Itay Drory - The journey of a speedskater

Unactive Blog - moved to http://itaydrory.com/

2012-01-05T18:55:00.001+04:00

The Blog will not be updated any more, all the info will be from now on my new website

http://itaydrory.com/

Please visit there for more info.
Itay.

Top 5 quotes of my life as an athlete :

2012-01-02T22:12:00.001+04:00

It's important to believe in your self, but it's always good to know what is the price to pay for being successful.

This are my top 5 quotes of my life as an athlete :
1."Some people dream of success, Others wake up and work everyday for it ! "
2.“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
3.“Every success is built on the ability to do better than good enough”
4.“Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be”
5.“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”

Happy New Year 2012 !

2012-01-01T23:19:00.002+04:00

After the summary, comes the party :)
Here's a bit of what the city of Kolomna had for us yesterday....

Summry of 2011

2011-12-30T14:50:00.000+04:00

Tomorrow it's over....My first year as a pro speedskater, and WOW what a year was that,if it will follow with more years like this one, I will get to where I want and no doubt I will be an Olympic skater in the end. I can't even summary the number of KM's I skated or ran in the last months, because since the winter came I stooped using my GPS watch and I had to manually put all the data, which after 2 months I had to stop due to heavy time it took after each training. What I can and will summary is my Blog data, my results on ice and inline and my YouTube channel. So here it is : My YouTube channel : http://www.youtube.com/user/drory25?feature=mhee Views from 1/Jan to 30/Dec - 16,326 VIEWS.

Beside YouTube I had opened a formal website which shows who I am, and that would link to all my published data over the Internet.

I had been on TV for 2 times on Israeli TV and for 1 time on a Russian TV sports show

Sports channel 5+ "Look who is talking " - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95YMZ-C2hrI

Russian sports channel - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYCg2Q4nXaw

Israel sports channel 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgwXJ0GMHdc

As well, I got Wikipedia page in Hebrew : http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%90%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%99_%D7%93%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99

And my formal website www.itaydrory.com has got hundreds of views on the short time it's up.

My dear Blog, which is a baby for all my journey, been views world wide, by many countries and tons of people.

Total views on my Blog since May 2011 - 8,053 views, and the average views for a month is between 900-1000.

I'm most viewed on my homeland (Israel) with more than 3,800 views, followed by USA and Russia, each with more than 1000 views.

The Blog had been viewed in more than 50 different countries.

Page views by Browsers

Internet Explorer

4,248 (52%)

Chrome

1,531 (19%)

FireFox

1,252 (15%)

Safari

366 (4%)

Opera

237 (2%)

Mobile Safari

172 (2%)

Mobile

126 (1%)

Simple Pie

65 (<1%)

Version

13 (<1%)

Namoroka

11 (<1%)

With all my heart I can say that this was a great year, with a great progress, now it's time to open 2012 and be ready for a Euro and more official events.

Happy new year !!

Itay.

resistance training with a parachute

2011-12-29T02:44:00.001+04:00

Part if fixing and improving sprints techniqe.
Great resistance training with a parachute

Article about me

2011-12-27T20:37:00.001+04:00

With the help of Israeli sports website, we published an article about me and my story in the Speedskating world.

You are welcome to read it :
http://www.shvoong.co.il/he-IL/344/10441/

If you can't read hebrew, this is link for Google translate of the website, it won't be 100%, but readable.
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=iw&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=iw&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shvoong.co.il%2Fhe-IL%2F344%2F10441%2F

itay drory 3000m ice speedskating race

2011-12-21T09:43:00.000+04:00

My 3000m race from the last event
A lot of technique problem that I can see in this video, but like they say, competition is the best practice.
Under the stress of an event, you will do a lot of mistakes.

500m race - Itay Drory

2011-12-18T12:10:00.000+04:00

As I promised, my 500m race from yesterday.

Today's race at Kolomna

2011-12-17T23:16:00.002+04:00

Sat morning, I'm about to race for 500m and 3000m, the 500m wasn't even my choice, coach wanted me to train on sprints as well, I agreed.
Going to ice rink with a good feeling, but worried, I didn't skate on ice for like 16 days, and only been 2 days since I came back, and BOOM, I'm off to a race !
500m started OK, finished with 42.5 (a new PR for me) and I was a bit surprised.
The 3000m went the other way, finished with 4:32, which is 6sec behind my PR, and 20sec away from a podium.
Any way, got a lot of work left, tomorrow I'll start working on getting back to my self, a video of the event will be up by tomorrow.
For now, I'll add a 100m sprint practice, which shows how much my tech have been improved.

How we train : Speed Skating

2011-12-15T16:04:00.003+04:00

A few hours of editing, it's a little longer than I wanted, But I decided a 12min video is better than 3 videos of 4min each.

Enjoy the result, if you like it, please share it :)

Working on the new YouTube

2011-12-14T23:08:00.000+04:00

My next YouTube is under editing stages, I think I got enough stuff to start working on a new speedskating hit, problem is, it takes a lot of work !
And right now I'm facing a very hard time on the ice, after not skating for 3 weeks (I was in Israel).
I can share that New-Year is around the corner, and a lot of trees are with this lights and also it's snowing nicely.

I'll update and hopefully finish it quickly as possible.

As you can see, I'm working with 2 PCs and a digital camera to finish transferring all the data quickly.

Cycling in Israel & Yossi Birthday

2011-12-11T02:00:00.001+04:00

During this days in Israel I had to train at least once with the road bicycles....For that
purpose I joined a group of good friends and great people, and today was also one of the cycling team member birthday.
A great way to meet good friends, having a cool ride of 100km, and to finish with the best breakfast possible.

Here is a little taste of this day :

New clip on ice

2011-12-09T19:26:00.001+04:00

No new updates - Israel

2011-12-06T18:15:00.001+04:00

Hello to all my dear readers and visitors.
On the 25/11 and until the 12/12 I will be in Israel (Home land) and I can't update the Blog during this time since my PC is still in Russia.
The Blog will be back to regular updates after I'll get back to Russia and continue 2012 ice season.

I can be found on Facebook at my page : https://www.facebook.com/pages/Itay-Drory-Israel/236017816461752
Yours,
Itay.

Good day, Bad day

2011-11-20T17:49:00.001+04:00

I know we all have those good and bad days, but as a sportman those days have a huge meaning.
Today I raced my 4th event since ice season opened, and after 2 months I been training very very hard.
Finally today I saw some improvement which is worth of talking about.
At my 1st event of Russia cup, I raced 43.7sec for 500m, and that was when I finished with no air and almost can't stand, I was only skating 1 month on the ice back than.

1st Russia cup - 500m

My 1st training race of 1000m, was with a fellow lady skater, I finished with 1.28 (sec) and she kicked my ass big time by 7 sec.

That's my friend Rita, who kicked my ass on 1000m :)

At my 1st offical 1000m event, I did 1.27.52min, and the event after 1:26.87, in both cases I knew I could of done much much more, but I had tons of technique problems from the inline world.

Today, after 4 events on the ice, and a lot of leassons I learned during them, I did better job.
Raced 500m in 42.7 and I finished full with air, I even said if I knew before I'll do so good, I would of tried harder, cause I could ! my fear from falling is still running somewhere in my head, since I crashed at my last 500m heat at Russia cup.

Tech improving on the 2nd Russia cup

At the 1000m, I did 1:24.6 and that's a lot of improvment in 2 weeks since my last event.
I smiled today, and I know I feel better on the ice, sprints will not be my goal on the ice world, but It's a demon I have to fight with on the way of getting better.

Have a good week ! :)

New website :)

2011-11-16T15:27:00.001+04:00

Sorry for not updating lately but I had been so busy with other stuff and a lot of hours at the ice rink, which made me to pause updates for a few days.

I bought the domain itaydrory.com
And for the moment there is small website on it, please visit and share your ideas :)

www.itaydrory.com

A new pgae on Facebook

2011-11-11T11:05:00.001+04:00

During last time I noticed that I been updating anything I wanted at so many places, and after taking the advices of a another sportsman, I opened a fan page on FB.

The page link is this : https://www.facebook.com/pages/Itay-Drory-Israel/236017816461752
And I welcome anyone to follow me on it.

Yours,
Itay.

Time for lessons after this competion

2011-11-06T18:02:00.000+04:00

My 2nd event was just finished 2 hours ago, this was a good and bad event for me.
It was a bad event cause I had a lot of mistakes and a very bad results, but it was good since I needed this lesson to learn a thing or two.

1st day 5/11/2011 -
Time for 500m heat, I feel good, stronger than last time, I'm on the line getting ready to sprint, I hear the gun shoot and I start running, by the time I cross the 100m I hear the 10.9 sec (new PR for me) and I think "Ok, I should speed up in the turn" I'm starting to crossover and after 1 sec, I hit the wall on 38km/h of speed.
I get up, very mad about my self, and I say to my self, I got to finish the race, I skated slowly to the finish line, with all my respect gone, and than the 2nd pair who started crashed on me also made me to crash again...so I get up again, not even looking on this guy who could of injured me badly, and I cross the finish line with something like 1 min.
Of course there is more to this part, the main stupid thing, is I didn't even know it's not over.

Ice rink in Kolomna at night

After a long rest of 3 hours, relaxing in the gym and getting ready (Mentally mainly) to my 1500m, it was time for going on the ice for warm up.
This was the 2nd bad thing of the day, as I go on the ice, I hear some noise out of my blades, it seems during the 2 crashes my blade was damaged, and now it's shaking when I speed up.... !
Since I'm new to ice, I didn't check after the crash if my gear was ok or not ! (stupid eh?!)
Now I have to skate 1,500m with a shaking leg and a huge fear from re falling again.
I start the sprint and I can feel it's so hard to keep balance, my right leg is killing me, and I'm working on not falling a lot more than on my skating...It ended with 35sec for lap, and 2:16 in general. (6 sec more than last time)

2nd day 6/11/2011
I came early to the ice rink, I had to fix my boot and blade, and have the time to test it as well, it was sooooo cold ! -8 degrees on the way to the rink !

-5 degrees , it's COLD !!

I worked for more than 40 min sharpen my blade to fix the hit, and with 2 trainers to remove the knife to where it should of been :)

My trainer working on fixing my boot :)

After a short test, I felt much better and it wasn't 100% like before, but skateable for sure.
Time for 1,000m heat, I'm ready, on the line, planning the turn and how fast I'll go there, I sprint good, I lose the 2nd guy very fast, and than I go in the turn FULL of fears to fall again, I'm starting to lower my speed to make sure I won't have problem, but lowering speed in sprint is a bad bad thing....
So I skated all this time while the idea in my head, is not to skate good, but just not to fall again and make a fool out of my self, I did finish, with 1:27 which is like my training time.

The 3,000m heat, was with a fellow skater from my team, in my head I wanted to chase him and do more than I can for now, that idea died quickly as he opened very fast for 1st lap and I gave up early on the chasing idea.
So I skated like a training with 37-38 sec for a lap, to just finish and get it over with, every turn it was more and more think about being scared of falling than to do able to skate fast.
I finished with 4:45, I guess it's true when they say : "If you fall off a horse, the best thing to do is to get back on it" , Today racing was very careful and I can't stop thinking about watching out from falling again, that made me lose a lot of time on my skating.
I know I can do much better, but the fear of falling again won today,I guess after a few trainings everything will be back as normal.

Today training 2-11-2011 & upcoming events

2011-11-02T21:50:00.002+04:00

Very soon I'll have my 2nd & 3rd shoot to improve my results.
At 5/11/2011 I'll race in 500m 1000m 1500m & 3000m in a local event of my town.
And at 11/11/2011 I'll race for 500m 1500m & 5000m in Russia cup 2nd leg.

Ice season is up and running :)
Until than, I been working so hard the past 3 weeks, analyzing mistakes and powering up my legs in a crazy way.
Today I did a lot of analyzing work on my tech, here is the movie I use :

Crossovers on ice

2011-10-26T20:19:00.001+04:00

I learned from my 1st ice event, is that ice unlike inline's demands a very strong legs and very high level of power.
Since the event I been busting my ass at the gym, everyday working on power training and making my legs ready for the next event, I can already feel a big difference and it's in only 2 weeks, I skate 7-10 lap's on 35sec for lap with no big problem, sometimes it feels better and sometimes less, but I know I'm improving and I can feel it.

Right now, since I'm working a lot on power and around 2-3 hours on the ice, I didn't make too much video's lately, I did make one today.
At morning warm up on the 330m ice track.

Russia cup - day 2 & 3

2011-10-18T14:00:00.002+04:00

At day 2 of Russia cup,I joined a 2nd 500m race and a 5,000m race as well.
The 500m race, I got a weak
opponent, and I won the 1 on 1, but the result was slower than yesterday in 0.5, which was bad.

500m race

On the tech side, I feel much better since this event photos, helped me to see that I had done a long way and improved my tech. At the 5k, I started slowly, and after 3 laps everything went ok, but my leg started hurting, and speed lowered.
I started to skate on 38-39 sec for 1 lap, which is 2-3 sec away from what I needed, This pain in the Quad didn't leave me, and I skated slowly to finish with 8 min for 5km.
I don't like my results in this Cup, I think that they are very low, but for someone skating 1 month and with no pro backgroup, I'm doing ok.
Now I'm starting to work on power training since I have to increase my power skating.

Next event will be in 1 month I think, and I'm going to work to be better stronger and faster.

1st event on ice - 1st day

2011-10-14T21:32:00.000+04:00

WOW !
1st day is now over, Started with 500m and a bit of failing on that heat.
I skated a bit in the morning, before the race and it felt good.

Good morning Coach :)

After watching the ladies 500m, I went home for a 2 hours rest, in that time I watched maybe 100 YouTube video's about 500m skating and I tried to analyze them before my 1st time on that event.
When my time came, I was nervus as hell ! The only thing I can say I do good on ice, is the starting line jump, I got strong strokes and I can go quite fast on a good start, for some reason (I guess why) that didn't happen in the 500m heat, and I had a bad start followed by a bad skating :(
Finished with 00:00:43.7 sec.

After resting and getting ready (More mentaly) the 1500m came, and OMG I was the 1st couple to skate ! but this time, it worked.

Coach had a long talk with me, how to relax my self.

Coach briefing

After a good start, I opened a gap which took me to victory in my 1 on 1, and in the total score somewhere near the end of the list, but not in the end ! :)
Finished with 00:02:12 , 41km/h avg.speed.

And in the end, 1 good photo :)
Tomorrow, I got 2nd shoot at 500m and I'll race for 5,000m as well.

New clip on ice

2011-10-12T23:56:00.003+04:00

It's up and ready, last 2 min are from the last days of training.

History is about to be made

2011-10-12T14:08:00.001+04:00

The city is full with sportman, you can see them running on the streets...
When I walk I see a lot of different type of T-shirts with speedskating logo's on them....Each one and his city...

The rink is full with skater, no place to sit

The media are the at ic rink, taking photo's and video of the national team skating practice...The reason for that is that in 2 days, 14/10-17/10, Russia cup will take part at Kolomna ice rink.

Team training

And for the 1st time in history, there will be an Israeli skater on the line as well.
This will be my 1st competion, I only been skating for 1 month today on the ice, I got nice results on training but still not on the level of a good skater, so for now I am surely the underdog for this competion, not to forget it's my 1st ever event on ice, so I guess I will be a bit excited.

Watch out, Israeli skater on ice :)

Getting ready

BUT, being the underdog still got his suprise element, and that is what I'm hoping for :)

Since I got no idea what distance is 100% good for me, I will take part in almost all of them.
I will start with 500m and later on the same day, 1500m as well.

Underdog or not, I'm ready !

And day after (Sat) I will take the 5,000m event too.

My goals are to avoid being last and learning how to act in such event.
I come from inline world, where the pack and the draft has very big power on how you skate, I'm not used to 1-on-1 style like in Long track.

a good friend once told me : "Competion is the best practice" , I agree.
Good luck to everyone :)

What is up lately...

2011-10-09T11:09:00.000+04:00

For now life in Russia, as well life on ice has been good, my ice skating is being improved from day to day and I feel much better on the ice.
I been working on editing a new clip but I need to shoot more video's so it will be delayed for now....

I had a fuse burned in my fuse box at home...but this fuse box is unlike anything I saw before...something very very old....I had to wait a few hours for someone to come and help me fix that...

How old can this be ? :)

The fall is here like a good timing clock, on the 1/9 the temp went down and since than I feel a real fall with leaf falling from the trees non stop and covering the streets and side walks and as well the cold weather with non stop rain for the past 2 weeks.

Winter on the streets

My inline rink is wet 99% of the time, it has been almost 40 days without wheels on my legs, I kind of miss the inline's , just for a short skating , hoping I didn't forget how to skate :)

Ice arena in the rain

My inline rink....wet wet wet

I told so many people in so many times about how bad the Russian roads are for skating....But today I woke up to a new asfalt showed up on my street ! Maybe someone want's to prove me wrong :)
But I go a pic of before and after for that.

The road before fixing, with many holes

The new road :)

Until next update...which I hope will be with the new video clip, Have a good week.