Lucasmakowsky.com

As excited as I am right now, having just qualified to race in my first Olympic Games, I have to be honest when I say that my race yesterday was not perfect. Don’t get me wrong, I’m NOT complaining about how I finished, or about the fact that my first Olympic Games will be at home. That is pretty incredible. All I’m saying is that there were a few things that could have gone a lot better during my race.

All things ‘negative’ aside (ya, I can be hard on myself sometimes...), how cool is it that I can say that my first Olympic Games will be at home?! Not only did I just make the Olympics, but I will be able to proudly wear the Maple Leaf here at home: something every athlete dreams of. It’s been a long time in the making, and I still feel I have so much to learn and experience.

As for the race itself, I’ll briefly break it down to explain why it wasn’t a picture perfect race. Yes, I was ready for it, and yes, I felt good going into it. For whatever reason, though, my legs started to hurt pretty early in the race. Was it because of something I was doing technically? Very likely, but I couldn’t tell you for sure because I haven’t reviewed the race video with my coach yet. Whatever it was, it made me dig deep with around 7 laps to go.

From that point in the race I was on a solid pace, but just had to start working harder in the corners to maintain my speed. I roughly knew what lap times everyone else skated – a benefit to being in the last pair – so I knew if I could hold the times I was holding I would be in contention. As the laps were counting down, I dug deeper and deeper to keep my speed coming out of the corners and with 4 laps to go I remember telling myself “believe” in the corner. It’s easy to succumb to the pain but there’s no way I was going to live with the fact that I didn’t give it my all at the Olympic Trials.

I didn’t realise this until afterwards, but I guess with 1 lap to go I was still slightly behind the time posted by Denny. My family and friends told me it made for a good nail-biter!! So perhaps it was a little closer than I would have liked it to be, but I got the job done and that’s all I can ask for!

All hype aside, I still have the 1500m to qualify for on Friday. My 1500m has come a long way this year, so I’m really looking forward to it! Check back in a few days and hopefully I’ll have some more good news to report!