First reginonal meet

Ruri's first taste of competition from the south west region regional of 15 clubs (CA, NV, AZ). She participated in all the races coach signed up for her and got onto the podium twice despite falling twice. There are six girls in the JO Elementary girl group and 5 in the Standard Elementary girl group. By the way, Junior Olympic (JO) are for skaters within their first three years of racing. Standard are for all skaters in that age group.

We got up 5:30am and got to the rink 6am. It was already full of people and skaters were practicing. We were a bit unprepared with the numbers etc. Luckily other parents were there to help and we were ready for the practice of Ruri's group.

The following are the list of events and results for Ruri:
- JO Elementary 700m: Ruri was in 4th position into the 5th lap and she fell by herself. This is the place I've seen many falls, more on the venue later. She finished last.
- JO Elementary 300m: Ruri finished 4th in this event.
- JO elementary two girl relay 5x2 laps. She was with her friend from another club and they places second.
- JO freshman/elementary 4 girl. This was going to be an very exciting relay for Ruri 1x5 laps. However, the first skater of her team made a very agressive pass at the 4th lap and was disqualified. They didn't place.

The second day was for Standard Elementary girls. There are five skaters in the group, some of them are the same who raced for JO, just like Ruri.
- Standard Elementary 700m: Ruri finished last
- Standard Elementary 300m: Ruri finished last
- Standard Elementary mix 2 (boy and girl) relay 5x2 laps: Of the 4 teams competed for the relay, Ruri's team finished first after a rerun of the race due to a crash at about the 5th lap. In the interrupted race that had 7 teams, Ruri slipped in the start and was trailing. Then she made a late pass into the corner and the girl she was trying to pass fell and tripped Ruri into a fall. Ruri now has both of her knee bruised.
- Freshman and below open: Ruri was laped at about the 5th lap.

All in all, it was a good experience for Ruri and she had a taste of winning (with the help of her teammate who is the top of his class).

















I also raced the first day (JO master men). As I expected, I was last of the 7 skaters for both 1000m and 500m, but I was not far behind. In both cases, I had a good start but my stamina was not there for me at the end. Interestingly, for the 5x2 lap relay, although my club partner didn't show up due to sickness, my partner was from the Veteran class (even older:-), and naturally we were the last of the 4 teams. However, due to the first three teams wrongly counting their laps because of the sign board mistake, all three teams were disqualified, and our team ended up the first (a bit like the Australia dude who passed the wiped out skaters including Apollo Ohno in 2002 Salt Lake Olympic).

Into 12

Ruri skated a 12'8 today....after a hard 100 lap in which she did 45 laps (best ever) and 4 one lap burns. That was quite impressive. I had to massage her before going to bed. She also practiced with her partner in the mixed relay and her timing was way better than before. At the end of the 5x2 relay, she kind of collapsed to the floor, a first as well. I think she is ready for the race this weekend. At this rate, she may break into 11-12 seconds as the coach said before the nationals, that will be very good for her first season. In the meantime, I'm not sure I'll make into 11-12 seconds by June:-) but that is still my goal.

Winter Olympics

During last Sunday's practice, we had another club up north joining us. They had three JO elementary girls, just perfect for Ruri to race against in preparation of her first meet next week. She did pretty well, clocked a 13' in one of the races. So she is now about 0.4 secod behind me:-) One parent commented that may be Ruri got so fast because of the new team uniform she is waring. Kids are just incredible in learning and improving. I may be a little better than my old 12'6, but I don't have the official time yet.

The session this Sunday was intense, two 100 laps to boot, followed with mills. I had 18 people in front of me (meaning I have to lap the whole pack 18 times). I didn't feel that tired afterwards though. I guess the off-skate training I did last week worked. Ruri wasn't tired at all though. Maybe a good thing.

Naturally during the rest period, parents talked about the Winter Olympic speedskating that was going on. So far, the man's speed skating events (5000m and 500m) were both won by ex-inliner of USA (Joel Cheek and Chad Hedrick). If Chad picks up the rest of gold medal as he plans to, the inliners would sweep the gold. That would bring the respect to inline sports. Ruri is very excited watching them. It will also improve the chance that inline speedskate making it to the 2012 summer Olympic (it failed for 2008). Just imagine an inline/ice speedskater will have the luxury to train for both Olympics! That'll be cross training literally. I mentioned that one day maybe she will be there....she didn't say anything, but I can sense that she didn't think no either.

Skater's leg?

Ruri's (and my:-) first race is set for the 18th and 19th of Feburary in a place we will probabaly never visit were it not for speed skating. Merced, California, near Yosemite national park. We'll have to be there on Friday evening as the race starts 6:30 am the next morning. Ruri will race in both JO elementary division (beginner) and Standard (graduates of JO either by the three year time raced, or by results like placement in JO nationals). I'll race the JO master division. We'll report back on how we did:-) Hopefully with some photos or videos. Oh yes, we just bought a new iMac (Intel Duo Core:-) so I'm hoping this blog will be more interesting with some action/video.

Ruri seems to be improving a lot but the coach is not sharing the time with us yet. Yesterday we had a very intensive Sunday session (4 hrs). We started with two sets of 5 lap move ups, the second one was for 150 laps. I believe it's the first time I went about 100 laps. The second drill was for the dreadful ladder: seven 15'' laps (called recovery laps) following by one fast laps (<12''), then 7+2, then 7+3, 7+4, end with 7+5. That's 50 laps with increasing speed. I did pretty well but exhausted afterwards.

Ruri complained her leg sore/pain in the evening. When mom tried to put some cream to relieve the pain, she noticed that Ruri's upper leg has become noticably thicker (or what I call more toned:-). It's amazing just after 3 month of skating without any land excercise, that she is developing the muscles she needs quickly. I hope this also means she is doing the right drills. We have to watch it though, there is a fine line between toned and too thick:-) However, judging from the appearance of other girls who are older than Ruri I don't see any disproportionally thick legs there, and actually to the contrary. So I don't think I'm too worried about it yet.