Charlie Brown On Skates

The 2008 Chicagoland Inline Marathon marks my one-year anniversary in the sport of inline speedskating. It seems that I could write a small book on my experiences and lessons learned in this sport that has brought me so much personal happiness, but I’ll try to keep it as short as possible. My goals have been first, to get in shape, and second to be a competitive skater my age group. At 42, it’s a bit too late for me to have aspirations for being a pro, and I’m not sure even if I had been younger if I really have enough natural skating ability to have ever made it that far. But I think shooting for being competitive in my age group is possible.

So, what has gone on in the last year and what have I learned? Let’s get right to it.

1. The speedskating community is the best. I cannot tell you how many nice and cool people I have met in this sport in all different places across the country. I’m not just talking about people on my team, I’m talking about everyone. I think speedskaters are the friendliest community of sports people I have ever been a part of, and I have partaken in a lot of different sports. Even though it is an individual sport, there is this overall group mentality that “we’re all in this together” during a race, for the most part. Sure, there’s a field sprint at the end where we try to beat the other guy, but all in all it’s almost as if we are all pulling on the same rope. Whether it’s helping someone in a pack with encouraging words or the friendly race talk afterwards, the great speedskating community is one of my favorite aspects of this sport.
2. I love my team. I skate with Team Rainbo, the largest and oldest speedskating team in the country. Not only is this a team made up of wonderful people of which I’ve made many great friends, they are an awesomely talented bunch too. Whatever my accomplishments were in my first year, they are squarely due to the immense amount of coaching and encouragement as well as all the intense practices I’ve had with my wonderful team. I could not have accomplished half of what I got done this year without them. Believe me when I say I realize how lucky I am to train with such an excellent team. I really feel for the skaters that I read about on skating forums who are out there all by themselves skating without the benefit of a team. That’s really tough. There’s only so much you can do on your own, and that leaves the main learning experiences to be races, which only happen so often. If you are out there training alone, do all you can to hook up with other skaters, and you all will benefit. Skating with people who are much better than you only makes you a better skater.
   
3. I love the challenge of the sport. Speedskating is extremely technical and requires a tight mental focus. I don’t think I realized how much that would be the case when I first started. I was often told it would take me 3 solid years to get a good solid technique, and let me tell you - those people were right. Having done this for a year, I realize how much I have to learn and how many things I need to refine and improve upon. I love sitting down after practice or after a race and chatting about skating, dissecting a race or a training session. And oh yeah, it’s physically demanding. Sure skating a marathon isn’t as tough as running one, but that doesn’t make it easy. An hour and a half of peak physical exertion is taxing to say the least - but way too much fun too. During the race you can’t slip up and zone out for even a moment, because that’s when a break might happen or a fall, or a bad spot in the pavement, or a misstep or a hundred other things can happen. In the meantime, I may be fighting like mad to stick on to the pack and not get dropped - which often is as much or more mental than physical - or fighting my back pain or trying to fix a technical flaw in my skating. Getting in shape for these races is not a herculean effort, but keeping the right focus can actually be more difficult. I also find that solo training - skating during the week away from team practices - can be quite challenging. Especially when I need to do longer distances. It can be tough to skate alone, and with my schedule it’s hard for me to hook up with teammates during the week. There are days when I’ve had a long day, I’m tired and it’s 7pm, but I have to go out and do 18 miles to stay in skating shape - often with back pain to boot. That’s tough sometimes, and I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t really love the sport and enjoy skating.
4. Custom boots have made a big difference for me. If you are serious about the sport, then you may find as I have that a custom boot makes a big difference. I didn’t realize how much of a difference it could make. Once your technique hits a certain level you begin to realize that a stock boot just does not fit your foot well enough to really let you do the things you need to do. Soon I felt like my foot was floating around in my boot and I had no control at all. When I put the custom boot on it was like a revelation. Finally I could direct the forces where they needed to go. And I wasn’t lugging around all the extra weight of a stock boot either. Expensive sure, but worth every cent.
5. Every race and every practice is a learning experience. You never stop learning in this sport, and that goes back to the challenging aspect. Cale told me after all his years of skating that every race is unique and a learning experience. You learn something new each time, there’s some new wrinkle, some different course aspect, you feel different, you skate different - it seems there are a million variables. Even our practices are like that. That’s part of what makes it so much fun for me.
6. Falling is part of our sport. Like cycling, falls happen - there’s just no getting around it. That’s why it’s so important to wear proper equipment. Please don’t ever skate without a helmet! I cringe when I see people doing that. Friends of ours lost a father who was on his bike without a helmet in his own driveway - the man essentially died in front of his children. We can recognize that our sport contains a certain amount of risk and prepare ourselves appropriately. In my first year I’ve gone down a few times here and there, and I’ve had my share of road rash. I fell in mile 1 of the Squiggy race. It’s something we need to be aware of but you can’t skate in fear. The better prepared you are physically, technically and equipment-wise, the much less risk it becomes.
7. Be willing to do things outside your comfort zone. I’ve had to learn to do a lot of things I was not comfortable with. Skating in a pack was the first one. Getting on my outside edges, using custom boots, skating faster than I ever had… skating faster downhill than I ever had. To progress you’ll need to step outside what you know, and be willing to take direction from those who have gone before you.
   
8. This is a sport that takes time to learn correctly. I’ve been rightly criticized this first year for not having enough patience, for wanting it to come faster than it really can. Part of this is because as an athlete, things have come pretty easily for me in my life, particularly when I was younger. Somehow I just figured speedskating would be the same, especially since I had pretty much been skating all my life recreationally and skating inline since they came out. Wrong! As I said, this is a technical sport. There are so many things to master with just the classic push alone that can take years and miles upon miles. If you aren’t patient in this sport, you won’t last, and that is one thing I have learned for sure.
   
9. You will have your ups and downs. Holy cow have I experienced this one. Early on I had some nice ups, I suppose. Because I could skate fairly well when I started, some of the gains came quickly. But as time went by, I had some downers too. Suddenly the jumps didn’t come so often and when they did, they weren’t so big. It became an issue of fine tuning a certain aspect of training or technique, working it over and over to make the tiniest gain. And there came a time when I just felt like I forgot how to skate completely this year, and I found out I wasn’t the only one to ever have that experience. Not so long later I had my best race of my career. As they say in baseball, don’t let your highs be too high and don’t let your lows be too low, because they are both going to be around. I have days where I feel like I can’t do anything right. And lately I’ve been finding new strength that wasn’t there before. You take both in stride.
   
10. Off-skate work will benefit you. I’ve found great benefit in off-skate training. I have to be careful not to overdo it, but plyometrics and other various dryland training has benefited my skating. In particular plyo seemed to really help build leg strength that I could take advantage of. Definitely look into supplmenting your skating with dryland work if you want to improve.
    
11. I’m glad to be having this much fun. I really thought my sporting days were over. I had stopped playing hockey and softball for various reasons, and I had gotten way out of shape. Now I’m having more fun in a sport than I ever have in my life, and that’s saying a lot. I really look upon this as a gift ever time I get out there.
    

So what about my progress after all that massive pontificating? I’m actually happy and a little surprised with my progress in the first year. I remember the first practice I went to with Team Rainbo - it was extremely difficult and embarrassing for me. I returned home to my wife and made the following statement: “There is no way I will ever skate with those guys.” I’m glad to report that isn’t exactly true.

There are lots of different types of skaters on Team Rainbo, from fast to fastest. At the beginning I skated with the people that I could keep up with (for the most part) and they taught me the basics, corrected my hockey stride and helped me transition to a speedskating stride. At our practices we kind of break up into a couple groups after the initial warmup skate. Essentially the “fast pack” as I call them kind of take off, and the rest of skaters drop off into smaller groups based on speed.

There came a point where my teammate Lewis said to me “it’s time for you to move up.” I was basically not challenged anymore by the group I was skating with, but I was greatly intimidated by even attempting to skate with the faster (or even fastest) skaters. I kind of knew I should, but it really took him to tell me that to gear myself up to do it. Since then it has been a slow progression of trying to hang with that pack, sometimes getting dropped very early on, but slowly making progress. It has only been in the last couple months that I have been able to hang on for a decent amount of time - say roughly a half hour or a bit more, generally 10-15 miles. I’ve never made it yet through a whole practice with them - not yet.

But it’s great to skate with them. I look up to each one of them as an athlete and as an inspiration, and I’m strangely honored to be able to hang with them even for the shortest of times. Maybe it’s because it’s something I never thought I could do. And… it’s wickedly fun!

So for comparison sake I offer the following. First, the comparison of the results of my first race with the best race I had this year at the Badger State Games (unfortunately I got sick this week and was sick for yesterday’s Chicagoland marathon, and I wasn’t able to skate my best).

In addition, my first full marathon time was at the St. Paul race, coming in at 1:52:16. So I’ve improved my marathon time by almost a half hour.

Secondly, the photographic evidence.

2007	2008
Left: Here’s me in 2007 in dorky shorts, dorkier helmet, totally out of shape and using my 7 year old K2 rec skates	Right: In 2008, my favorite skating photo, working “the hill” at a typical Team Rainbo practice. At least the outfit looks better! I’m not in perfect shape, but certainly better.

So, what’s in store for year two?

I’ll be less focused on time now, that’s for sure. Early on it’s certainly fun to see how you can improve your numbers. As I have progressed it has become more about the race around me and trying to compete with other skaters at my level. I’ll be trying to improve so I can place better among that group. Sure, I’ll still want to probably race sub 1:30 marathons, and I would love to crack the 1:20 barrier, but those are less important than having a good race.

I think the big gains are behind me now, and I’ll need to really focus on technique. I had some limitations with my back in how low I can skate, but I’ll continue to stretch and try to lose the last part of the weight I’ve got to help out with that. One mistake I made last year in the off-season when we skated indoors to stay in shape was switching to 90mm wheels. It seems I lost some of the technique on cornering I gained when I went outside and switched to 100s again. This year indoors, I’ll stick with 100s.

I hope next year to be able to say I’m hanging around with the “fast pack” and competing well with my peers. Once again I’ll say, only time will tell.

You may or may not be aware that there is a inline racing series this year for the North American inline races called the National Roller Cup (NROC) being run by the Inline Planet. From the beginning I thought it was a cool idea, not because I could win anything but because you can have an objective way to measure yourself against other skaters, and it’s good for the sport. Plus, it adds another dimension of fun to the races.

It turns out NROC is basically a pro rating system and series, which I didn’t realize at first. That means I’m “stuck” competing with pro level skaters. What a pro level skater is in North America is vastly different from the big manufacturer team pros in Europe. Here it’s more based on historical performance, not if you are actually sponsored or not. Still, the pro skaters coming to these races in all divisions are darn good skaters.

Of the men’s divisions, the Open Elite is the cream of the crop where really all the top pros like Joey Mantia of Answer, Adam Miller and Rob Bell compete, as well as top guys on our team like Murphy Quinn, Peter Starkowycz, Greg Major and Steve Meisinger.

The division I compete in is Master Men 35-44. You’d think these are some older guys so it wouldn’t be so hard, but ha! That’s not the case, the Master and Veteran are extremely tough, with skaters often skating in the same packs with the Open Elite pros.

So as I said - I’m certainly not going to win any awards, but I do want to do as well as I can. The NROC standings were updated today and it turns out I did better than I thought at the Badger State Games. I took 11th place in Master Men for 16 points in the NROC. That puts me in a tie for 29th place. It should be noted that so far this year there have been 4 NROC races and I have only competed in one of them. I wouldn’t be that much higher had I done more races, but I would certainly have a few more points. The system will definitely favor those who can make the most races, but hey that’s only fair.

I will be competing in 3 more NROC races this year, our Chicagoland race, St. Paul (which is worth double points I gues) and Duluth. It will be interesting to see if I can keep up this training pace and keep my performance at the same level. I really don’t know, I am in totally uncharted waters.

I can say it is really fun, and quite an honor to compete with these skaters.

I’ve been training hard this summer hoping to reach my goal of breaking the 1:30 barrier this year as I had posted earlier. I’m happy to say I achieved that today at the Badger State Games.

It was a really fun and challenging race. BSG has no Open division, so I had to sign up for the Elite/Advanced Master 35 & over, so I assume my age group placement will be low, we’ll see when the results come in.

Edit: Results

1:23:34 (18.8 mph avg., 3:16 pace)
16th out of 20 in Elite Masters
51st out of 90 in Elite/Advanced

It looked like it might rain as the start approached, which would have been bad with my Am-Wing wheels, which are absolutely useless in the wet, but the rain held off. I’ve been very unsure of my starts lately, not really knowing exactly how to take off and who to be with, but I think I may have sorted some of that out today.

I think I took off a bit slow and a bit too far back. The early advanced pacelines where scattered and there was a lot of movement. As the first few miles fell behind us, various skaters were getting gapped and I had to make a few passes and jump lines here and there, but finally an advanced paceline of some 20-25 skaters sorted out and we began plugging away at the miles.

I was feeling decent, and in fact I was not being pressed by the pace. Ahead I could see my teammate Margo Carvell with a group of skaters about 2-300 feet away. I thought about stepping out and chasing them down but I didn’t want to blow myself up and ruin the race. That turned out to be a wise decision. A bit later I was at the pull and we had closed the gap to them considerably, now being some 50-100 feet away. I decided that was the time to catch them and upped the pace and pulled them in without too much effort.

The line settled in at the point with those skaters, and the pace did pick up a bit. We may have lost a couple skaters on that pull, I’m not sure. We hit a few smaller hills, nothing too horrible. When we reached the beginning of the turnaround loop, we hit a pretty sizeable and long hill which looked like trouble. I’m glad we do a lot of hill training at our Rainbo practices at the Sears Centre, because it pays off at times like that.

As we neared the top clearly there was a group of skaters behind that had gotten gapped and were falling off. I was literally at the end of my rope at the top and it was all I could do to make sure I caught the train down the other side. Luckily between the ride down (at a harrowing 30mph) and the stretch out there, I got just enough of a blow to continue on.

I swear I’ve perfected the art of hanging on for dear life for the duration of a whole race.

By this time, my back is really hurting, as it has been acting up the last couple weeks. I guess I’m kind of used to the pain and I was able to continue, taking a quick stand when I could to take the pressure off.

On the way out we had been skating into a strong headwind. The turnaround was like a 5 mile large loop, on some pretty rough roads where we had a crosswind. Then the way back we mostly had a tailwind, which was obviously nice.

At this point the pace is really challenging me. I was actually 3-4th in the line for a good long while, but hadn’t pulled since the hill. At some point I got smooshed out of the line and ended up grabbing on the back. It was one of those moments where I was not sure if I was going to be able to continue. And I tell you, there was nobody behind me, so it would have been bad news to fall off. I pushed myself to hang on and concentrate on my form and was able to stay there.

At about mile 18, a skater stepped in a hole or some bad spot and went down hard only a couple spots in front of me - and right in front of Margo. Most of the line shifted left to avoid him (and Margo did successfully) but I went right for whatever reason, and they guy rolled right in front of me. I had no choice but to jump him, and luckily I made the landing and didn’t hit the poor guy. Losing it there would have really sucked after making it that far too.

The rest of the way was pretty tough, with a couple of small hills thrown in for added stress! We came to the final quarter mile and the field spread out for a sprint, but my tank was empty. I picked up the pace slightly to stay at the back of the group but that was all I could muster. I followed Margo over the finish line for a time of 1:23:37 - a new personal best.

My GPS reported the distance .8 of a mile short at 25.4. Even adding another 2-3 minutes for the missing distance still puts me under my goal, so I’m happy about that.

My next goal is to continue to train consistently so I can continue to compete with these excellent skaters. I don’t think I can expect any more 8-10 minute improvements, but I can work on my form and my racing savvy to be better at where I am. I’m probably never going to be in those top packs but that’t okay, I can live with being competitive in the advanced packs and enjoying the challenge that brings.

Haven’t posted for awhile since I’ve been busy both working and training, so a quick report is in order. We’re getting into the heart of the outdoor season now, which is great, and we have our own race (The Chicagoland Inline Marathon) coming up in July.

I was going to skate the Baxter Inline Marathon to open up my summer race series, but alas, nature had other ideas. We left in the Team Rainbo van with high hopes, however those were dashed in Madison, WI when large stretches of I-94 were closed due to flooding. The traffic was building, there was talk of a dam breaking, mudslides, and an even worse return trip. Unfortunately, we had to bag the whole thing.  We basically spent 10 hours in the van to go nowhere.

The next race is the Badger State Games in a couple weeks, let’s hope there’s no more rain for WI because things can go sour there too.  In the meantime I have been training pretty hard trying to improve and meet my goals for this year. Last week I did something close to 100 miles including some tough intervals with the team on Saturday. I’m also trying to lose the last of the weight I need to, and making some progress.

I’ve also been skating on the new Bont G4 wheels and finally got my hands on a set of Am-Wings in 22mm width. The Bont wheels are okay, fairly fast but they wear quickly. I don’t think they have quite lived up to the hype. The Am-Wings, on the other hand, are great. Light, fast and grippy and the 22mm width is nice, if not requiring of a bit more edge control.

Lord willing the weather will be nice and I’ll have a Badger report in the near future.