Charlie Brown On Skates

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.