Since I've been concentrating on the dance/freestyle aspects of my skating, I've not been doing much (meaning: any) distance skating. I've been tempted to hit the Razorback Greenway a few times, but the sheer amount of people on the trail lately has kept me away. In fact, I've been completly unable to run my favorite off-road trails since the pandemic closures shut down businesses and people decided to hit the trails for something to do. So, because I've not been distance skating, I have also quit checking on the Distance skate groups on Facebook. Honestly, I find Facebook to be a necessary evil. I long for the days when forums were active. I see half thought out political posts by people that I tend to respect and it puts me off Facebook more and more. ANYWAY, I found out a day or two late that there was a 10k challenge last month, but after checking out the times this morning, I decided to skate a 10k at my local paved "trail." I put trail in quotation marks because this trail is just over .25 of a mile. It is almost a track, but it has a couple extra turns and isn't completely flat. In fact, it has one flat section, two slightly uphill sections and one slight downhill with a couple turn in it. Well, I say that but the course would, of course, be just the opposite were I skating clockwise. For some reason I always skate this thing counterclockwise. I have no idea why. So, I skated just ever so slightly over 10k this morning: Judging from the times of the racers that actually competed in the challenge, I need to work on my distance skating. In my age group I would have placed 20th out of 30 and overall I would have been 85th out of 138. Not great, but I'm not upset about it. I've not skated distance in a couple months and the courses turns really slow me down. I think I could do a little better on the Memphis Greenline.
I hope they keep these challenges up. I probably won't enter the actual virtual race, but competing against their times is a fun challenge and a nice change of pace from freestyle/dance skating.
2 Comments
Eric Sanders
5/16/2020 07:27:46 am
I guess before it was officially a thing called LDP we just called it skating from here to way over there. 1980s I'd push clear across town or do laps around my town (probably putting in 10-15 miles no problem. This was on whatever the set up was-a use it for all, with 151/169s, 95a wheels). Now we have low slung decks, super carvey trucks, 80mm/80a wheels. I'd love to go back and roll some of those same roads I once pushed along on with my push board. Ok enough ramble. Yes the once near empty trails are now human and dog slalom runs add in ducks and it gets to be not as fun to ride them. Some day it'd be nice to just go push along with you on some road/trail. Keep the wheels a rolling and the pumps a flowing.
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AuthorThe ramblings of an aging skateboarder. Archives
October 2020
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