[Saturday, January 8, 2005]  So here I am in Mecca. Lake Placid, NY to be precise, the Olympic Oval. This is the third time I've been here in a month, learning to use Marathon Skating International's new timing system: chips on ankles, sensor-wires buried in the ice. Very cool, very sweet, with no missed laps (or shivering lap-counters trying to keep track of spouses and friends), with results printed out immediately after each race. This time I'm running it myself, switching back and forth between writing these words and entering competitors into the database for this weekend's races. Down below my window is the Olymic Oval, with half a dozen skaters warming up. This is a refrigerated track, lovingly manicured by Zamboni between sessions. To the right is a huge building housing an assortment of rinks for hockey, figure skating and short-track speedskating. International events take place there regularly, as they do on the ice outside. On the other side of the Oval is an impressive building that looks like something out of Russia (think the Kremlin), but it turns out to be the Lake Placid High School. And way off to the left, but not that far away, are eye-catching snow-capped mountains. You have to come to Lake Placid to appreciate what it's really like. Just two hours from Montreal on excellent roads, and in the last 40 minutes you find yourself in a different world, winding through the narrow High Falls Gorge with a river rushing close alongside, and towering high above, Whiteface Mountain. You can't get more picturesque. And when you get to the village of Lake Placid, you can't possibly find more activities to take part in: all the classic winter olympic sports, everything you could ever want to do in mountains and woods. I call it a village, and it feels that way, but Lake Placid has the entertainment facilities of a city, all close by in an intimate, friendly setting. I especially like the intimacy of the Oval, sheltered from the wind, used throughout the day by speedskaters and rec skaters in alternating sessions. Then there's the nearby Lake Placid Pub and Brewery, home of a number of prize-winning beers of which the star is Ubu, dark and frothy with a nourishing fruity sweetness. Today on the menu at the Oval we have a 25K, 49 skaters participating from the US and Canada. Tomorrow we'll have a 50K. Despite the intimidating title of US National Marathon Championships, this is a most accessible event, with participants of all ages (several over 60) and every possible level of ability. While everyone today is on speedskates, many of them have rented either the blades or complete skates from Dimon Sports just down the street. And that's the real reason why Lake Placid is a speedskater's Mecca. Imagine walking into a store and discovering that it is full of speedskates: boots, blades, wheels, complete skates, skinsuits, everything. Short-track, long-track, ice, inline, it's all there. And now take everything that comes to mind when you think "store" and throw it out the window: none of the glossy consumerism of a SportsExperts, no hard sell. You walk into John Dimon's store and right away you know you've found skater's paradise, down-to-earth, skater-oriented, with sharpening jigs and a blade-bender in action behind the counter. [Sunday, January 9]  We had a couple of glitches yesterday. The timing software wasn't configured quite right, so when the winner crossed the line for his final lap suddenly the system stopped counting for everyone else. But it did keep on registering crossings and individual lap-times, so after 4 hours of painstaking addition (with Frank Cherry patiently reading out numbers from the screen) I was able to produce official results (down to the thousandth of a second) for nearly everyone. Unfortunately there was another kind of glitch toward the end of the race: a spectator walked over the unprotected wires and suddenly we stopped getting any kind of data. The last 5 skaters in the 25K were thus deprived of having an official finish. But today we've done everything right! The software's configured right, the wires emerging from the ice are sheltered behind a barrier of big red cones, and we've got an announcer in the right place. Yesterday the wire provided for the microphone was so short, we had to shout names and numbers back and forth in a relay across three rooms. It was crazy. But today the wire stretches all the way to the other side of my laptop, and Ken Windman is there to announce the race and tell skaters how many laps they have left. Everything goes smooth as silk. By the end the skaters are delirious, with one fellow saying he set a personal best thanks to the timing system, because he always knew how much further he had to skate. Organizers Lisa Windman and Mike Millar are happy, John Dimon is happy, and I'm happy. The crowning touch is when I hit the Print button, seconds after the final skater comes off the ice, and I can go downstairs to hand out results sheets. [Wednesday, January 12]  Coming up next: the Vermont Marathon & North American Marathon Championships at Lake Morey, Vermont. This is a place where you'll see more Nordic Skates, because the track is out on the lake. It's a gorgeous setting, and the fact that everyone spends the weekend together at the Hulbert Outdoor Center makes the whole event especially pleasing. Good food, good people, great skating... what more could you ask? Meanwhile, I'd like to plant the Lake Placid seed in the minds of my fellow Quebeckers. It's an amazing place to skate, with perfect ice, scenery that will blow your mind, and the other nice stuff we Roller-Montrealers especially enjoy whenever we get together. On weekends there 2-hour sessions in the morning and afternoon when the Oval is open to speedskaters; the rest of the time, even if you're wearing Nordics you can be out there if you keep the speed down. Combine your trip with a lengthy visit to Dimon Sports (it will definitely blow your mind). Plan for beer, make a weekend of it, spend the night at a hostel to keep costs down (the choice of affordable lodging is enormous). Montrealers, you won't believe you've been so close to Mecca and have never gone before. Rod Willmot