Long Track Speed Skating

Balance, Denny Morrison says, has never been a problem for him. Even from the time he was very small. At two, he was able to ride a bike without training wheels on the streets of Chetwynd, B.C., where he was born.

Great, thought his parents, he'll be able to skate and play hockey like every other Canadian kid.

"But when they checked into hockey at the local rinks, there was nothing available for three-year-olds. It happened that one of my mother's friends had started a speed-skating club, so I was at least able to start learning to skate," Morrison said.

That little bit of fate or luck in a small B.C. foothills town of 7,000 would determine the sports path of Morrison, one of Canada's top medal hopes in speed skating for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

"When I was four, we moved to Fort St. John and, as luck would have it, they had one of the biggest speed-skating clubs in B.C.," he said.

"I could play hockey there, but I never felt any reason to quit skating. I've been doing it my whole life. There's something cool about being the speed skater among a bunch of hockey-playing friends growing up."

Fort St. John, a city of 17,000 in B.C.'s northeast, has produced "NHL players and world champion chuck wagon racers," said Morrison, 23.

He's out to put it on the map in his own way, as an Olympic medalist - hopeful of bringing home the 1,500-metre gold in what ultimately could come down to a head-to-head battle with one-time training partner and friend and rival, American Shani Davis.

Morrison has traded the world record for the 1,500-metre distance with Davis, the current holder.

The Canadian won gold at the 2008 world single-distances championships and added bronze in 1,000 metres. But Davis took back the world title on the Olympic ice at this year's championships in Richmond, B.C.

To get to the top of the podium in 2010, Morrison's already been building his stamina for the intense training he knows coach Marcel Lacroix will demand of him.

"Marcel has emphasized doing shorter sets with high quality, rather than a lot of volume done poorly," he said.

Fort St. John, where his parents still live, is known as The Energetic City - fitting for the workload Morrison undertakes.

To be close to his workouts, he lives with older brother Jay - also a speed skater - in a house owned by his father in Calgary. He bikes to the Olympic Oval, four kilometres away, drops his backpack and gets immediately into jogging two laps to warm up.

"Some people are surprised at the workout itself," he said. "A lot of preparation takes place. It will be an hour and 40 minutes from the time I leave the house to the time I actually start the skating program."

The laps of jogging are followed by five to 10 minutes of calisthenics. Then, there's stretching on mats, and an on-ice warm-up with two sets of 10 laps each.

On the ice, the actual training program can vary from hard-paced short sprints, on and off for 45 minutes, to "the centurion - 100 laps."

During summer months, Morrison says, he meets up with other skaters for a long bike ride, anywhere from two to six hours. They may also meet at the oval for a "fartlek" - a run combined with dry-land exercises.

"Sometimes, we do speed-skating motions, but not on skates, smooth lunging steps," he said.

They look like a herd of Groucho Marx impersonators.

"You can do one minute jogging, then one minute walking, then two-and-two ... and just when you're feeling good, you tell yourself there's 16 more sets to go."

He does the sets. He doesn't forget that Davis, who used to train in Calgary, once admonished him for letting up during a practice.

When a season is done, Lacroix gives his charges up to four weeks off, "and I try to stretch out my recovery phase as long as possible," Morrison said. "It's more about staying moving at this point.

"I'll ask to do a mountain-bike ride so I can enjoy what I'm doing. But once I start the program in May, I'll do more of what's written down. I'm doing speed-skating training all the time, saying to myself, ‘This is what's going to put me on the podium.' It's hard on the mind."

It's a grind, but the words of Lacroix echo in his head: "Today, not tomorrow."

Morrison owns an Olympic silver medal from the team pursuit race in Turin in 2006, but now wants to add individual hardware. He finds it inspiring to be around other Canadian athletes with solid work ethics such as Olympic gold medalists Clara Hughes and Cindy Klassen.

When Morrison is away from the oval, he works on his 1991 Dodge Stealth. He says on his website that he sometimes takes a framed picture of the car with him on the road. He lists his favourite reading material as the magazine Car and Driver.

"I'm a car fanatic. I really enjoy it when it runs."

He and his brother also make a break from speed skating by playing other sports - volleyball, basketball, badminton and track - all good for cross-training, Morrison says. But the goal ahead of him always remains speed skating and the loop of ice in Richmond, under the six-acre wooden roof.

"Johann Koss [Norway's speed-skating Olympic icon] came and told us, ‘It's not enough just to want it badly, you have to stay focused on the little things that can do it for you,'." Morrison said.

"For me, as an Olympic athlete, when I am training, the training is all that matters. It's what's going to prepare me for the Olympic Games. It's what keeps me training."