I particularly liked the idea entering as it was held here in our town Szeged, so travelling meant exactly a mile to cover :D Sadly enough only the young amateurs were allowed to enter so I did not have the chance to scare the locals with my vast amount of skating knowledge - however it also marked Peter's first race in age category E, those born in 2000 & 2001.
He had 3 distances to cover, namely 1000, 300 (on the 1st day) & 500 metres (2nd day). He was a little bit scared of the 1000m, as he has not raced this distance before. I knew he was strong enough but we knew nothing about the opponents. He was also scared of the fact he had to race with older ones. Both those fears were really baseless.
Our tactic for the 1000m was to ride on the wheels of the leader or 2nd and try to overtake him/them the last lap. He started hanging on to the 2nd guy but quickly recognised he was too slow so he jumped up to the 1st guy, SzT and followed him from then on. However he was not close enough and I guess he couldn't find his draft. Well in the final lap they both started to accelerate and Peter came in 2nd, seemingly not too tired at all. I was very happy to see him do exactly what we've discussed, it showed that he knew exactly what would happen and controlled himself all the way.
1000m
The 300m in the afternoon was a go-go-go kind of racing, and 'as usual' he made a bad start and used quite some time & energy to climb up the ladder, however he was able to get hold of 2nd place finish again. Later he told me the starter did not call out 'Ready' before blowing the whistle and it perplexed him a lot...
300m
Then came the relays but he could not start there not having any mates in the age category. That's just annoying, it means all the season would go like this :(
Next day the 500m was due. Analyzing the 1000m I found his main opponent only started sprinting hearing the bell, so I tried to make Peter surprise him by starting his sprint earlier. I think it will work - another time, as this time Peter had a bad start again, almost let everyone ahead of him and spent the first 300m fighting the rest, so it was clear he won't be able to start a sprint from there. Anyway he finished 2nd again so it was obvious he earned silver this weekend.
500m
We all were happy with this result, a really good start for the season. It showed us Peter is in good form physically and mentally he is able to cope with the older ones. I am sure he will grab a gold sometime later this year.
Weather was perfect, organization was quite OK, the only bad thing was the speaker (a coach) giving instructions to her own team members. Let's give a microphone to all coaches then :D
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