. If MM also races, they will probably form a TISC women's team (watch out Ottawa!). But if she doesn't, it means I better get my butt in gear for outdoor relays. I've actually been avoiding relays since the beginning of outdoor season because it caused me so much grief and falls in indoor. Now I have no excuse to avoid them anymore...