It seems...

It seems time is so short during the winter break.

I guess it's a busy time of year, and that feeling is to be expected.

I mean, my time home was longer than the "usual"... That's for sure. Normally, if I'm lucky, I get two days at home. This year I managed to sneak in four and a half! The time back home was really good, but again it seemed short.

I also miss getting up to Edmonton to see the rest of my family! I just received a call from my sister, and I guess I'm missing out on the belated family Christmas dinner...

The thought of all that good food and company makes it tough to miss because of training!

It's going to be a short visit here in Calgary though. I'm shipping off to Kingston for a couple days and then back to Montreal for some training with the team there.

We'll be losing Jon for a bit as him and his wife Veronick are about to have a baby. So heading off to Montreal is probably a good time as he'll be very busy this month!

It should be good to get away though. This time while I'm there, I need to crack down on studying and get things done!

Haha.

Just a heads up, look forward to my January 8th posting. It should be an exciting one!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays Everyone!

(I believe that's politically correct)

Here are some photos from home in Medicine Hat.

Our neighbourhood was visited by a great horned owl today. It was eyeballing my Mom, Dad and I this afternoon while we were outside checking him out.

Another strange visitor occurred a few weeks back...

Picture of a Coyote in our backyard tree. My Dad thinks it was eating the berries from it.

Again, Happy Holidays Everyone!

National Team Trials #1 - Calgary

The up and downs of sport...

There is no denying it - both for results and emotions.

I had a great day on Saturday. Came 3rd in the 1500 m's, which for most people seems very uncharacteristic for me. But looking at the results, the whole weekend should be classified as unusual...

There was Sunday.

I'm sorry if I was a little depressing in that last blog entry. Looking back at it now, it wasn't a great moment for me. Writing that entry was tough, maybe I shouldn't have. But where's my honesty in that?

It was tough and it was how I felt.

I was really disappointed with the results. Nothing anyone could say could change my viewpoint for that moment. Especially, considering that it was the second Canadian Record stripped from me that weekend (even though SSC never acknowledged my 1500 m, set Friday February the 13th, 2009).

I won the C Final and came 9th in the 500 m's.

Monday was revitalizing. Somewhat...

Physically I was unwell.

I woke up with a pretty bad headache, sore throat and a plugged nose. I had felt the beginning stages of it Friday evening, but I wasn't too stressed about it. I knew I had a few days before I was going to feel the fatigue from it - which meant after the competition.

Mentally I was strong.

I was resolved on making the 1000 m's my best distance of the weekend. In truth, it's usually one of my worst distances though, but as I said... not this time.

I pulled every lap "wire to wire" in the Heats, Quarters and Semis - I was too stubborn to let anyone else take command of the races. I bulldozed myself into that A Final and finished 2nd behind Remi.

I maintain that I deserved the win, but it's Short Track. I won't get into the logistics of it because it would be reiterating everything I said from the outcome of Olympic Trials...

To finish of the weekend we had a 3000 m and a relay. I ended up coming in 6th in the 3000 m. I'm "OK" with that. I'm not very fond of that race.

In the relay, Marc-Andre got a strip early in the race and our team was shortened to 3 man exchanges... It was very tiring.

All in all, Monday was a very long day... I'd say, probably one of the longer days I've had competing. I got a full 8 hours last night, but my cold is out in full force. Fortunately, I have a day off to recover.

What luck!

And there you go, the "ups and downs" of National Team Trials.

If this were previous years, my best performance would have been the 500 m. I feel like it was the only thing that kept me on the team from year to year.

I'm still extremely strong in the 500 m's. But, bad luck happens... Ice breaks away and it's a good thing I can make up for it in the other distances.

In the end, it was a pretty good weekend. Thank you everyone for your support, especially to the family that came in from out of town to watch!

All the photos I've used here are from Alex Seleznyov, you can visit his website at:

http://alexseleznyov.com

Also, this last photo was taken by my sister of the posters that were set up for the trials!

*Sigh*... What a day...

40.437...

40.437 is the new Canadian Record in the 500 m and unofficial World Record... Except this one was not set by me, but fellow teammate Michael Gilday.

Yes in two days, he has taken down two of my records... sigh...

I'm happy for him but I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty choked that they're both gone.

If that wasn't enough, I fell in my quarters... I was moving pretty fast with less than a lap to go... May have even been a new Canadian Record for me... But for some reason the ice decided to give out on me. My skate just broke away and carried my body with it.

I ended up coming in 9th in the 500 m. Not something I'm very pleased about - I managed to win the C Final.

The only real positive thing I can take from this day is that of all races I stayed on my feet for I skated in the 40's... And one of them was from position 4 on the line! Also, that our C Final was about half a second faster than that of the A Final.

This is part of sport, especially Short Track. Anyone who does high performance sports knows these ups and downs all too well...

But tomorrow is another day and still big points up for grabs as we continue on with the 1000 m's and 3000 m super finals. It should prove to be a long and grueling day!

Photo above is compliments of Tracy Hillis!

News Articles

Two news articles from the Calgary Herald today...

Michael Gilday...

http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports/Race+lifetime+ease+Olympic+heartache/2335484/story.html

Mine...

http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports/Maybe+make+sense+2014/2335482/story.html

*sigh*

Day 1 - National Team Trials Calgary

Well today was interesting. My heat involved me chasing a few guys down who decided to go for time... No idea why... All I remember is shaking my head when I saw them go. I passed them and finished 1st.

The Semi final was a little better (since no one went for time), I won the race and advanced to the A Final, where I met up with fellow team mate Michael Gilday.

Before stepping out onto the ice for our race, Antoine Gelinas-Beaulieu asked me if I "was ready to hurt". I shrugged, I wasn't exactly sure what he meant since 1500 m's always hurt for me. I should have guessed that he would go out for time... He pulled the first 10 laps of the race at an extremely fast pace, Gilday took over at that point and finished with a 2:06.565...

Yes, a 2:06.565...

Don't believe me? Check yourself...

That's like 4 seconds faster than the world record (2:10.639)... (Picture above is compliments of Alex Fishi!)

I managed to work myself from 6th to 3rd in the last 2 laps. I came in not far off Gilday, so needless to say I have an even faster 1500 m time now (to be accurate 3rd fastest in the world I'm guessing).

I'd like to note, that I did own the original Canadian Record, even though Speed Skate Canada never acknowledged it. It was announced that Michael broke Turcotte's old record, but it was actually mine. I did it last year at Winterfest... But it was ignored.

Anyways, congratulations to Gilday and nice work Antoine!

Tomorrow will be an eventful day as well, since it is the 500 m's!

National Team Trials #1

Trials on an Olympic year seem funny, but there are still a few spots remaining on the line for next years team. They start today with the 1500 m's. We'll be doing 3 rounds of 1500's starting at 10 am today.

The rest of the weekend will be:

Sunday 10 am start time: 500 m's (4 rounds)

Monday 10 am (I believe) start time: 1000 m's (4 rounds), super 3000 m (just one final), and a relay with the top 16 from the competition.

It will be a good weekend. Our group is strong right now, and we're skating smooth!

Canmore and things...

So I only went to Canmore on Thursday. A few of the other guys and gals went for Friday, but it was a long drive and the roads weren't great so I packed it in for the week.

Thursday was great though! I'm hoping I can get a group picture up soon but we'll have to see. The Canmore club skaters had the opportunity to come out and skate with us... Like I mean, literally skate with us. They were nervous at first, but after skating side by side with us in mixed relay groups, they soon learned that all we really are, are big kids. So needless to say we got along rather nicely!

The ice there is actually really nice! Very smooth and can hold our bodies on turns really well. The only thing is that mats come up quick with it being an NHL sized rink... Oh and it is very cold. Those kids are tough as nails to train there all week!

The rest of the weekend was spent hanging out at the Long Track World Cups with Matt Lipsett, a good friend I used to skate with "back in the day" (Ha). It was great catching up on old skating stories with him - what memories!

Now it's time to gear up for trials. They'll be running from Saturday the 12th to Monday the 14th.

One last thing, congratulations are in order for our Juniors here in the Oval Program. They all skated really well. We have three Juniors heading to Junior Worlds! Congratulations Kristy Shoebridge, Mikhail Choi and Rob Watson!!!

Some R n' R from the Oval

So today they took out the short track mats at the Oval for the upcoming long track World Cup. I'm surprised they left them this long, as the competition starts soon. But, it was awesome of them to leave them on this long!

Tomorrow we're shippin' out to Canmore for a couple of practices. It should be fun, then a nice relaxing weekend full of recovery!

Round House Kick to the Chest

OK, so the Oval is a little busier than usual. The Long Track World Cup is in Calgary this weekend and there is a large number of athletes on the running track during my morning warm up.

While doing my warm up jog I unfortunately got blocked by the Chinese team. Now these aren't normal sized Chinese people, they are huge with very powerful legs (as I soon learned from first hand experience)... Like I think the tallest girl is like six and some feet...

No Jokes.

They run pretty slow to begin with, but they had just finished their lap jog and started doing dynamic stretches - they were now spread out in front of me and moving very slow.

I saw a break in the group and started to maneuver my way through the pack. They had been doing front swing kicks for the majority of my pass but as soon as I was about to pass the lead person, she switched exercises on me, swung her leg round the side of her and snapped straight back into my chest... So strong it knocked me right off my feet.

I was in complete disbelief.

I think she was too, she had no clue I was coming up on the outside of her. She was very apologetic, but I said that I was "OK", brushed myself off and callapsed on the long track mats. I'm not sure what was worse, being winded or my ill attempts to hold back laughter.

Anyways, enough said...

Also, Congratulations to my cousin Chris and his wife Amanda, they had a baby girl today... Presley Riana Davidchuk! Now I've got to teach Kadan (their son) how to deal with a little sister!