Ultrafit: Blade runners

Floyd Bedbury first put on speed skates in 1946. He was 9 years old, fit and looking to race on a plowed circle of ice at Como Park in St. Paul. "It's been 62 years now," he said.

In those decades, long blades on ice have propelled Bedbury around the planet, including speed skating world championships and, in 1960 and 1964, to the Olympic Games. And he's still at it.

"My whole life I've just wanted to race," Bedbury, now 70, told me last week at the John Rose Oval skating track in Roseville.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, and Bedbury's team, the Twin City Speedskating club, was lacing up on benches in a building beside the track. I'd come at Bedbury's invitation to try the sport during an hour of open ice training time.

Outside, the Oval was gaining a gloss, a Zamboni polishing its 400-meter loop. This colossal rink makes up North America's largest continuous sheet of refrigerated ice. Skaters waddled toward the track, blade guards clacking on cement as they approached the immaculate medium of their sport.

Speed skating has roots in 19th-century Scandinavia, where athletes sprinting on ice drew huge crowds. By the 1920s it was an Olympic sport, and the United States had top competitors who hailed from Lake Placid, New York and other northern cities.

Minnesota, with its long winters and abundant lake ice, has long been a hot spot, producing dozens of national champions and Olympic speed skaters over the decades.

Post-WW II heyday

In the two decades after World War II, when Cushman and Bedbury were among the top skaters, the sport was a popular wintertime spectator event. Rivalries between Minneapolis and St. Paul racers, Bedbury said, were intense. "I remember races with 10,000 people in the crowd at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis," he said. "We'd line up 55 guys on the ice, just lap after lap of mayhem."

Today, despite the Oval and its Olympic-caliber ice, the local scene has toned down some. There are a few hundred speed skaters, including high school squads. Twin City Speedskating and the Midway Skating Club together have about 70 athletes, many of whom train multiple days a week and compete on weekends.

Nationally, about 2,200 people skate competitively, according to US Speedskating, a nonprofit organization in Salt Lake City that governs the sport in America.

Butt down, straight out

I looked out a window to see three racers streaking past, hunched, arms swinging, legs raking slowly side to side, gliding at 20 miles per hour on a warm-up run. "Relaxation is the secret to this," Bedbury added.

Long and knife-sharp, speed-skating blades allow racers to kick and glide with minimal resistance. As human-powered sports go, speed skating lives up to its name as one of the quickest ways to traverse a flat plane. Top racers clock more than 40 miles per hour.

"You gain speed exponentially with good technique," Trynoski said.

With that in mind, I stepped onto the ice and pushed off. The 17-inch blades under my feet felt immediately faster than hockey skates, gliding soundlessly on ice so smooth I could see clouds reflected from above.

I took an outside lane and started skating, Bedbury gliding by my side. The basic technique came quickly for me on the straightaway, a lateral push-out-and-return motion akin to inline skating or freestyle cross-country skiing.

The Oval's giant arching lane of ice bends abruptly at each end, spinning skaters 180 degrees on their counterclockwise course. I shuffled and stepped fast on the ice to turn, skimming the padded wall before realigning my blades to ride straight.

"Step behind on the turn," Bedbury encouraged.

I watched Bedbury and two team racers power through the curve at the end of the track, each stepping one foot behind the other, then pushing off for power in the turn.

Three or four laps around the track and I was gaining confidence. Motion on ice is initiated with little effort: A couple kicks and I could feel wind on my face.

Bedbury left me alone to practice, breaking away to spin fast laps with the rest of the team. Light danced on the ice at my feet, splotches of red, lines of black flashing in the steely gray.

On the ice, gliding fast and quiet, racers whirring by, I could see Koehler's point.

Bedbury coasted up to give a tip. "Work the turns," he said. "Float through on the straights."

He skated ahead to demonstrate, gliding on a knife edge, skimming into the turn. His left foot crossed under, body off kilter, accelerating with each subtle push on the ice.

Then Bedbury was gone, around the bend and out of sight. I leaned over and focused, pressuring steel on ice, swinging my arms, floating along with only my shadow, trying to catch up.

Stephen Regenold is a Twin Cities writer and author of the syndicated column www.thegearjunkie.com.