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








1 comment:

Julia said...

Fantastic Lars and it sounds so fun!! I had no idea you were as versed on the ice. Great cross training too!