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Less than 2 years ago I decided to try (ice) Speedskating...nothing like starting a new sport at the age of 40! I'd never even been on a pair of ice skates prior to that. Last year I made it to 5 competitions, and had some decent results.

During the offseason (April ~ August) I was training really hard to improve for this season, and had a long term goal to qualify for Nationals in March. I even went to a week long advanced training camp at the U.S. Olympic training facilities up in Milwaukee this summer. Based on my times, I figured it would be January or February before I would qualify.

My first race was in Rochester, NY a few weeks ago, and I set personal bests in all distances. In my 1000m race, I knocked 2 seconds off of my best time last March.

2 weeks later I entered in my second race of the season, and knocked another 5 seconds off and beat the Nationals qualifying time by .2 seconds! I also got my first overall win, and set personal records in 2 of the 4 distances.

So...the 2nd race of my 2nd year in Speedskating I qualified for Nationals. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited for sure.