Charlie Brown On Skates

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.