SkateFarm - The Wrap Up
Talk about being tired...but it's a good tired...
Blue Monday won't mean much to most of you, but I've kind of got a case of it at the moment. The SkateFarm was a fantastic time and opportunity for some top-notch coaching and skating. Strangely enough I didn't want it to end. It was hard to come back home to...that other life.
Not that it was a typical "vacation" by any stretch of the imagination. I guess I haven't taken "typical" vacations much over the years anyway.
The morning of Day 4 was spent on the Roller Coaster Hills. A local that had to stop and chat with us recalled the many accidents of people pushing things a LITTle bit too far and wrecking here and there...car crashes that is.
That section of road really did look like a roller coaster with nicely rounded tops and valleys and greatly varying sizes and slopes. It was nice that this section of road was freshly paved. It made for *much* better skating as SOME of the roads we had to skate on were more than a bit tore up. I tend to have problems with the bone-rattling skate routes.
The first hour or so was spent on speed technique skating a sequence of a roughly 75 ft. drop down followed by a 30 ft. climb. So gradually we worked up to being able to maximize the speed on the downhill to assist getting over the following climb. The maximum speeds on this section were tending to be 25 to maybe 30 mph. It was quite a confidence building exercise.
Since *following* that past the 30 ft climb was a 100 ft. drop where Birgit hit a top speed of 38.8 mph before rolling up the next hill. My GPS said I hit around 37.8mph, but that's good enough.
I never thought I'd see *that* speed again.
The afternoon skate was more difficult but really rather fun overall as it was going to finish at the Chateau Morrisette winery up a "nearby" ridge of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Now...if I had actually looked at the altitude difference between where we started the skate and where we were going to end up I wonder if I would have even started. But...somehow...I managed to skate up the roughly 1000 ft. hill over the course of 7 miles of road to get up there. Eddy was a fantastic coach helping me all along the way and even sometimes assisting me to keep pace on the long climb up.
I'll try to post the picture Ann took when I finally arrived. Boy was I beat.
So there's a first cut at the SkateFarm weekend. It was hard to leave. I feel like I should be out skating right now. It almost doesn't seem right to be sitting here at the computer, but there are chores, bills and cats waiting so I guess it's time to come back to the OTHER life and keep moving on.
Blue Monday won't mean much to most of you, but I've kind of got a case of it at the moment. The SkateFarm was a fantastic time and opportunity for some top-notch coaching and skating. Strangely enough I didn't want it to end. It was hard to come back home to...that other life.
Not that it was a typical "vacation" by any stretch of the imagination. I guess I haven't taken "typical" vacations much over the years anyway.
The morning of Day 4 was spent on the Roller Coaster Hills. A local that had to stop and chat with us recalled the many accidents of people pushing things a LITTle bit too far and wrecking here and there...car crashes that is.
That section of road really did look like a roller coaster with nicely rounded tops and valleys and greatly varying sizes and slopes. It was nice that this section of road was freshly paved. It made for *much* better skating as SOME of the roads we had to skate on were more than a bit tore up. I tend to have problems with the bone-rattling skate routes.
The first hour or so was spent on speed technique skating a sequence of a roughly 75 ft. drop down followed by a 30 ft. climb. So gradually we worked up to being able to maximize the speed on the downhill to assist getting over the following climb. The maximum speeds on this section were tending to be 25 to maybe 30 mph. It was quite a confidence building exercise.
Since *following* that past the 30 ft climb was a 100 ft. drop where Birgit hit a top speed of 38.8 mph before rolling up the next hill. My GPS said I hit around 37.8mph, but that's good enough.
I never thought I'd see *that* speed again.
The afternoon skate was more difficult but really rather fun overall as it was going to finish at the Chateau Morrisette winery up a "nearby" ridge of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Now...if I had actually looked at the altitude difference between where we started the skate and where we were going to end up I wonder if I would have even started. But...somehow...I managed to skate up the roughly 1000 ft. hill over the course of 7 miles of road to get up there. Eddy was a fantastic coach helping me all along the way and even sometimes assisting me to keep pace on the long climb up.
I'll try to post the picture Ann took when I finally arrived. Boy was I beat.
So there's a first cut at the SkateFarm weekend. It was hard to leave. I feel like I should be out skating right now. It almost doesn't seem right to be sitting here at the computer, but there are chores, bills and cats waiting so I guess it's time to come back to the OTHER life and keep moving on.