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.

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.

This weekend was The Great Race in Elkhart, Indiana - a 10k criterium and 1/2 marathon. As always, I was looking forward to the race, especially since it was a new one for me, and I had never done a 10k crit.

Although I had been training fairly consistently in the week leading up the event, I did not get any skates in 8 days before the race, and that proved a huge, huge mistake. Sunday was the 10k, 10 laps around a 3 block oval. Unfortunately the pavement was not in good shape in many areas, so that didn’t help matters for anyone, but hey we all skate the same course.

It became apparent quite quickly as the early laps unfolded that I simply didn’t have it. I started off at a good clip but didn’t find a good pack, and skated solo mostly until a teammate jumped on for the last 4 laps. I had nothing and I finished back in the pack, feeling awful, having nothing in my legs. That was the 10k.

Monday morning was the 1/2 marathon. I had hoped that having the 10k the day before might wake me up, but alas, it was not to be. I dropped off the advanced pack by mile 3ish, along with another teammate. We skated together for some 6 miles before a long pull on a hill did me in - I told them to just go on. Skated the last part solo.

Again, the story was simply dead legs. And worse, I honestly felt like I forgot how to skate half the time. I was getting no hip/knee drive no matter how hard I tried, and finding my correct edges was impossible. There were parts that were enjoyable, thank goodness - especially the social aspect of the event and the team dinner, etc. so at least I had a pretty good time other than my results. Speaking of which:

Great Race 1/2 Marathon Results:

Time: 49:04.6
Pace: 3:44
Avg Speed: 16+ mph
Place: 32 out of 48 in the Pro/Open division

I had hoped for sub 45 minutes, but no way was that going to happen. In addition to just not having it, the course was challenging in that it had a couple tough hills and some really rough spots.

I’m not sure exactly what happened other than not skating enough, but I need to re-evaluate my training and figure out where I fell off track. Plus, I’m dead serious about dropping the rest of this extra weight. I have to be lugging a good extra 20 pounds around, and I can’t stand it anymore.