On Track For 2010 Speedskaters sweat their way through summer By George Johnson, Calgary HeraldAugust 5, 2009
www.calgaryherald.com/sports/2010wintergames/Track+2010/1860887/story.htmlCanada's speedskaters receive only three to four weeks off a year and use the summer months to lay the foundation for their winter achievements. This summer is a particularly arduous one, as the skaters ramp up preparations for the Vancouver games.
Photograph by: Ted Rhodes, Calgary Herald, Calgary HeraldDon't for an instant be fooled into thinking vanity has Christine Nesbitt gazing at herself in a nine-metre mirror this early in the morning. No, it's stride technique.
Pushing purposefully side to side, in heavy socks, on the wooden slide board.
A few feet away, on the Olympic
Oval running track, 1,500-metre kingpin Denny Morrison is in gym shoes, down low in the speedskating crouch, hooked up to elasticized cables with national team coach Marcel Lacroix pulling on the other end, like a kid on an icy road in December hopping a ride via car bumper, providing resistance.
"Summer training,'' says Lacroix, "is our foundation for the winter. Summer is the time to work on volume, to work on endurance.
"This is the base of everything we do.''
At the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, speedskating is expected to deliver a Canadian bonanza. The ice at the Richmond Oval could very well be our happy hunting ground for glory.
Outside of the women's 500 metres, there's viable podium potential in each distance, men and women. After mining eight medals at Turin (four, individually, courtesy of the peerless Cindy Klassen), the long-trackers seem poised to strike the Colorado Lode in 2010.
Before the ovations and the flags and the anthems, though, there's the work. Intense, burning-lungs, deadened-legs, crying-out-in-pain-muscles work.
"People have no idea how hard we actually do train,'' sighs Clara Hughes, the 5,000-m gold medallist from Turin. "They see us on a TV screen for a short period of time at an Olympics or a World Cup race, everything appears so effortless, and they say to themselves 'Hey, that looks easy.' Believe me, it's not.
"This is a full-time job, 11 months of every year, 7-8-9-10 hours a day. When I'm not training, usually I'm sleeping. I train in the morning, I take a break, I train again in the afternoon and then I cook healthy food for myself before I go to bed. So I'm always doing something that relates to the sport, even when I'm resting.''
Skaters typically receive only three to four weeks off a year to decompress and heal.
"To repair the engine room,'' is how Lacroix describes the brief downtime. "It's a long haul, a skating season. From weekend to weekend, country to country, track to track with different ice conditions--the ice in Italy, for instance, where we skate outdoors, is vastly different than the one we see the next week in Norway, indoors.
"There's a lot of wear and tear, physically and psychologically.
"By the end of it, they are cooked.''
In advance of a new World Cup season, with the Games up ahead, visible in the distance, Canada's skaters have begun four weeks of intense training. The hardest day? Arguably, two-and-a-half hours on the ice in the morning, followed by four on the bike after lunch.
And, naturally, the attention has begun to build in anticipation of the first Olympics on our soil for 22 years.
"You have to learn to say no,'' says coach Xiuli Wang, a part of the national-team staff for seven years and a former world champion in the women's 1,500. "There are so many demands on their time in an Olympic year, they're being pulled this way and that, by the media and sponsors and their families. They can only do so much.''
Still, with the Games six months away, there is some time allotted to placate the media. Canada's Salt Lake figure skating darlings Jamie Sale and David Pelletier had paid a visit to the Oval the day before to pick up tips from Morrison, taping a segment called How Tough Is This Sport? for CTV that will run through the Games.
"We had them on the ice, we had them doing cable work, we had them on the slide board,'' says Lacroix. "They couldn't believe what went into the training. It was like, ' Whoa! Skating this way is tough. But skating this way is fun, too.'''
Steven Elm has been a part of the evolution of summer training. Turning 34 on Aug. 12, he's preparing for his fourth Games.
"It's changed so much since I first got involved in high-level skating. I started out as a short-tracker. Back then, we didn't actually begin training until August. Now, the nationals are being held in August. So you've got to be at your peak.
"Do I enjoy (summer training)? Well, I could be at a desk working 9 to 5. So, actually, I'm thankful I'm out here. Funding and sponsorship, by companies like RBC. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing this now. I'm thankful.''
For all athletes, the toil and fine-tuning during their off-season is viewed as far more than merely a necessary evil. It's the means to an end.
"I love summer training,'' says double Olympic silver medallist Kristina Groves, who finished a session in a weight room down a hallway at the back of the Oval. "I love the idea of trying to be the fittest athlete on the planet.''
The Canadian national senior setup is made up of four groups in Calgary and one in Quebec City, each assigned a specific coach. The skaters generally stay together with the same coach for a minimum of two years, allowing coach-athlete relationships time to develop. Lacroix, for example, has been mentoring Morrison and Nesbitt since they were juniors.
For him, diversity is the key to maintaining a fresh outlook on the workload.
"You can't bring the same recipe into the kitchen all the time. You've got to keep them excited, interested. Too much of the same thing, and you stag. I call it spicing the rice. Rice is rich in nutrients, right? Good for you. But eat it all the time and you're staring at your plate every night, muttering 'Not rice again?!' Pretty bland.
"So you spice it up, change it around, inject some flavour.''
Two years ago, as an example, he arranged a camp in Las Vegas, where the skaters mountain-biked and attended Cirque du Soleil backstage rehearsals --facilitated by a former University of Lethbridge gymnastics coach then on the production staff--to experience a different take on focus and dedication.
"Performance on demand,'' explains Lacroix. "They're in that business. And so are we. Those people in Cirque have to put in a gold-medal performance twice a day.''
As much as diversity is welcomed, many athletes remains firm creatures of habit.
"I like routine,'' says Groves. "I respond to structure. Xiuli's schedule, I think, is perfect. Monday-Tuesday, we go hard. Wednesday, a little less. Then Thursday-Friday, hard again, Saturday, she eases up on the gas and Sunday we get off. It shows there's a plan in place, a blueprint, and you as an athlete, you know what to expect and what is expected of you.
"Some people might call it boring, I guess . . . But, hey, we skate around in circles for a living, right?''
After on-ice detail work in the morning, Lacroix's afternoon session on this day involves sprinting for eight seconds 10 times in a park across the street, kitty corner to McMahon Stadium, then, after a 112-second rest, 10 more sets consisting of 15 seconds of simulated skating, crouched down in the speedskater's stance, followed by a 15-second sprint.
All, naturally, uphill. "Low and strong!'' exhorts Lacroix, chasing his group up the slope. "Push, push, push! Good knee drive! Good knee drive!''
After the third of the 15-second crouch simulations, he smiles knowingly. "They're starting to feel the love. The muscles in their legs are starting to ask questions, and they have to find answers.''
It's punishing just watching them. The amazing thing is that there's very little drop-off in the distance covered, despite the punishing repetitions.
"Some days, I'm happy to be here,'' admits 24-year-old Mykola Makowsky of Regina, trying to qualify for his first Olympic team. "Some days, I'm not so happy to be here. But I know that every day I am here, I'm making myself better.
"We have such a strong group in Canada, that the difficult part is qualifying for the Canadian team itself. You do that, and you're going to do well at an international event.''
Another development team skater, Calgary's Keith Sulzer, a part of the national development team, is working with Wang's group, which also includes Hughes and Groves.
"I'm just trying to squeak on the team (for the Games). But to be able to train with athletes like Clara and Kristina, and learn from a someone like Xiuli, who's coached so many great athletes and was a great skater herself . . . you can't put a price on that.
"You quickly realize the amount of training that has to be put in.
"We were in California for a camp, and were scheduled to ride a time trial on our bike. I'd never attempted one. Clara, of course, is an Olympic-calibre cyclist. So I asked for advice. And she said: 'Push as hard as you can. And when you're body's telling you you can't give any more, push harder.' "
An Olympic year is unquestionably a special year. There's a different feel, a burgeoning interest, a sharpened sense of urgency.
Yet, the focus and preparation, emphasizes Lacroix, cannot in any way deviate from any other year.
"Our group motto,'' he reveals, up in his office at the Oval before a new day of training, "is T-N-T:
"Today, not tomorrow. "People are always asking
how many medals Canada can expect from the skaters. It's always 'Oh, if . . .' Uh, uh. No, no. No 'oh, if . . .' People look at the depth and talent on our team, they see Cindy Klassen and Christine Nesbitt and Kristina Groves and Denny Morrison and Clara Hughes and Steven Elm and Jeremy Wotherspoon. They've all won Olympic medals, World Cup medals, world championship medals.
"People are already starting to count medals, and we're what? Six months from the Games?You can't get ahead of yourself. That's dangerous. Potentially lethal. This is a process.
"You don't win anything until that race is over and you're standing on the podium. It's a long journey to reach that point.
"And that journey starts right here, right now.''