Kristina Groves: "Lazy Bones" Living Life in Skating's Fast Lane

KRISTINA GROVES: THE GROVESLINE

Canadian speed skating ace Kristina Groves shares journal entries

(As Canadian speed skating ace Kristina Groves notes in this latest edition of The Grovesline (see previous dispatches below), it’s been some time since we’ve heard from her. Not like she hasn’t been busy – she looked very sharp yesterday in finishing second at the Canadian Fall World Cup Selections at the Richmond Olympic Oval. Groves is a big supporter of Right To Play and Clean Air Champions. She's also still dreaming of carrying the Olympic torch.)

Kristina Groves: The Grovesline

It’s almost a miracle that I’m writing this. Since I last wrote, which was many moons ago, I have thought of, and half composed in my mind, countless brilliant pieces of writing about the very fascinating and noteworthy things that happen to me on a daily basis. Sometimes when I’m out for a long training ride or biking to the rink in the morning, I think of endless witty and poignant sentences about all kinds of ideas my mind conjures up for this very thing.

But then I get home and flip open my computer to read the newspaper and check my three new emails. Then I start to make lunch and take forever to eat it, and before I can even take a nap it’s time to go back to the rink for the next training session, massage, physiotherapy appointment and special program in the Human Performance Lab. And then it’s off for groceries, home to dinner, cleaning up and falling asleep …

Sounds busy right? Or rather much like everyone else’s life out there except with way less email and no children. I’d like to pretend that the reason I haven’t written for so long is because I’m so busy with training and therapy and focusing on preparing to qualify for the upcoming Experience of a Lifetime. If only it were so. No, the reason I haven’t gotten around to writing for so long is simply that I can just be one lazy son of a gun.

Since I graduated from university in 2004 I have been a full-time athlete with part-time interests on the side. I used to take three classes a semester, train twice a day, work a part-time job, cook my own meals and keep a pretty clean house while maintaining a reasonable social life.

Now I feel proud if I empty the dishwasher within 48 hours of it being run and fold my laundry before I’ve managed to take a piece or two at a time off the drying rack till it’s all back in the dirty bin. I started house projects five years ago that I have yet to complete and recently hired a firefighter who does renovations on the side to help finish the trim and baseboards around all the new flooring we installed seven years ago, even though I had a borrowed nail gun in the basement and most of the pieces were already cut. Don’t even get me started on how often I clean the bathroom!

Apparently my time management skills have taken quite a beating in recent years. The one upside to these embarrassing confessions is that it seems my performances in skating are inversely proportional to the amount of stuff I have going on in my life. As all the extra-curricular and extraneous activities have fallen away, my rankings have slowly improved. It is, of course, possible that this could have more to do with maturing physically and mentally but honestly, I only have the energy to explore one theory here. I think I have taken the art of doing nothing to a whole new level. I sit around. A lot. It took me a long time to be okay with this, and although I have made some headway in accepting that this is part of what I do, I still often feel like I could and should do more, although I’m not exactly sure what I mean by ‘more.’

The racing schedule often determines my inability to ‘do’ things as I am on the road for weeks at a time during the fall and winter. This inevitably leads me to make a list of all the things I’m going to do in the spring when I get some time off. One year I finished the season mighty exhausted but with a really long list and was itching to get started even though I was cooked. My good friend and roommate at the time, Sabina, set me straight one day and said, ‘Kristina, you’re tired, just let yourself rest and be okay with it!’ I promptly took her advice and lay around the house for a week.

During the last Olympic season in 2005-06, I discovered Sudoku. I actually became kind of obsessed with it and spent hours lying on the couch after training pouring over endless pages of nine squares of nine squares. I also discovered the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm and read a whole lot of books. Those distractions served me well; I had some of the best races of my life that season.

Which brings me to the present day. For the first time in my life, I see a light at the end of the tunnel on this sporting journey and realize I might not be a speed skater until the End of Time. With equal parts energy and motivation, I approached the beginning of this season with an intensity that was not entirely productive. Feeling like this might be ‘it,’ I felt compelled to do everything right and got a little caught up in feeling pressure to perform at the big show – a big waste of energy. After few bumps in the road during the summer and help from some great people around me I’ve managed to readjust my mind and attitude accordingly.

In short, I am focused and positive on the ice and relaxed and, dare I say, wonderfully lazy, off of it. I have gotten to the end of many a day wondering how it is possible that I have merely trained and eaten. It might have something to do with discovering a website that allows me to watch never-ending streaming episodes of Frasier and The Cosby Show (ridiculous, I know). Or it might have something to do with training really hard and being so tired some days that my brain is in a fog and I just sit there until I have train again. Or most likely it has to do with the fact that I’m intent on skating fast and one way to do that is to make sure I train hard and be lazy, just not at the same time.

Whew. My fingers are pretty tired. I think I’ll sign off now and go take a nap.

-------

Some other editions of The Grovesline:

June 22 -- Close Encounters With Steel Poles

May 19 -- Meditating on the New Moon

March 31 -- What the Puck?!

January 26 -- PB's of a Different Kind

 

Kristina Groves: Close Encounters with Steel Poles

(Canadian speed skating ace Kristina Groves checks in with her latest edition of The Grovesline on the Road to the 2010 Winter Games.  She writes here of how Aldous Huxley and a much too close encounter with with a steel pole while skating at the Richmond Olympic Oval have reminded her of the importance of mindfulness. Her motto may well become: "Attention. Here and now, boys. Attention."  (Groves is a supporter of Right To Play and Clean Air Champions.")  

When I was home in Ottawa at the end of March for a week of rest and recovery, I happened one day to spend a few moments scouring my parents’ bookshelves with the intention of taking some books out on loan to help occupy my mind throughout the upcoming season. The shelves are packed with all kinds of classic and contemporary titles, very few of which I’ve read, most of which I have not. These same books have been on these same shelves for my entire life and I tend to recognize all of them, not for their titles, authors or literary acclaim, but more for their cover designs, colours and graphics. Strangely, even though I was a fanatical reader when I was a kid, I rarely ventured to these shelves for my fix. I figured now might be the time to actually read some of them and, considering I will need to fill the odd hour or two this year with some restful downtime, this would be the perfect prescription.

CHRIS SO/TORONTO

I borrowed about four or five books. Notably, ‘Late Nights on Air’ by Elizabeth Hay, winner of last year’s Giller Prize, and ‘The Age of Reason’ by French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. When my Dad asked me what I picked, I mentioned these as well as ‘Island’ by Aldous Huxley. He replied with, ‘Oh, heavy one’. This one caught my eye because many years ago I read ‘Brave New World’ by Huxley and enjoyed it tremendously.

‘Island’ is the first one I picked up. Within minutes I found myself going back to the beginning and starting over. And again, a few pages in I went back to re-read paragraphs, two, even three times more. I put the book down. The next day I started it again. I made it a few pages further, and slowly felt I was adjusting to the writing and absorbing at least a small amount of what I was reading. Still, I did not get very far, and far from feeling hooked, like when you can’t put a book down and spend hours devouring every word to find out what happens, I was simply confused and a little defeated.

The one bright spot for me amongst the early pages was a little nugget of a lesson about being mindful. On the island of Pala, Huxley’s utopia off the coast of India on which the story takes place, mynah birds had been trained to fly around squawking, “Attention! Here and now, boys. Attention.” Early in the book, the injured main character flows in and out of consciousness, wondering what he is hearing. We learn later on that the birds were so trained to remind island inhabitants to be mindful of the here and now, to be present, to be in the moment: To pay attention to attention. I liked this part, and even though I had no clear idea of what else was going on, this point struck a chord with me, as I am at the least mindful of trying to be mindful. (This is the stage you might get to before you can actually claim to be truly mindful.) So, I heard the mynah birds in my mind, and it helped me through my daily doings a little more mindfully. It unfortunately did not help me much in getting through, or even getting, ‘Island’.

I plugged on, barely. I started to avoid reading because I found this particular read to be a little stressful. Eventually I would give up, postponing ‘Island’ by instead starting, and finishing, ‘Late Nights on Air’ within days.

All the while I was in Richmond, B.C. for our first stretch of training there. Being back on the ice so early in the season, the earliest ever, and being in a new training environment, in addition to having some trouble kicking a stomach bug I picked up at our training camp in Tucson, left me feeling a little out of sorts. Our second day on the ice, I did not feel too well in the morning and briefly considered staying home to get some rest. But being the kind of athlete I am, I didn’t, even though in my aching gut I knew I probably should have. Lesson number two – listen to your gut.

That day I stepped onto the ice and skated a few easy laps. This time of the year is sometimes a good time to make changes to equipment, tweak blade positioning, etc. My coach, Xiuli, suggested I move one of my blades just a smidge, to help me achieve better blade placement on the ice. I resisted at first, having no feel on the ice yet, but relented and moved it for that practice. The first couple of laps felt technically fine, but physically I was still off. I skated up to Xiuli and told her as much, ‘I feel tired, my energy is low and my brain is just not here right now. I’m not focused.’ Having said all that, I started another set of easy laps, my brain in a fog.

As I exited a corner and started on the straightaway, the culmination of three factors came into play leading to a fairly unfortunate end. One, as mentioned previously, my brain was M.I.A. Two, I caught my left outer edge, not yet used to its new position, meaning it took control of me and took me down. And three, my fall trajectory put me in the path of one of the tall metal poles bolted into the gym floor situated on the inside of the oval. These poles are used to hold up the tall netting which surrounds the entire floor and prevents the basketballs and volleyballs from ending up on the ice.

It happened so quickly, even though I was skating what I would refer to as, ‘really, really slow.’ Being on the inside lane gave me no time to react or move out of the way. I could only shriek in fear as I slid towards this giant pole. I don’t even know how I hit the pole, but thankfully I did not hit with my head or any lower body appendage. Still, I was so mad!! Repeatedly I swore, ‘who put those *$#%ing poles there?’ I was the third skater on the National Team to fall and crash into one of these poles.

There is no other rink in the world set up like this, and admittedly they take down the poles during competition, but concerns raised when the poles were installed fell on deaf ears. I came away with a sprained wrist, of all things, and a kinked up neck and shoulder. Otherwise unscathed, I was undeniably very lucky.

The alarm bells rung throughout the oval staff and immediately plans to solve the problem were put in place. We are now protected from the poles and netting by a line of mats, the same ones used to line the outside of the track. Genius!

So I ended up with a few extra days off and some easy training, which is probably what I needed in the first place. And although the poles were indeed an unnecessary hazard, and although I probably shouldn’t have moved my blade so early, in the end the biggest fault laid squarely on my own shoulders. I was not paying attention to what I was doing. I was not connected with my skating. I did not heed Attention! I was not Here and Now, Boys! Those words rung sorely through my mind as I recuperated during those empty days in my still, hot apartment. How lucky I had been, and how easy it is to lose that edge, the edge that keeps me from such incidents on a daily basis. Moment to moment, if I am not connected with what I am doing, I am doomed.

And so, yet another lesson learned. Thankful for this experience, I am more aware, more conscious and more present in what I do.

Maybe when I pick up Huxley’s ‘Island’ again I will get it. Maybe all I need to do is. Pay. Attention. Here. And. Now. Boys!

The Grovesline: Meditating on the New Moon

(Canadian speed skating ace Kristina Groves checks in with the latest edition of The Grovesline from the team's first training camp of the season in Arizona.  She's been gracious enough to let us re-publish these entries she sends to keep family and friends updated.)

 I love the moon. I love staring at the moon, marveling at its existence and wondering how it can shine so brightly just by reflecting the light of the sun. It amazes me how that little dot in the sky pulls in the tides and let’s them out again. I try to imagine what it must have been like to walk around up there and what it looks like on the dark side we never see. I love it so much because it makes me feel small and makes the little things I worry about seem so insignificant. Sometimes when I’m rushing around, caught up in my own jumbled thoughts, the sight of the moon will catch my eye and stop me in my tracks and take my breath away. Even though it is light years away, or maybe because it is light years away, it keeps me grounded and reminds me to keep sight of the big picture.

My favourite moon is what I call a fingernail moon. That’s not the scientific name for it of course, but it’s the name I give to the moon when you can see just the tiniest sliver of it, when it just barely catches the light of the sun. It makes me think of the end of my fingernail. I took an astronomy class in university (easy science credit) and learned that this phase of the moon is either the waxing or waning gibbous phase, the phase when it is either just past (waxing) or just before (waning) a new moon. But any moon, whether it is a fingernail moon or a rising harvest moon, always brings a smile to my face and a little piece of peace to my mind.

After four weeks off training, some serious rest and contemplating the reality that my own full moon is disappearing into its waning gibbous phase, it is time to get back in the saddle again. Although the rest is entirely necessary, it comes as a bit of shock to the system after eleven months of intense training and racing. In past years I used to resist the urge to lie on the couch all day and just let myself rest, feeling as though I should instead utilize my four weeks of freedom to accomplish something useful like tile the bathroom floor or ski my brains out. But over the years I’ve come to accept that I just need to stop, rest and get to a place where I feel completely free of physical and mental stress.

After a couple of weeks I am generally past the phase of physical exhaustion and begin to feel pretty sedentary. I don’t like this feeling but it pulls me in like the tide and I succumb to it every year. It’s what makes starting to train again so physically difficult, as my body resists the movement at first, until my muscles wake up from their slumber and start firing when I tell them to. Sometimes it’s tough to get going again and it takes a while for the motivation to come back. After the Olympics in 2006 it was nearly two months before I started training again, and even then I didn’t really get into it for a couple more. But that was by design, just as it is now, that I feel truly ready to go again after just four weeks. This is part of the Olympic phase, and a new moon is around the corner.

And so, we ride our bikes. After ten days of bike touring through the national parks of southern Utah I now find myself back with the team in the midst of 35 degree Celsius heat in Tucson, Arizona. Riding is how we get fit, and although the heat is rather extreme for Canadians like us, it is a far better option than the unpredictable, cool and often rainy weather that befalls Calgary this time of year.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not, it didn’t take long to get back into the physical exhaustion phase. We are only at the end of day three of a ten-day camp and at 8:40 pm I can barely keep my eyes open. How can I feel so tired already? Maybe it’s the 4-hour rides followed by afternoon runs, core and weights. Or maybe it’s just the new moon. Every season begins anew, and each year I travel through the same phases of training, fatigue, and rest and finally the culmination of it all in the ultimate end of supreme competition - a full moon!

I know that beyond this cycling camp there is much harder training to come that will challenge me to reach a new level, but somehow, no matter how tired I get, my eyes are wide open to the fact that this is the time of my life. How lucky I am to have the next ten months in front of me, full of possibility and potential. I will never have this chance again. While other new moons will come and go, I feel absolutely full of enthusiasm, patience and focus, to wholly experience this one as it travels through waxing, waning, and absolutely 100% full.

Kristina Groves: What the Puck?!

KRISTINA GROVES: THE GROVESLINE

Canadian speed skating ace Kristina Groves shares journal entries

The Grovesline: Inside the World of Kristina Groves

Kristina Groves, one of the lynchpins of Canada’s speed skating powerhouse, has been kind enough to share the insightful and funny journal entries she sends to family, friends and supporters with this blog. This latest entry is a real beaut as Groves talks about her disqualification at the recent world championships on the Richmond Olympic Oval after crossing the line with by far the fastest time in the women’s 1,500 metres. Groves is a supporter of both Right To Play and Clean Air Champions.

One day when I was a pretty young kid, young enough at least not to know any better, a couple of dumb, older kids taught me a ‘trick’ on the bus on the way home from school. They told me to go home and show my parents this ‘trick’.

That night, as my Dad tucked me into bed, I showed him what I had learned that day. I put each index finger into the corners of my mouth and attempted to say the word ‘puck.’

You can imagine what comes next – the trick is that you can’t actually say ‘puck’; it comes out sounding just a little different.

Being as young and naive as I was, I didn’t actually know what I was saying, although my Dad sure did and his reaction was somewhere along the lines of, “Well now, I don’t think that’s a very nice thing to say.”

Had I been in his position I suspect I would have said something similar, but I also might have also burst into laughter after leaving the room.

It turns out there was good reason for having learned this trick many moons ago. I had quite an opportunity (recently) to utilize it, and in doing so kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

After I got disqualified from the 1500m at the World Championships for hitting a lane marker, also known as a puck, and thus crossing the line and breaking the rules, I certainly could have put this trick to good use and channeled my brief disappointment rather efficiently. I could have sworn at the very thing that I accidentally hit in just one word instead of two or more! Of course I didn’t actually do this, but it would have been funny if I had.

A lot of people said a lot of things to me after the unfortunate DQ. It was actually a pretty interesting mix of reactions. Most people were incredibly supportive and kind in what they said: “You are still the champion,” they said, and “That was a great race, in my mind you are the winner.”

Some were out and out angry, expressing their disgust with the rule and how unfair it can be: “That is such a stupid rule!” and “I can’t believe they DQ’d you, what an outrage!” Others were oddly sympathetic, offering me words of pity, as though my cat had died: “I’m so sorry for you that you were disqualified.” or “I am really sad for you.”

The best came from the referee who made the call on the DQ who came up to me as I was warming up for the two races I had the next day and just threw up his hands in the air and shrugged and said, “I had to do it! There was no question!” seemingly defending his decision as though I had made a big stink and protested the DQ. He was not apologetic, nor should he have been, but I didn’t particularly care to hear it.

The strange thing was, I didn’t really care.

Many people commented on how calm I appeared after the fact and one kind person even wrote me these words: “Your response to the unfortunate ‘puck’ incident was the epitome of diplomacy worthy of the Queen of England.”

Needless to say this brought a smile to my face. I am human after all though, and I will admit that I unleashed a 30-second rant of rather vocal, profanity-laced frustration in the Canadian locker room. But then just as quickly it all just disappeared and I laughed!!

What else could I do? I had three more races that weekend and, despite that, I had skated the race of my season, one of the very best of my life. No matter what the end result was no one could alter that fact.

Many times I have said that my aim is not to win medals necessarily, but rather aim to achieve that magical feeling of being so in the moment when everything comes together and I feel like I am flying on my skates. I did that in this race and in some ways having the prize removed, by my own fault, left me with only the absolute satisfaction of having achieved the very thing I claim to aim for.

That night back at my apartment I did not wallow in any disappointment, nor harbour any anger towards myself, or the rule, or the ref or anything at all. I felt strangely free and unencumbered by discontent of any magnitude. I simply let it go. I made dinner, sharpened my skates and got ready for the next day.

But I did do something else that night that surprised me – I cranked up the tunes in my new, partially furnished apartment, full of empty boxes and not much furniture to speak of - and I danced! I danced, badly mind you, by myself to whatever it was that was playing, in whatever way I felt like, just because I felt like it. I’m not prone to such behaviour on a regular basis, and looking back it seems rather odd, but at the time it felt so great, and didn’t have anything to do with anything at all.

I suspect that this whole experience will serve me well in the future; just as the lesson I learned on that bus many years ago came to light once again here. The lesson in all this, one I am sure to remember, is simply to continue along the path I am on, and be confident that what I aim for truly is the ultimate goal.

Well that and one more: to not hit the &#!@ing pucks again.

Get Ready to Rumball:  Just a reminder that today you get a chance to go head-to-head with an Olympian when world champion rower Jane Rumball and the University of Toronto rowing team hosts an Erg-a-thon fundraiser in support of Right To Play on Tuesday, March 31, in the front lobby of the U of T Athletic Centre (55 Harbord St, downtown Toronto). It runs from from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Rumball, part of of a Canadian women’s eight that just missed the podium at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and a former world champion in pairs, is travelling to Kampala, Uganda, in April to see firsthand the work done by Right To Play, an athlete driven charity that brings sport and play programs to kids in the most disadvantage parts of the world.

As part of the fundraiser, for a mere $20, you can get to challenge Rumball or her friend Michelle Guerette, an American rower who won silver in the women’s single sculls at the Beijing Olympics, in a 100-metre showdown.

For a double sawbuck, I just might try my luck. Figure if I go late enough, maybe Jane and Michelle will be tired enough to give an old guy a chance (Fat chance!).  It's a great opportunity to expose your kids to some first class athletes and people. Planning to take my daughter and some of her friends.

Kristina Groves Will Rebound Today – But Not With A Vengeance

DARRYL DYCK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Groves in a groove.

RICHMOND, B.C.

Watch for Canada’s Kristina Groves to rip it up today at the World Single Distances Speed Skating Championships.

It won’t be because she’s looking for redemption after getting disqualified for mistakenly kicking one of the plastic pucks on a curve after clearly being the best skater in yesterday’s 1,500 metres – it’s a new and controversial rule instituted this year.

If she excels today in the women’s 1,000- and 5,000 metre races, it will be because she’s demonstrated an ability to shine at the big events – five medals at this worlds last year – and because as she demonstrated yesterday she’s in top form and got her rhythm on the ice here.

Groves made it clear yesterday she was thrilled with her performance, despite the DQ, called it “the race of my life.”  The feeling she took away from skating at that level was much more important to her than any gold medal.

And it’s that feeling she will be focused on trying to replicate today – not avenging what happened in the 1,500. There’s nothing to avenge. She made a mistake. The rules are the rules; they had to disqualify her and she knows it.

But she also knows she bested German speed skating queen Anni Friesinger by nearly a full second – Friesinger knows it, too. The winner of 12 world titles at this event hasn’t been spanked like that in a long time, no doubt. It’s given her something to think about as she gears up for the last Olympics in a storied career.

Rumour Mill: One rumour floating around yesterday was that a vote was taken among the speed skating nations at a team leaders meeting on whether the rule about immediate disqualification for dislodging pucks should be amended.

The vote wouldn’t have changed the rule because only the International Skating Union could do that; it was more just a straw poll.

The scuttlebutt is that every nation voted that it should be changed except for one – Canada. Again, it wouldn’t have had any bearing on the women’s 1500-metre result.

Crockett Stands Firm: Kevin Crockett, former Canadian Olympic medalist turned coach for the Chinese team, has been unrepentant for his remarks in the Star earlier this week, blasting Speed Skating Canada for going overboard in trying to exploit the home ice advantage.

Crockett, who was escorted out of the Oval when he brought his Chinese skaters here to train in January, has made it clear he stands by his strong words. It could get interesting on Sunday after his star skater, world champion Beixing Wang, competes in the women’s 500 metres.

Kristina's Corner: PB's Of A Different Kind

Here’s another entry from Canadian speed skating ace Kristina Groves, winner of five medals at last year’s world single distance championships. For those of you who think Olympics athletes are a bunch of granola eaters – not that there’s anything wrong with that – Groves is here to tell us that they can venture over to the dark side on occasion. If you don’t want your illusions shattered, you might not want to read this missive she sent along last month.

Groves, who has been kind enough to share her journal posts here, is a supporter of Right To Play and Clean Air Champions.

PB’s Of A Different Kind ….

For those who don’t know me, it is a well-known fact among those who do, that I am, in all likelihood, the slowest eater on Planet Earth. I have been awarded this distinction in part due to copious amounts of undisputed evidence, witnessed by anyone who has ever shared a meal with me, and I am powerless and incapable of denying it.

I come by this unfortunate habit, or healthy one depending on how you look at it, for a number of different reasons, none of which I will go into in any great detail, but suffice it to say that I am a slow eater because: a) I chew slowly, b) occasionally forget that I am chewing by reason of distraction, like reading a magazine, c) get caught up in conversation at the table and d) generally have to eat well beyond the point of satiation in order to consume adequate calories to sustain my training regime and maintain hard earned muscle mass. In combination, these factors make for some agonizingly long and lonesome mealtimes, as I find myself abandoned and alone to finish my meal, mostly as a result of me shooing people away so as to prevent them from wasting time out of courtesy for my prolonged ingestion. I am often apologetic for my masticating deficiencies, but have come to accept it, and even feel a hint of satisfaction when people tell me that it’s better for digestion to eat slowly. Another positive side effect tends to be getting out of doing the dishes.

Kristina's Corner: A Little Ray of Sunshine

AP PHOTO

Kristina Groves tells us how to pick out a Norwegian in a crowd.

Kristina Groves is definitely one of Canada’s athletes to watch on the Road to 2010.

She won five medals last year at the world single distance championships and has been tough to beat again this season.

She also’s a skilled writer, as you’ll see here, and is kind enough to share her journal entries with us now and then.

Here’s one titled “A Little Ray of Sunshine” from last week. We'll run another neat one that features a Big Mac attack (well, cheeseburgers, anyway) in Moscow next week.

These entries should really give readers some insight, in a good humoured way, into the life of an Olympic athlete. Groves is involved with the humanitarian organization Right To Play and the environmental group Clean Air Champions.

A Little Ray of Sunshine ...

I think of things to write about all the time. They’re usually about skating, or training, or racing or travel, etcetera. Sometimes, when I think the idea is really good and the inspiration is strong enough, I actually do write about it. But then sometimes, even when I think the idea is good, the inspiration fades away and I end up letting it go. This is more often than not because I am lazy and just never end up getting around to it. But what also happens is that what I might initially think is a good idea occasionally turns out to be not so interesting or my opinion about it changes, or I just don’t feel that way anymore.

For instance, over Christmas I was going to write about how lousy it is that we always have National Team trials right after Christmas, and how we are robbed of spending Christmas with our families year after year, never getting to go home; never getting to do Christmas things. I was going to call it ‘The Sport Who Stole Christmas.’ I was going to whine about how I didn’t have the chance to bake any Christmas cookies or trim a tree or make snow angels and about how I felt so guilty for not doing more for the special people in my life.

Kristina Groves: "Girl Train" & Other Tales From The Road

Kristina Groves is one of the world’s best long track speed skaters. Even if the Ottawa native is too modest to declare that herself, five medals including one gold at last year’s world single distance championships attest to it. She already has two World Cup wins this season.

She’s also a big supporter of Right To Play and a green warrior for Clean Air Champions.

 And it turns out she’s also a skilled writer who sends out regular missives to friends, family and supporters about life on the World Cup circuit. Here, she shares her first two posts of the season with us, the first “Girl Train” filed after the opening World Cup in Berlin and the second “Saving My Socks” dispatched this week after another big win in the Netherlands.

Thanks to Kristina for this …

Girl Train (Nov. 11)

In an effort to stave off the perils of jet lag, the girls and I headed to downtown Berlin on the train for a late afternoon excursion and decaf latte. When our search for the shopping district proved fruitless we landed instead at the local Starbucks (sorry) for a warm drink to heat up our damp and chilled toes. In a way that only girls seem capable of, much gossip and gab ensued and we spent a good hour discussing all people and things speed skating. And in a way that only gossip seems capable of, in some small way, we bonded.

I train in a group of five girls and four boys, and even though we are a tight group we rarely socialize together outside of speed skating, which is one thing I believe has contributed greatly to our individual successes. At the rink, our coach, Xiuli (Wang), keeps us focused on the work we are there to do and we are oft viewed by other groups as overly serious skaters that never have any fun. This is not an entirely unwarranted description as our group is comprised of serious and professional (in spirit at least, if not in salary) athletes, but we do certainly have our fair share of fun. It just seems that suffering like dogs and working harder than you thought possible doesn’t qualify as fun for most people. But no bother, we are branded the black sheep and we don’t care.

As a result of Xiuli’s high expectations, demanding training programs and our combined work ethic and commitment to success, we have found a way to train especially well together, but we all have interests and social networks outside of our sport obsession that keep us independent and mentally healthy. We generally all get along just fine, albeit with the odd bump in the road, but still, I was pleasantly surprised to find us all together that afternoon in Berlin, relaxed and fully enjoying each other’s company.

Earlier that day we hit the ice for the first post-travel session, which is always a bit of a shock to the system. Having arrived in Berlin sans coach Xiuli, who arrived two days later, we spent this first training session on our own, and with only the girls of the group qualified to race the first fall World Cups, we were really flying solo. It was a quiet ice session in the afternoon; we were nearly the only five skaters on the ice, and thankfully it was also an easy one, just easy sets of laps together in a train, taking turns leading.

There are not many ‘girl’ teams in the world today that can depend entirely on themselves to train together at an adequate intensity to achieve world-class results. Often you will see smaller groups of girls training primarily with the guys, who pull laps for them, pull accels for them and generally raise them up to higher quality training. There are even one or two teams where there is only one girl who employs male domestique skaters to train with her. We are pretty proud of the fact that we are strong enough and secure enough to pull our own laps and push each other to higher and higher levels. Not to say that we don’t still train with the boys in the group, but when we do we pull our fair share of laps at a pace fast enough to still benefit them.

After we were finished our ‘easy’ laps, which felt brutal after travel, as they always do, we were chatting with a Danish skater who has been training solo in Berlin for the entire summer and fall. Speed skating is quite on the fringe in Denmark and as such there is not much of a team or program to speak of, so it is constant struggle for this girl to find a place to train and people to train with. She was initially told that she would be allowed to train with the German B team, but in the end that fell through and she ended up entirely on her own. She commented on how nice it was to see us skating together and instantly I felt both incredibly sorry for her and incredibly grateful for what we have together. This sport is so unique in that we need each other, we need a team, to do the training, but come race day we are alone in our goals and on the ice and fight hard to beat each other and everyone else. I can’t imagine tackling this sport alone, it seems impossible to me. It is all too likely that sometimes this Danish girl feels brutal during laps too, but has no one to share the brutal-ness with, or laugh about it with afterwards. We are lucky to have what we have, although in talking to this girl I realized how very much we take it for granted.

After coffee, on the train ride back to our hotel from downtown, we realized that we hadn’t bothered to take note of the name of our stop. It was rather dark and foggy out so we had to keep a watchful eye on every stop to make sure we didn’t end up lost in some remote corner of Berlin. Thankfully we recognized our stop when we saw it and made it home safely.

Our little excursion made me think that someday I’m going to have to get off a different kind of train - this crazy skating train - and right now I have no idea what station to get off at. As far as I can tell there is no map, and I’m both the conductor and only passenger aboard! I can only hope that when the time comes I’ll just look out the window and somehow recognize it as the right one. Thankfully, when I do, it will be with the knowledge that an incredible journey has come to an end and that I was lucky enough to take this ride with a very special group of uber-fast, uber-fun, uber-awesome skater girls.

Saving My Socks (Nov. 19)

As we navigate our way through various airports around the world, we tend to draw a lot of unwanted attention to ourselves; we are conspicuous travelers. This is not because we are loud and obnoxious (although some may argue otherwise) but rather because we are a large group of people all wearing the same clothes carting around massive amounts of luggage. This may come as a surprise to you – what could we possibly need to bring besides skates and a skimpy skin-suit? Well, the list is long, and in my case it seems, only getting longer as the years go by.

The item that really gets people’s attention is the bike box. Many of us bring bikes on the road. We use them for training (we don’t just skate in circles), for warm-up and warm-down on race day, for getting to and from the rink, and for getting into town and away from the hotel. I pack my bike in a large plastic hard case made especially for this purpose. I put other important things in there too, like shoes, skate sharpening equipment, snacks, food and spare blades. It can get pretty heavy, is quite oversized and a tad awkward to maneuver even with wheels. Random people are constantly coming up to me asking, ‘What is in the box?’ Most of the time they don’t even say hello, they just want to know what’s in the box. When I tell them it’s a bike some are satisfied with that and just walk away. Others are intrigued, so they pursue the chitchat to find out what I’m up to. The ensuing conversation that inevitably leads to speed skating has happened to all of us so many times we try to avoid it like the plague.

So, there’s the bike. But then I have to bring a trainer for my bike so I can ride it in my hotel room, or for warm-up at the rink. That’s bag number two. In this bag I’ll also include more shoes, more food, and some bigger, but stuff-able, clothing items. This year I decided to bring a blender to make smoothies because I never eat enough on race day and somehow can stomach liquids much better. So I put the blender in that bag too.

Then there’s the main bag, bag number three. This is the big one where I have to pack training clothes, skating clothes, casual clothes, lounging clothes, toiletries, various jackets from each of our team’s sponsors, and more shoes (in case you’re wondering, I need: running shoes, weight lifting shoes, cycling shoes, flip flops, and usually one pair of casual shoes). No matter how many times I go on the road, I always feel like I never get it right. Too many jeans I don’t wear, not enough training shirts, endless pairs of socks…

When I’m getting ready to pack, I make little piles all over the place and it always seems so ridiculous to bring so much stuff. Every time, I ask myself, do I really need this shirt, or that jacket, can I make do with less or do I have room to bring more? It’s an art form really, one I’ve been working on for many years. Miraculously I always manage to make it out the door, and, now this may come as a shock, so far I’ve always survived the trip with what I have!

I’ve begun to realize that I have some peculiar habits when it comes to living out of a suitcase for weeks on end. It seems that no matter how many pairs of socks I bring, I always end up at home with at least a few clean pairs. Now, this is not the result of poor packing or bringing too many pairs, but something else entirely. I’m not sure if it stems from some sort of primordial human instinct to conserve, be it energy, food, or fuel, for the unknown days ahead, but for whatever reason, even when I have clean pairs of socks, I will root through my laundry bag and re-wear a previously used (read: dirty) pair so as to ensure that there will always be clean pairs left. I thought maybe it was because I’m too lazy to hand wash them in the sink, with the laundry soap I have dutifully remembered to bring from home, but I will always do that if I run out of clean underwear.

There are a few rare and glorious places we go where we can do an actual load of laundry for free. Like at the hotel in Berlin. But when we start a trip in Berlin and have two weeks to go I still have lots of clean laundry, probably because I’ve already begun my hoarding, so it doesn’t seem urgent or necessary. At the hotel I’m staying at now it costs €5.75 to get one long-sleeved shirt laundered. And €1.70 for a pair of socks, € 4.00 for a t-shirt, €5.75 for pants… you get the idea – it’s a rip off. While I am occasionally desperate for clean laundry I resolutely refuse to spend €100 to do it. So instead I squirrel away my socks for the long weeks ahead.

I’ve often thought that I might as well just lighten my load and bring less stuff. Then I wouldn’t have to cart around clean pairs of socks and other clothes I will strangely never wear. You’d think that the amount of times my many bags have careened off the luggage cart to land all over the place in a big mess would teach me a lesson or two. Pack light! Only bring what you need! I have actually done this once or twice in the past, and in hindsight, with great regret, so perhaps that is the root of my strange behaviour. I ended up wearing the same clothes so often, and got so tired of smelling like a buffet that now I overcompensate by bringing too much.

Over the years I’ve become immune to the staring and pointing and questioning I endure for my own and my team’s necessity for traveling with all the necessary equipment and creature comforts of home. It is clearly and understandably a life that is mysterious and peculiar to most everyone who has not lived it. Still, I can’t help but laugh to myself when I think that if they all think I’m strange only because of the enormous pile of luggage on my cart, then they don’t know the half of it.