Charlie Brown On Skates

In my mind, I am not 42, even though I just turned that number two days ago. Lucky for me, my body continually reminds me of the fact that I am actually middle aged. Speedskating is a demanding sport on various parts of the body, and it’s an endurance sport. The word “endurance” itself informs you that there’s going to be some struggles along the way.

When you’re 18, you think your body is a machine - and to me it felt like one. Almost nothing went wrong. Watching some of the younger skaters, it’s easy to get envious of their youth as they fly around the track or outside seemingly without effort (even if that isn’t the case).

The paradox that I see however, is that a great deal of top skaters in this sport are actually right in my age group - and older. Let’s take two excellent skaters from my team for example: Greg Major is 50, a great skater who is always vying for top spots in his division. Cale Carvell will soon be turning 60. Cale won the Hayward Marathon in 2007 - not just in his division, but OVERALL.

Lots of our skaters are in the 35-45 range, and many of them are extremely good. Look at Eddy Matzger - still one of the top skaters in the world at endurance events.

Do they all struggle with their body? I don’t know, but I sure do. I’ve been dealing with back problems for a decade, and we all know how skating is with our backs. There are days I find it hard to get out of bed. But the flip side of that is it is forcing me to better my technique in order to avoid back pain. Maybe in the end it will work in my favor.

It’s the minor things that can actually be more aggravating. Pulling a calf muscle while warming up for a strength workout this morning. Aches in the knees for no apparent reason that come and go. And worse, de-training happens at an incredibly rapid rate if I take off too much time.

My problem with this is that when I compete in sports I have high goals. I want to *compete* I don’t just want to be part of the group. When my division rolls into the finish, I’d like to be in the group picture.

Maybe these goals are too high for me. I don’t quite know yet since I’ve only been in the sport for 8 months or so. I’ve always been very competitive, and I’ve always been pretty good in the sports I’ve been involved with in the past.

But now I’m outside my comfort zone, this isn’t baseball anymore, or even football. I’m told technique takes a good 3 years to develop and I’m not even one year in yet. I’ve gotten better skates, I’m working on technique as best I can, and meanwhile my body fights me along the way - I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

My goal this year was to skate some sub 1:30:00 marathons. It’s a tall order since that would mean an improvement of over 17:00 from my personal best. Can I do it?

Only time will tell.