The Speedy Ice Effect: Michigan

Im back! I went to Midland Michigan to train with their team for a week. I was fun, they have 3 days of ice a week there!! IN THE SUMMER!!! Craziness. They definatly like their junk food there, let me tell you. After just about every workout, they "needed" to stop at McDonalds or Tim Hortons. After the bike rides, a certain person (not to mention any names, everyone knows who you are!) would stop at Burger King to get a chocolate shake. I tried to have some self control, it worked for a while but I will admit to having appx. 17 timbits and a couple slices of pizza.

I stayed at coach Joes house, he and his crazy canadian wife Mel were awesome. She had a friend over from canada too, and Kevin would come over just about every night so it was like a week long party! Especially with the Wii, eh? On a normal night, we would be up untill 2 or 3 am playing Resident Evil. I think on the first night we played pretty much 9 hours straight. Oh yeah, then we ordered pizza. So thats what my hard week of training was like. (kidding)(kind of) We did do some pretty hard ice workouts. Dryland was difficult, it being the flattest place on earth and all. We made pretend hills :) The weights were CRAZY! I think I have arm muscles now!! And I can now do 1/4 of a pull-up, where a few weeks ago I could only do 1/8 of one!! I know. I need a licence for these muscles.

On the way there and back we did some college visits too. I liked Brock University in Canada and Case Western in Cleveland, and 2 other random ones inbetween that I forgot about. They all had what I want, which is a D3 XC team, some form of health sciences, and earth sciences. The XC coach at Case was awesome, she is extremely flexable, when she found out I am a speed skater, she immediatly went to how she could modify my XC workouts arround skating workouts and/or include skating as a sort of cross training. This to me is MIND BLOWING, how she welcomes cross training and the amount of felxability. The opposite of what im experiencing now. Their training schedule is nice too in a way that I would have plenty of time for this "cross training" ;) since we would only meet for practice 2 times a week!

Now for the fun part.

In the car on the way back, we stopped at a rest area with a bridge over the thruway. I took a picture of a truck going under me and got this crazy cool light stream! After this I was walking back to the car when I noticed a bike gang. On their leather jackets and on plates on their bikes, it said "Hells Angels". Apparently they come out of NYC and might be suspects in some sketchy crimes. They were giving me these nasty looks and it seemed like if I took a picture of them they would come over and kill me, so NATURALLY I took a picture....bad idea. One guy came over and said something but I was in the car and gone so fast I didnt hear what it was!