I'll miss you Russ

When I heard about The coach of Frenchtown Russ Hoppaugh's passing I was shocked. Now to claim I had a very close personal relationship with him would be a lie. However, I have always been close with his daughters(I love you lidaw guy) and most of his skaters. I really can't remember a time when Russ wasn't around. He was always very nice and treated everyone with respect. Now while i was never close close friends with him, I can talk about him from a competitive stand point. It seemed like 4 or 5 yrs Frenchtown and High Point would always be battling for national titles in every Sr. relay. And you always new his kids would be fast. It didn't matter if you've never seen the person before, if they had on a Frenchtown uniform, they were going to be fast. And after every single race, regardless if Frenchtown or High Point won, Russ always said something nice to me after the race. One of the things about his Frenchtown team that I always admired was they were like a family. I'm sure they had fights and disagreements, but when you would see one of them, you always saw more. To me that always shows more as a coach than winning(but they won a lot too). There are things so much bigger than skating, and his skaters always were always respectful and did things the right way. Great coaches don't have to be loud or tell people how good their skaters are, everyone just knows. Russ was a great leader and a great person; rest in peace my friend.

Roanoke 2009

You ever just need something that boosts you up when you feel down? Roanoke turned into that for me(and it's not b/c i won). The crazy thing is I hadn't even realized how much I needed it. What a lot of people don't realize is how much things had started to get to me. It's like all the negative things people were saying about me and my teamates was so loud that it drowned out the positive stuff. I had started to wonder if maybe we really were "bad for the sport".

But this weekend reminded me how much I really love not only the sport, but all of the people in it. It seemed like everyone just wanted to sit and talk to us. I had so many people say how much they appreciated everything we do. It seemed like every kid wanted to just hang out with us or take pictures. I literally signed hundreds of autographs, from the minute i walked in the door till i left. It kinda makes me laugh everytime tho, b/c A) my signiture is terrible and B) i always think in 2yrs people are gonna be like why did i get him to sign his name I don't even remember who he is. I had a lot of people say "sorry to bother you, but my kid wants you to sign this", guess they don't realize I love kids. I can sit around and play with kids all day, it makes me feel like a kid myself. So to everyone who said thanks to me for talking to the kids, taking pictures, or signing stuff, thanks to you, it made my weekend.

Now lets talk about some racing really quickly. Might as well start with the 50 lap race that was filled with drama. Well... i missed it all. I saw some of the early pushing and shoving, and wondered why no one was getting dq'd. But i guess i missed all the good stuff in person. But I did catch the video online. The video really must not do it justice.. I mean i saw them fighting and stuff, but you can't see anything super bad. I mean it's bad, but it doesn't look like throw them out of the meet bad. The good thing about that video is it shows something everyone likes to talk about. The dreaded Jamming of the pack. If you watch when I attack, there's no reaction from the pack. Infact the first reaction if from chad who happens to be on my team. Then there was like one lap of effort of chasing him. If you watch when chad attacks in one lap he goes from 10 feet in front of the pack to a corner. And when joey goes to the lead he steps the whole corner. I'm just pointing out how little effort the pack put in to race. Now if you want to accuse me of anything it's waiting for Chad, which I will admit to. Unfortunatly he didn't quite have the juice to stay out there. But it makes me think that maybe... just maybe there's a little more to it than someone jams the pack while someone else laps it.(yes i know i didn't go all the way around, but there was reasons for that and it wasn't b/c i was too tired).

Hmmm Julie was a monster again. She was way impressive; it may be the first time in the history of the sport that someone who had twins falls in a pro race and gets up and wins(see i drop random facts like Sportscenter). Overall it was just sick racing from like every division. There were soo many good races. The girls were battling in like every single division. It was nuts. It honestly was one of the best meets ,as far as racing, in years.

Well that was the short short version, but i just haven't been in a writting mood lately. I have like 20 unfinished blogs written, that you may or may not see in the next little bit. But the meet was great to me, it just reminded me how much I love this sport. Now were getting into the traveling part of the season, which is always fun, but stressful at the same time. I have a bout one month at home and then it's time to hit the road for a few months. Hope to see all you guys soon, train hard......

Retirement

It seems like everytime I go around skaters I get asked one question all the time. "When are you going to stop skating." I get it people, I'ma dinasour in this sport. I get injured a lot more now than i did even 2 yrs ago. I times I even say things implying that i'm coming to the end of my racing days. But what it boils down to is this; skating is what i do. Through all the ups and the downs, it's one of thoes things that just is. When you ask why I still race, there's so many different answers. B/c when you love to do something, you can't just point out one reason why you do it. I joke with a lot of my friends that in 30yrs we're all gonna be racing the same races, only a little slower. Don't get me wrong, I don't think i'm going to be racing at the same level that I am now for much longer. I know at somepoint I have to go into the real world. But I assure you I'm prolly one of the happiest people I know, so i'm not in that much of a rush. I think when I get older I'd really like to coach some. Ofcourse if I ended up having to coach anything like myself when I was younger, I prolly wouldn't make it very long. Even now I watch kids and think how A) I'd love to coach this kid. Or B) Oh that's why I don't coach.
But I have a long way before I get there. So, the question about retirement, is no(for now). I may back down, but I plan on having something to do with this sport for as long as I can.

VACATION

Thanksgiving weekend came and went, and once again there was another major skating invitational. However, for me it was something completely different. For the first time since 2003 I didn't skate a major indoor invitational(well there was Philly 06 when i was a the Olympics, and ofcourse i can't be at 2 places at once if there's more than 1 going on). Actually it was really fun for me b/c i got to blend into the crowd. It reminded me how much i love every bit of skating. It was so much fun to watch all the races. I like watching kids all the way to the oldest people. Even with the decreased numbers this year, there were a lot of exciting races.

I was asked about 100 times why I wasn't skating and I mostly gave the same answer, I'm on vacation. The main reason I didn't skate was b/c of a previous engagement and i wasn't sure how much i would get to be at the rink. But beside that, I really needed a vacation. Why would you need a vacation from skating you might ask... and lots of people did. So to explain why i need a vacation you gotta flash back to Greensboro 2003. That was the last time I just decided not to skate an indoor invitational. At the time I was 23yrs old and had just gotten good enough to race with the top pro guys in skating. And more importantly than that I was hungry to succeed.

The next 5 years just sorta turned into a Blur. Indoor skating just all clicked for me. I ended up getting a major sponsor and then everything got crazy. One season I raced like 19 competitions and like 15 were indoors. And like i said I was hungry. I've never been the kind of person that can look past a meet. To me the most important meet is always the next one, regardless of who's there and where it is. In 2005 i won the Michigan Thanksgiving meet. That was important b/c after that I meadaled in division in every indoor meet I skated until nationals 2008(where i got 4th). During that time I got two 3rd places, the rest were first or 2nd. I had one season I won ever relay I skated except the dreaded 2man at nationals. During all this, I was also trying to learn how to skate outdoor. So as soon as nationals was over, it was off to worlds. And after worlds I would try and learn as much about outdoor as I could. I never missed a clinic in Colorado in 5 yrs, so basically it was just go go go. I'm not trying to brag about accomplishments(even tho it may sound like that) what I'm trying to do is let you know how hard it is on your body to be ready for every meet every year. And the last year or 2 I was getting to where I was struggling the last month or 2 of the season. So, hopefully a little vacation for me will help me out in the end of the season. Plus I have some nagging injuries that I just want to get all the way healed.

With all that said, I just wanted answer everyone that thought i was done skating. I think I'm going to write a blog about my skating plans in the next little bit, but I'm glad so many people cared enough to ask me. Thanks and hope to see you all at West Palm

2008 speed proposals

So I was looking over the new speed proposals and I thought to myself I wish I had somewhere to talk about what i feel. And then it hit me, I do have somewhere to talk.... on my blog. So here's how i feel on some of the new proposals.

08-01 & 08-02 Basically adding more races to Novice at regional and nationals... These two really don't have much effect on me. But I'm all for them. I know if I was still novice and went all the way to nationals, I'd want as many races as I could get. Hopefully the would split Novice and Standard again to cut back on hotel cost for the majority of skaters(MOST will only skate novice or standard). Two quick points on this I want to make. The first is people complaining about having "Novice National Champion". I really don't see why this frustrates people so much. I don't see anything wrong with someone being the best in the nation at the beginner level. If it bothers you so much that someone calls them self a national champion when they're novice, get a little more self confidence about your accomplishments. The second thing is people saying this person won Novice to quickly, so now they're going to quit. I wish someone could do a study of this b/c it makes no sense to me. I think there's like 20something Novice national champions a year. I'm going to assume most of them don't quit b/c they won Novice nationals. And if they do quit b/c standard is too hard or they were successful too quickly, were they really going to stick to this sport for that long??? Our sport is struggling, and I think we should do as much to boost the beginner program that we can.

08-03Supplemental National Championship Entry Rule.... Ummm.. Ok i get it. More people at nationals. Ok, I'm just gonna say lets go for it, b/c I can't put up a good reason not to have more people at nationals(plus i looked at the chart they put up and it kinda gave me a headache)

08-04Regional Reps.. Each Region has an official speed comity. SWEET! Shoulda been done years ago. NEXT.

08-05Oval Track... I have a problem with this proposal(with all do respect to Mr. Cotter). Every argument you make for skating the oval track for the Elim(minus the first point), can easily be made for any other race. Simply replace Elim with 500m or 1,500m. So.. if we are to make the argument for the elim to be changed, we should make the argument for EVERY world class race to be changed. For the record I'm all for that. But then it's a slippery slope. Soon people say the Sr, Jr, and So men can go just as fast. They should skate on the oval track too. Once again I support this too. But I think more people don't support this than do. Plus to be completely honest this multiple passing lanes thing is kinda a myth. If you know what your doing you can make the only way to pass is to go outside. And that's not too easy. I love the oval track, but i always hate the "it's so easy to pass" argument for it.

08-06Individual Medals and new point system... World Class already does this, and it's kinda cool, i guess. I'm really kinda torn on the individual medal thing. Awards would take about 4hrs to do. But it is a litle more like worlds where every event gets a medal. Hmm...I really don't know on that one. As far as the point system, I love it for World Team Trials, Don't like it much for Indoor nationals. The big thing to me is two 4th place finishes shouldn't be worth more than a first place finish. I think it's good when you have 9 races at trials. Not as good when you have 3 races at indoor nat's. I'm not completely against a new point system, but 2 4ths beating a first doesn't seem right to me for some reason.

08-07Dual Club Representation... Hate it. It just seems cheesy to me. Buuuut it does open up some pretty cool trade options. I can hear it now. I'll trade 2sr guys for 1 freshman girl and a master man. Could be interesting, but seriously I hate it

08-08Nationals always in Lincoln..Floor is good. Good location. Easy to plan. Ok I'll support it.

08-09World Class sponsors limited to 2 men and 2 women..... WOOHOO!!! I'm part of the reason this rule is discussed. Being a member of one of like 2 teams in the last 3 years to have more than 2 people i'm honored. I guess this makes me biased. But i really think it's a rule that's going to hurt skaters, but won't hurt me. It's really going to hurt the up and coming skaters and not as much the established ones. This is the line that really gets me "encourage more companies to participate in the sponsoring of world class athletes."... WHAT?? This is stupid in several ways. There's only a handful of sponsors, now your limiting the number of people they can sponsor. And trust me it will make a big deal that they can only have 2 people in their uniform at the biggest meet of the year. Also, does anyone really think any company is saying.. "ehh i was gonna sponsor a skater, but there's 4 guys from another team out there, so now I won't". There are also stupid ways to get around this. If Luigino/atom wanted to get around this.. it's simple. Introducing Team Luigino and Team Atom. The moral is people want a rule against team skating, this is a rule that is going to hurt the athlete.

08-10Limiting the entry fee for Nationals... Great for the athlete, not great for the organization. Without the athlete there is no organization. I'm all for it.

08-11Talk to the right people to resurface the track in Colorado... PLEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAASSSEEEEEE!!!! man this would be great for us. We have nothing in the US that feel like skating on that stuff. Plus you wouldn't have to put a brand new set of wheels on for every race. And you could finish a long race when it's hot with out tearing your wheels apart. Unfortunately until I see this happen I don't think it will. It's just one of those things that's too good to actually happen.

Ok that's just my opinion as an athlete. Talk to you guys soon

Worlds.. The other stuff.

So i talked about the skating stuff in my last post. And of course I left millions of things out, but there's just too much to write about. Now I'm going to write about some of the other stuff that goes on, in my opinion at least.

I'll start with the negative stuff that always bothers me(plus it's always better to end with a positive). First it absolutely drives me up the wall when people who haven't' been to worlds, weren't at worlds, weren't at residency, or have never been to residency go online or at practice and have all the solutions to all of the US's skating "problems". I know that we don't do things perfect and there are things that can be improved. However when you go off of he said she said you end up hurting the problem more than helping. So many people are quick to bash the coaching staff and how they do things. The coaches actually see us something like 6 weeks out of the year(and 3 of those weeks are at worlds). It's completely lose lose with them. Not a single person has once said "Joey won all of those medals b/c of of the great coaching at residency". But a lot of people have said "the jr's didn't perform as well as we think they should have b/c the coaches messed up". Ahhh speaking of the Jr's. I could not believe that there was actually a topic on a forum about why the Jr's didn't get medals. People who haven't even seen an international race have figured out "what's wrong" with the Jr's. Look, people talk negative about myself, joey, josh, etc. all the time on the hyper boards. It sucks, but o well, at least we're adults. It's not fair for you to bash on 15 16 yr old kids on a public forum, when most of you don't even know what your talking about. Those kids went out and gave 100% regardless of the results. They don't deserve to come home a few days after worlds and read how they didn't meet your expectations. Ok.. last thing. I'm tired of people saying how we don't act like a "team". I don't know what people want from us. You want us all to hold hands a be best friends? There is 24 people on the team, we're not all gonna agree about everything. Everyone trains differently at home, when you have to change your training for residency of course people are going to disagree. Joey and I are as close as anyone on the team, and we get mad at each other a lot during training. You don't get to this level without being passionate about what you do. A lot of times that passion leads to arguments. Being on a team means to come together for a common goal, it never says you have to be best Friends or agree with all of your teammates. No I don't hang out with everyone on them team, nor does anyone else. Am I closer to some than others, yes. But also there's no one on the team I don't like as a person. Unfortunately skating isn't a Disney movie, but that's just how it is.

Ok now on to some of the cooler stuff from worlds. I remember thinking how beautiful Spain was when we drove from the airport. Things like that always remind me how lucky I am to be able to travel the world just to skate. It's also always cool to meet people from all over the world. Everyone is so nice and eager to make friends from other countries. As always we kicked it with the Kiwi's for most of the competition. They are always down to have a good time, and are cool as hell with us. Then there's our last night crew. Every year we always kick it with the Dutch and at least one Belgium skater. It's just nuts how almost everyone gets along with everyone else for the most part. I think you learn more about other cultures in 3 weeks at worlds then you could in years in school. I wish schools/teachers that hastle kids could actually see this. Worlds is such an amazing experience, and if you ever get the chance you should jump all over it. I know most people spend enough vacation time on skating, but i promise this one is worth it

WHHEEEEEW... Ok glad i got to say all of that. Check back in a few days for the next blog... keep skating hard and talk to you soon.

SUMMERTIME

So i guess i haven't written anything in a while. But it was an interesting summer, so i'ma do the short version of everything. There were lots of things I wanted to write about, but I was frustrated with a lot of things going on. Sometimes I say stuff i regret when I get frustrated so I decided the best thing to do was to stay quiet. That being said.. I'll dive right in.

INDOOR NATIONALS

Hmm it feels like it was forever ago, but here's what i remember. I spent most of the time trying to remember how to skate indoor again(I was in colorado for almost all of the summer, only skating outdoor). Everyone was soooo fast, that was pretty cool. As far as my racing... ehhh. A lot of stuff went wrong. First and foremost, I lost my cool in the 1,500m. I appologize to anyone watching, I'm sure it looked terrible. Before anyone makes me too much of a villian, remember I'm passionate about racing. I lost my cool, b/c I got frustrated I fell. I felt like I had gotten knocked down on purpose at the time. I don't think that now, but it was a heat of the moment thing(I'll go in to that further in a little bit). What made it even worse was I let that frustration carry over to the 500m. I got over agressive in that race and got Dq'd for being a lil to handsy early in the race. Over all a lot of stuff didn't go like i would have wanted it to, but there was some positives. First I finally got the 2man monkey off my back. It feels like i've gotten 2nd or 3rd in that race for like 10yrs straight. Second, I won what as far as i know the largest purse for a single indoor race ever. One 5K banked $2,000. Definatly can't complain about that. OO yeah i got boo'd after that race, that was pretty classy, i thought. I would love to name all the people that impressed me at nationals, but man there was so many. Plus it was like 2 or 3 months ago, so i don't remember anyone. So in fairness, if you thought you skated well, i agree. Good job. Lets move on.

RESIDENCY

Untill you go to residency, you'll never realize how hard it really is. That being said, I was pretty frustrated with the lack of conditioning a lot of people came into residency with. That being said I've made that mistake before also. All anyone can do now is learn from that, and move on. Ofcourse going into residency I was a little curious about how things would be after Dane and I got a little tangled up at Indoor Nat's(even though we talked and everything seemed cool). But let me be the first to say, Dane was one of my favorite people i've ever trained with. He worked hard every single drill, and was probably the most positive person there. We had some pretty rough weather for a week, but everyone got a lot better. I fell super hard, and missed like 4 days of training(my knees still look torn up). That sorta took the wind out of my sails, but it's one of thoes things that's just happens. There were ups and downs and people got frustrated, but that's residency.

Worlds.

Man worlds was crazy this year. There's so much to talk about. My racing sorta got messed up. I was really sick the day before the competition started. So, I felt like i didn't skate as well as I could have in the points race. I ended up getting 9th or something like that. Which isn't bad, but i felt like I should have performed better. Then i skated the elim on the road, and got snuck at the line and eliminated. It sucked b/c we were in the front of the pack for every lap except the one i got eliminated. It was kind of funny though, b/c I didn't hear them call me out. So we jumped back twards the front of the pack, and I stayed in for like 10 laps extra. My bad, but in all honesty I didn't hear my number called, so I just stayed in the race. We skated the relay and ened up getting 2nd. It's not a gold medal but anytime you get a medal at worlds you can't complain. Then I skated the marathon... Honestly if it rains I should just stay in bed. To say i'm bad in the rain is an understatement. I fell in the very first corner. Being the trooper that i am(haha) I got back up and almost caught back up to the pack. Then BOOM, I fell down again. To make matters worse, one of the ref's was right beside me when i fell the 2nd time, and he said "just stop and go see the trainer". Hmm guess when your beat your beat.
As for everyone else, things kinda went up and down. Josh skated stronger than I have ever seen him skate. He medaled in the 1,000m and was super strong in the points race before a fall. Joey was strong, but he got sick(the same thing i had) and hardly skated on the track. But he was back to his normal ways dominating on the raod winning 3 golds and a silver. Dane was super fast too, things just didn't go his way. I definatly thought he was good enough to walk a way with a few medals, but when your racing the best in the world sometimes things don't go your way. Brittany and Sara were amazing. They dominated the sprints on the track. It was so fun to watch. It's amazing to watch their oppisite styles. Brit is so strong and powerful and sara attacks the corners better than anyone else at the competition(male of female). Bri and Mariah skated well both getting medals. All of the jrs skated ok with minimal experiance. I'm sure a lot of them wanted to do better, but hopefully they learned a lot. For the record I'm going to do a whole blog on worlds in the next day or 2.. but it's going to be more about the experience more than the skating.

So that was how skating was this summer, the short short version. As far as my racing it kinda felt like everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. But I can't complain too much, I was able to do things lots of lots of people would love to do. Stay tuned, I have lots of time and lots to talk about, so I plan on writting a lot over the next few weeks. Sorry I took so long, but i was kinda afraid I might regret some stuff if I wrote. I've learned that when your tired after a long season, frustrated about the way somethings have been, it's sometimes best to just be quiet.