Monday, February 28, 2011

The Fastest Ice in the World



Headed west to Salt Lake City for 2 days of ice time on the Olympic Oval (400 meters) with son and grandson. This facility is awesome, two hockey rinks in the center of the big oval. One for short track speed skating and the other for hockey, plus a running track on the perimeter of the long track. The inside temperature of 65F.

Short track club members (30 skaters) from Denver, COS and Fort Collins all attended with ages ranging from 8 to 65.
The first session was on the big oval working on skills and finishing with time trials. We had to choose either the 500m or 1000m. I picked the 1000m and finished in under 2 minutes, just a few seconds behind Glen Winkel from the COS short track club. After we finished our event the big boys (USA, KAZ, Austria, Swiss) showed us some real speed!

After the long track session we moved over to short tracking skill sessions in the afternoon and raced in groups of 6 arranged by skill and speed. What a blast!

The Sunday am session was "speed skating scratch racing" on the Long Track Oval with distances from 500m, 1000m, 3000m and 5000m with groups of 6 - 10 by skill. I did them all and managed to stay upright and win a few heats.

I can't wait to go back and GO LEFT on the ice again

Lars








Thursday, February 3, 2011

Warming up for a race


Here I am warming up for Master's Nationals at 3 years of age

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

BOULDER BICYCLE RACE HISTORY - WHAT CAN YOU ADD?


This Cycling Race History piece is especially fun because it prominently features the Vic's Espresso/Peerless Tires team, (thanks to the ubiquitous Marc Bekoff). Among familiar names, note the Riders of Rohan competitor, Raging Doug Emerson.

Boulder Cycling History - Fill in the blanks!
From Don Hobbs dmhobbs53@gmail.com

We mention Boulder's old local racing teams and a few names popped up, but I'm sure there are more. Any additional bio information would be great (including racer names on those teams), and if my facts are off please correct me ....
  • Boulder Riders of Rohan: Spoke on Hill - Steve Brown, Scott Havlick, Doug Emerson
  • Ride 'Em Cowboys: Pedal Pushers - George Knaggs, Mark Southard, Bruce Whitesel, Dave Zimbleman, Fritz Johnston, John Budko, Charlie Hanson
    Dick's Schwinn: Peter Thron, Tim Draeger, Jeff Cloud, Rachel Ames, Mark Taylor, Jeff Lord, Kenny Leader
  • Team Monger/CycleLogic
  • Vic's Espresso - The team made its debut in 1984 and was founded by Marc Bekoff, Lawrence Bosch, Andy Pruitt, and Brad Wallace. The four of us are still around and 3 of us are still racing, believe it or not. Pedal Pushers was a long-time sponsor and the Le Peep team emerged from "Team Pink" sponsored by Pedal Pushers (a la George Knaggs). Over the years the original Le Peep team has had a number of different sponsors including Ben Serotta/Davis Phinney Bicycles, Specialized, Shimano, Celestial Seasonings, the Morgul Bismarck bike shop, Cycle Logic, University Bicycles, Pearl Izumi, and Sugoi. Now the four original founders and many others are part of the Boulder Master's Cycling Team sponsored by Vic's Coffee Shop (not all of them), University Bicycles, Peerless Tires, Specialized, Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, Shimano, Sugoi, and yes, Le Peep -- http://bmct-main.blogspot.com/. Over the past 26 years members of the team have won many state and national championship and one world championship (thanks to Marc Bekoff for bio information).