Wow!

Phewwww! What a World Cup Series! This past weekend was the final World Cup of the season that doubles as an Olympic Qualifying event. The US Skaters managed to qualify a full quota in almost every distance that will be skated at the Games. They set a World Record, several national records, and won a ton of medals.

Pictures to follow. For now...I need some sleep.

Berlin- Post Colbert Signing

Well...It's been one day since US Speedskating's world changed but as you can see by the first picture...Berlin is still the same. :) Yeah, the sun went away and the weather returned to normal. We enjoyed the sun while it was here though.

Nick and Tucker getting ready for training.
I'm excited for what these guys are going to do this year.

Our ladies...getting in a little "down" time after ice practice.
Fikre scoping things out.
I told Elli that she has the same expression in all of the pictures I have taken of her.
She decided to diversify.
I caught Fikre and Jen before they were ready.
I like the first one better. :)
Daaaaaaaah...
Jonathan Kuck rockin the yellow rubber shoes (not sure if they are crocs) on the bike.

Things are going really well here in Berlin. The team was extremely excited today to hear the news about Colbert Nation stepping in to save the year. This is the start to an amazing season. Watching the team right now is like holding a balloon while it fills. You know its about to burst but you can't take your eyes away. Except when this ballon explodes the result is going to be medals everywhere.

Colbert Nation

Awesome Awesome Awesome Awesome!

Colbert Nation is going to step in to save US Speedskating after the huge loss of our main sponsor DBS!

Check out this article from NPR news: Colbert Goes for Gold: Sponsors US Speedskating

This could not have come at a better time! Thank you Colbert Nation!!!

Berlin

Greetings from Berlin. Our travels went well even though some of our luggage got lost for a few hours. It arrived the same day so all is well. The sun has actually been out since we got here. We thought that by not seeing the sun in Milwaukee that we were getting ready for our Europe trip but we have been proven wrong.

Here are a few shots of Matt, Brent, Tucker, and Nick doing dryland this afternoon:

Nick smelling Matt's new conditioner. :)



Fikre doing his best Jean Simmons impression.

More to come....

LT World Cups Fall 2009

Tomorrow I leave with the team for the Fall World Cups (which double as Olympic Qualifying Competitions). The skaters will compete November 6-8 in Berlin, GER and Nov 13-14 in Heerenveen, NED. Then the sprinters will return home while the distance skaters go to Hamar, NOR to compete on the 21 & 22. Then, in December, they will race two more World Cups- Calgary on Dec 4-6 and Salt Lake City Dec 11-13.

Here is a breakdown of the team members and what distances they skate:

Ladies
500
Elizabeth Ochowicz
Heather Richardson
Jennifer Rodriguez
Lauren Cholewinski
Rebekah Bradford

1000
Jennifer Rodriguez
Heather Richardson
Elizabeth Ochowicz
Rebekah Bradford
Jilleanne Rookard

1500
Jennifer Rodriguez
Jilleanne Rookard
Maria Lamb
Nancy Swider-Peltz Jr

3k/5k
Jilleanne Rookard
Maria Lamb
Catherine Raney-Norman
Nancy Swider-Peltz Jr.
Anna Ringsred (Salt Lake City only)

Men
500
Tucker Fredricks
Brent Aussprung
Shani Davis
Nicholas Pearson
Matthew Plummer

1000
Shani Davis
Nicholas Pearson
Trevor Marsicano
Chad Hedrick
Jonathan Kuck

1500
Shani Davis
Chad Hedrick
Trevor Marsicano
Jonathan Kuck
Brian Hansen

5k/10k
Shani Davis
Jonathan Kuck
Chad Hedrick
Brian Hansen
Ryan Bedford

I will try to post pictures and updates as often as I can. For live results you can check out the ISU Website or view video of some of the races on Universal Sports.

Big Kahuna Winner!

Things got a little busy this past week but I just wanted to let you know that Kelsey tore it up in Santa Cruz. She made the decision to compete in the aqua-thon (Swim & Bike) because her shins have been acting up again. Better safe than sorry. The morning of the race they cancelled the swim due to extreme fog. Which, I didn't understand. Isn't it always foggy in the morning in Santa Cruz? And, how does fog affect the swim?

So, she ended up just doing a TT on the bike. The next closest female competitor was about 10 minutes behind and she finished 3rd amongst the men. I would love to have seen how she would have done if there was a swim since that is her strongest event.

The Big Kahuna Triathlon marked the end of Kelsey's racing season. She will take a short break and then get back to building her base. She is already looking forward to racing next year. Hopefully, she can get her shins figured out. I look forward to the day when she competes injury free with nothing holding her back. I don't think she would be physically capable of losing. :)

I am back in Utah from the World Cup Qualifier in Milwaukee where I was witness to some of the best skating I have ever seen. On friday I leave with the team for a World Cup in Berlin. We are there for a week and then we go to a WCup in Heerenveen. Then, the following week, we go to Hamar for another WCup.

Busy times! But, exciting. We are going to light it up in Vancouver. I can't wait.

Passion

There is one word, one emotion that comes to mind when I think about my wife Kelsey competing in the sport of triathlon- Passion. Many elite triathletes know Kelsey from the ITU Olympic Distance World Championships and World Cups she competed in, as well as her residency at the training center in Colorado Springs, CO.

I first met Kelsey in 2005 while I was living at the OTC in Colorado Springs as a National Team Short Track Speedskater. We were both injured at the same time and we met in the sports med clinic. I had sprained my knee during training and Kelsey was struggling with alignment issues that caused shin splints and severe hip and back pain.

Ever since I met Kelsey, all she ever wanted to do was train and compete in triathlon. Her goal of going to the Olympics in Triathlon took precedence over absolutely everything else. As an athlete myself I gained passion and enthusiasm for my sport just by being around her.

In 2006, we moved to Salt Lake City, UT where I began coaching. We got married in September of ’06 in Michigan (where my family lives). We were there for a week and of course Kelsey brought her bike so she could train the whole time.

Rewind to the summer of 2001. Kelsey was training on her bike when she crashed trying to avoid getting hit by a car. She was taken to the ER with a broken hip. Ever since that day she has suffered from major alignment issues. She has yet to go through a full season of triathlon without major injuries. Although she always remained positive and focused on her goals about two years ago she just couldn’t take it anymore. She had shin splints so bad there were hairline fractures all the way through her tibia.

The only thing in this entire world Kelsey really cared about her body wouldn’t let her do. However, the thought of completely stopping athletics never crossed Kelsey’s mind. With her lifelong passion of competing at the Olympic Games, she began thinking of what other sport she could do to go to the Olympics. She grew up as a swimmer and though she reached a high level she new she wouldn’t be able to take that sport to the Games. So, what was left? Cycling of course.

Kelsey quickly found, and joined, the top women’s cycling team in Utah. She struggled with the idea of going from being a top athlete in the country, competing at a high level in one sport, to starting from the bottom of the barrel in another. She was lucky to find a good cycling coach and a team that cared and could help her improve. Her biggest struggle wasn’t the physical conditioning, it was gaining the race experience that you need in cycling to master races strategies.

For the first year Kelsey did mostly local races. Her biggest struggle, although she didn’t talk about it much, was finding satisfaction in competing at a local level. Not that the women she was competing against weren’t good. They were some of the top riders in the country at one time or another. She did everything she could to get upgraded so she could start racing bigger races.

Eventually she did get upgraded. She started traveling to larger national competitions. It was back to the bottom of the barrel again. With more and more race experience Kelsey began to see better and better results. But still, the same passion and enthusiasm she had for triathlon wasn’t there.

There was another side to Kelsey while her cycling career was going on…a dark and gloomy side. While I would like to consider myself her better half, I know Kelsey is not Kelsey without triathlon. There was not a single day that went by in the two years of being a cyclist that she did not wish, hope or dream of being a triathlete again. It was eating at her soul. She couldn’t even watch triathlon on TV or read about it. It made her sick to her stomach to even hear about anything going on in the triathlon world.

Last summer while racing the Cascade Cycling Classic in Bend Oregon, Kelsey suffered a heat stroke and was forced to withdraw from the final stages of the race. When she returned to Utah she took some time off to recuperate. When she began training again she felt different. Her heart rate would sky rocket when doing easy workouts. She decided to get checked out by a doctor.

Dr. Max Testa was about to perform a cardio stress test on Kelsey and called it off before she even started. He could already tell there was a problem while she was warming up. He discovered that she was having Premature Ventricular Contractions and would need heart surgery immediately.

I had switched jobs a few months earlier, which meant we had changed insurance companies. In addition to the stress of needing heart surgery, we discovered a lot of Kelsey’s hospital bills were not being covered by insurance because the hospital we normally went to didn’t take our new insurance. We had to postpone her surgery while we got set up with a different doctor at a different hospital.

Our insurance was going to pay 80% of the surgery which I thought at the time would be fine. However, I assumed the price of the surgery wasn’t very high due to the fact it was an outpatient surgery. Boy, was I wrong. The surgery was more than $40,000, which meant we were responsible for over $8,000. Throw her other medical bills on top of that and we were in trouble. A speedskating coach and an injured non-funded athlete don’t exactly make a whole lot of money.

Although the money was an issue, it wasn’t an issue in deciding whether or not to have the surgery. It had to be done. It’s amazing how much prayer goes into something like a heart surgery but we are thankful to all of our friends and family for the support during that time.

The surgery lasted 5 1/2 hours. They used adrenaline to keep her heart rate at 140bpm throughout the entire procedure. Afterwards she was exhausted and glad it was over. The doctor explained it would take a few weeks for the swelling on her heart to recede and we would be able to tell whether or not the surgery was successful. But, he was very optimistic.

For a while Kelsey felt no change. She was beginning to worry that the operation didn’t work. But, time went by and she starting feeling better and better. And then, she started to feel really good. So good that she began to wonder if she had struggled with this heart condition her entire life and didn’t know it. All of a sudden she was doing workouts with her heart rate at 130bpm when it would have normally been 180bpm for the exact same workout only a few months before.

By this time the cycling season was over so she was working on her base and trying to stay in shape through the winter. Once in a while she would go for a run. As I mentioned before, running was what always caused injury for her so she was running easy just for the enjoyment of it. She began running more and more. No injuries…hmmm. With triathlon always on her mind you can imagine what she started thinking.

The day came when Kelsey decided to get back into triathlon again. She was glowing. That same day she went straight to the pool, where she hadn’t been in two years. Just the thought of doing a triathlon changed everything. Kelsey was Kelsey once again.

Not wanting to get injured, Kelsey decided to take her time coming back. Early this summer she did a small Olympic Distance triathlon in Las Vegas and blew away the competition. After that, she did a few local bike races while she prepared for the Toyota Rainbow Cup Triathlon in Tobago.

Before she left for Tobago she started to feel some alignment issues. She immediately backed off the running, which in years past she never would have let herself do. She replaced her running workouts with water running. The water running allowed her to keep her running strength up while reducing any potential injury implications. I also believe it helped strengthen her stabilizer muscles, which will ultimately help her stay injury free and build her technical stamina. Having strong stabilizer muscles will help keep technique together even when the large muscle groups begin to give out. If you can maintain proper technique during severe fatigue you can get yourself through the finish line.

Tobago being a big competition Kelsey went in not knowing what to expect. She had been training injury free for a good amount of time so she knew she was in pretty good shape. Obviously, she was a little concerned with her running because of the recent issues.

Being around Kelsey when she wins is like realizing for the first time that love is real. It’s like being part of something great…something better than you. God put us on earth for these kinds of experiences. Needless to say, she won in Tobago.

With her eyes set on the future, Kelsey is looking towards her lifetime goal once again. She is back. Focused, happy, fit, and ready to conquer the world! Game on.

Thanks to Dan Morris for the first 4 photographs in this article.