Katherine Reutter Diary #1

Say hello to Katherine Reutter, a short-track speedskater with gold-medal potential. The Champaign native has been kind enough to give us an inside look at her quest for Olympic glory by writing a monthly diary for The News-Gazette. Her first entry:

July 2009

Hi! My name is Katherine Reutter and over the next several months I´ll be telling you about my experiences as an Olympic hopeful preparing for my first Olympic Games.

 I´ve been a competitive short-track speedskater since 2005, but this year is my first real shot at showing the world what I´ve got on an Olympic level. This year is very special to me because my goal in skating is not to go to the Olympics - or even to bring home a medal - but to be the greatest short tracker this world has ever seen. The 2010 Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, will be a monumental step toward achieving my goal.

Preparation for these Games started many, many years ago. I first moved to a training center in 2005, when I was 16. I was the youngest and a rookie among a group of veteran, world-class athletes. I started training at the same level they were at, going from less than 10 hours per week to about eight hours a day. With the extra workload and my determination to finish everything, the inevitable happened. After six months I was overtrained and burned out with just a few weeks to go before the 2006 Olympic Trials.

At Olympic Trials, the first day is a nine-lap time trial. The top 16 times advance to compete for a spot on the team. I was 17th by mere tenths of a second. This was the beginning of my journey toward learning everything I could about this sport and how to excel at it.

Since then, every day has been an opportunity to learn more. I´ve made quite a few mistakes along the way, but with the 2010 Olympic Trials 21 / 2 months away I feel like now it´s just fine-tuning before I´m ready to show the world what I´ve got.

Summer training is like four-months-of-hell week. Since the beginning of May we´ve been doing high-volume and intensity training (six to eight hours a day) to build a base to last us the whole season. Once the competition season starts, the team travels abroad for two weeks every other month. Between tapering for races and recovering from flights and time changes, there is very little time to build strength in season so the name of the game is maintenance.

The Olympic Trials are in September, which is four months earlier than the U.S. Championships in a normal year. This means all of our volume and strength training is crammed into the first two months of training so that we can peak in September.

Training began in mid-April, and our base training cycle is coming to an end this week. Part of me is grateful for the two months less of exhaustion, but the other part of me wants to keep going.

 Performance for the whole season is based on how strong you get in the summer. I´ve been fortunate enough that I´ve already reached the point in my training where I peaked at last year, but that makes me wonder how much stronger I could be if I had just a few more months to prepare. Either way, I´ve done everything I can to make training optimal every day this summer so I can start my season knowing there´s nothing more I had to give.

As we enter into our preparation cycle for Olympic Trials and the Olympic season, I´ll keep you updated on training, health and life in general in the world of Olympic living. Katherinereutter.com will also be up and running soon if you´d like to check out more frequent updates online.

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