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After last week's Salt Lake City (Kearns) Utah championships, where Shani Davis set two world records, the speed skaters head for what they say is the slower ice of Richmond, BC, to the oval where next year's Winter Olympics will be contested. There's controversy over whether the Canadian hosts have been allowing teams free access to the rink, but i don't care so much about that. If they want a home rink advantage, so be it. If they want to seem gracious and accomodating, so be that too.

Oh I am so sorry I didn't look this up before, even when I saw press releases earlier this year. I just never quite got to it until now. But now is good too. If you wish you could see long track and short track ISU world cup events on your television, well you might sometimes, but on your computer, you can see many hours of video from this year's world cup season in both track formats. I've only watched a bit but it looks and sounds and feels great!

If you have a few minutes to watch some videos about ice speedskating stories indoors and out, check out this contest where you can vote on which ones go to the next round. I assume United Statesians can vote! Check out the video from Canada's skaters...

http://www.ingspeedskatingchallenge.com/video.php

Methinks thou must yield thine (or someone's!) email address to vote...or at least something that looks like an email address. But watching the videos is fine for me.

A few years ago at the US10K I met Heather Richardson from High Point Speed, just briefly, not a long chat or anything. But it was clear she was a powerful skater even at 10K, which is lots longer than most indoor types really want to do very often (that's a lot of laps on the tiny indoor inline circuits). The Greensboro News & Record has a nice story on her, point out that...

Richardson, a 19-year-old from High Point, is the reigning U.S.
champion in long-track speedskating's sprint events and recently
finished 20th at the World Sprints.

They told Mark DeMontis he'd never play hockey again. They were wrong. Now he's planning to skate across most of Canada this summer, despite being legally blind, all for charity, to help others like him enjoy skating and life.

DeMontis was a triple-A hockey player in Toronto with hopes of an
NCAA scholarship when he was diagnosed with Leber's optic neuropathy,
an eye disease that left him legally blind at age 17.

I was just wondering, for those who did the 2008 Montreal 24-Hour Inline Race, how was it for you? Tell us whatever you can while you can still remember it. Share stuff about...who, what, when, where, how, how many, how much, how fast, how fun, what you'd want to be different from the race organizers, what you'd want to do differently, what you'd want your team to do in the future, and do you think you'd do it again?

This is open to all participants from any team and soloskaters too. Please share your thoughts while you can remember them. We're interested!

2 Texas Flyers, Biff and I, skated Montreal 24-Hour last weekend (http://inline24.com/). Skatey-Mark got 2nd in this event last year.

Smooth road surface.  Each relay team has up to 10 skaters. Laps are 2.7 miles; team members take a lap usually every 1 to 1.5 hrs. Or if you're going through midlife crisis, you can skate the 24 hours all by yourself. Below is my very wordy story for the long ass event.

Funny how my parents think I'm young, and I think I'm old sometimes, young others, mostly depending if I've been forced to look in a mirror, or to look at my hands, or help me, otherwise be faced with reality of that sort. The inner reality is often far different, and yay for that....

Wow... What do you say after skating for 24 hours? Well, first off I want to say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to our AWESOME support team! Andrea, Maria, Renee, and Dawn -- YOU ROCK! In fact, we need to create a whole new verb that adequately describes how much you rock. And another BIG THANKS to Brian Shicoff for organizing everything, and to Lawrence for really making me earn that silver medal, and to Bryan McKenney for rounding out our team of Americans determined to fulfill Brian's dream of sweeping the podium... (lol)

I know my world. Well, sort of. I think (therefore I think I am) I know a very small portion of it.

One thing I love is to read a nice, clear, brief piece of writing that takes me just a bit into someone else's world, to the overlapping edge of theirs and mine, perhaps. If it's written with some balance, fairness, gentleness and love, so much the better. If it sees the frustrations but seeks peace with them, nice. If it catches the enormous spark kapow importance of a pair of skates, even though it's a passing mention, yeah! Thanks to Chloe Tse for a few nice minutes of reading. It's a different world from mine, and that's why I liked listening in at the next table (via the web) for a moment.

Climate change or not, those crazywonderful Canadians have been trying to get the canal ready for skating at least by their upcoming Winterlude festival on February 2. I love any article that says...

Okay...  everyone knows I'm a distance junkie, and just a glutton for punishment in general...  Last year I did my first 100-mile skate and had intended to challenge myself by skating 100 miles on back-to-back days.  My "double century weekend" never happened unfortunately, but I have been pondering my next challenge for some time now.

This is mostly a press release so if you want to know about that, click it. But an important and interesting part is that this skater wants to get his event class into the Paralympics. Good luck! From the release...

OK - here it is...  Perhaps my longest writeup ever... 

Le Défi de L'Île de Montréal -- October 21, 2006

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PRE RACE

Ahh this is a shame, as Craig and I vaguely talked of a return to do this fine event, and I would love seeing Ottawa again. Please note that there's an Ottawa Inline Skating Festival very soon (Sep 3, on Canada's Labour Day, the same as USA's Labor Day). It sounds like tons of fun and I would seriously love to go there. The US10K is the same day. Such good opportunities on the same day! (I'm severely unready for a 10K, were I ever, but this one is point-to-point and not laps so I'm likely to finish; laps are just an easy way to quit early as far as I am concerned.) Of course the NY100K is forthwith as well...this coming weekend! Oh boy another place I'd love to be. Time=1/Money! Ha! Ahh, but rules make sonnets, and choices make a life!

I don't know much about world record solo attempts, but I saw this story in the sidebar and thought it might spark some discussion at some point among those who have been to the F1 track in Montreal, especially to skate. As I recall from reports, during the 24 hour skate race there, participants had to watch for hedgehogs crossing or some such! Regardless, I don't know if this is an age group or gender or human speed record, as the article leaves a bit to the imagination. Perhaps we'll find more later. Enjoy...Blake