"It was easy to set that up but now that it's time to make that official it's tougher because there's definite parts of me that don't want to quit," the sprint star from Red Deer, Alta., said on a conference call Friday.
"I catch myself thinking once in a while, 'Oh, I should try this with my blade, or do this in training and that can make a difference.' And then I think, 'I don't know if I'm going to be training any more because I'm retiring.'"
Still, there won't be a change of heart for the 33-year-old, whose career resume ranks right up among the history's most successful speedskaters.
Wotherspoon has several nagging injuries and feels the left arm he broke during a fall in November 2008 has never fully healed. The pain leaves him wondering if there is some permanent damage.
So his body is done, even if his mind is not.
Soon, however, Wotherspoon will have some other thoughts to keep his brain occupied, namely a job as head coach of an international training centre in Inzell, Germany.
The plan is for him to work with skaters from fledgling programs around the world once the facility opens in the spring of 2011. In the interim he's looking to do some assistant coaching with other countries, trying to learn what he can beforehand.
That Wotherspoon would jump into coaching isn't entirely surprising but the fact that there was little interest in him doing it in Canada is.
The job at the academy had been in the works for some 2 1/2 years through his relationship with Dutch entrepreneur Marnix Wieberdink, and no offers from home ever really materialized.
"I've had some casual conversations with one person about it but nothing like an official job offer or anything like that," he said. "I think though if I do choose to coach in Canada one day, what I'm going to be doing in Germany will be better education and better training than I could have gotten anywhere else really."
Wotherspoon got a taste of coaching over the last Olympic cycle when he helped mentor young Canadian skaters like Jamie Gregg of Edmonton in the men's sprint group.
He's heard the knock that elite athletes rarely make good coaches because they have trouble understanding the struggles of those less talented, but dismissed that.
There will be a learning curve, he acknowledged, but he won't employ a cookie-cutter approach when dealing with his charges.
"I think that's a bit of a generalization or stereotype because people always say just because you're a good athlete doesn't mean you're a good coach, but it also doesn't mean you'll be a bad coach," he said.
"I think it comes down to personality and recognizing what your weaknesses can be. Some of those things, I can see what they will be and other things I'll learn as I go along."
As for the national team he leaves behind, Wotherspoon believes it is in good shape, even though fellow veterans Clara Hughes and Mike Ireland have also retired since the Olympics ended.
There is a possibility of a leadership void with the departure of the program icons, but he feels there is enough veteran savvy left to keep things headed in the right direction.
"I think for sure in the sprint side, we have a pretty good handle on things and there are some young guys with a lot of potential coming up," said Wotherspoon.
"I think long-distance men, Canada's very rarely had a real strong team in that area. So I think that's something to look at and to think if they really want to improve in that area, it's either the way that skaters are developing from a young age, or it's the way that they're training for it. That has to be identified before you can take a course of action on it.
"For the rest of the team, I think there's a pretty strong base and a strong group of skaters that are still going to be there providing good people to train with for the good up and coming skaters."
Continued...