Drifting along

I dug out my drift / freeline skates this week as well, and tried them out on Burleigh Hill. I forgot how quickly they picked up speed - this may look mundane, but at the time it was terrifying! It's amazing how much I don't bend my knees as well...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE6R2VX2Zbc

For Pete

Still disappointed?

I love a challenge :)

Labels

I've finally gotten round to indexing my blog. So now if you want to view all posts on a particular topic, just select the appropriate label. I've broken the posts down into the following :-

• Beer
• Bikes
• Cheese
• Food
• Life
• Music
• Running
• Skating
• Travel
• Work

Which isn't a bad selection of things to be writing about. Life is good :). Was in two minds about splitting out 'Beer' and 'Brewing' but can always do that later if need be.

Most posts are linked to a couple of labels - this one is linked to them all so you can have a starting point. Have fun!

The evil blue roller of extreme uncomfortableness

Everybody over 30 who works out in any way will have their own favourite 'alternative' therapist, and mine is the team at Osteoworks in Kangaroo Point. Over the years John White & Rebecca Edwards have used their osteopathy talents to help me cope with backache, neck pain, scoliosis, hip pain, shin splints and even a thoracic hernia. They also have a kick-arse massage therapist on the team - Peta Payne is both an excellent skater and a masseuse who has worked with national and international sporting teams. Kick arse she does - if you request a remedial deep tissue massage she slips a strap of leather between your teeth to stop you chewing the upholstery on her table. And as well as being very good at their jobs they're also all lovely people, which is good because if they weren't so nice you'd probably end up punching them to stop the pain during treatment. So if you're suffering from muscular aches & pains, give them a call and see what they can do and say hello from me*. Unless you're the regular US or Russian reader of this blog, in which case a it's a bit far to go. But please add a comment on how you found me - sadly I suspect they're just web-bots.

Anyway, I visited Bec on Tuesday to get my knee looked at. It turns out it's not particularly my knees fault, more my feet, legs and hips have become a mess of tangled tightened muscle and overstretched tendons, and that's putting unusual loads on my knee. Running will do that to you (I blame Nike). Bec started to loosen everything up using what felt like trigger point therapy, finding knots of twisted muscle fibres and leaning heavily into them with pointy elbows & fingers whilst I stared into middle distance and mentally retired to my 'happy place'. It may not be pleasant at the time but it really makes a difference when it's done.  

She also recommended the use of a foam roller at home to keep everything loosened up.

Blog readers will now be divided into two camps. Some will be looking at the photo wondering what it is, whilst others will be hiding behind the sofa hardly daring to look like a kid watching Dr Who meet the daleks for the first time. The idea is that you lay on this innocuous looking thing and roll your tight muscles back and forth across it. It's not so bad on the front of your legs, but most people who ride, run or walk will have a very tight Iliotibial band (IT band) which is on the side of the thigh. I'm supposed to roll for 60 seconds on each side, but currently I can only manage one full roll before I'm whimpering in a corner & planning to throw the thing over the balcony.

*Note - Bec doesn't agree with barefoot running on tarmac & concrete, so if you do see her keep mum about that bit ;)

Drift skates

There's a relatively new form of skate out on the market now, variously known as the drift skate, freeline skate or split skate. It basically consists of a two platforms, each with two wheels underneath

The idea is that you stand on the skates (one skate for each foot) with the wheels pointing sideways, and the ride is supposed to be like a surfing / snowboarding sensation. Fortunately the instructions & warnings are clearly laid out
I've got no idea how you're supposed to start them rolling without having something solid to push off from
But it didn't take long before my natural poise & grace took over

It's a wierd sensation and although hard at first I could feel my body starting to adjust and get used to the movement. I even managed a 10' wobbly roll down a gentle hill by the end of my second session! However they're hard work - you're constantly trying to both balance and to stop your feet from disappearing out sideways so it's hard on both the deep core muscles and the muscles on the inside of your thighs. The biggest fear isn't so much falling off but the back skate stopping whilst the front skate continues on, leading to an inevitable yet still painful conclusion.

Refueling

Wednesday Night Skate last week started off small and kept getting longer. We ended up covering 26odd km in the end over the space of about 3 hrs.

It's important to refuel whilst you're skating that far, and twice as important to wear a paper boat as a hat whilst doing it.....

The dangers of exercise

After another late-ish departure from work on Monday I ended up missing another evening ride. So I decided I'd do some core strength exercises - sit-ups, planks, side planks - which felt good at the time but lead to a mild recurrence of an old back injury. Because of this I've spent the rest of the evenings this week laying on my back in front of the TV. I'm on the mend now, hopefully able to ride at the weekend (within reason), but best of all I can put my socks on without wincing.

We went for a skate on Sunday morning so at least I've had the chance to try the new skates. Skating without brakes is a strange sensation. You're very aware of it on steeper hills but often get taken by surprise just carelessly rolling up to a door or a junction. New skates also mean new wheels which are sticky sided and don't slide very well. This can catch you out when you try some dramatic slide-stops that backfire when the wheels grab.

The K2 skates are a 'softboot' fit. These clench your feet much less than my old FSKs so there's a lot more foot and ankle input required. If I forget to think about my feet I find myself 'flopping' off my edges which feels ungainly & inelegant. They also seem to be less efficient - I think I'd struggle to cover 30km in them wheras I can cruise through 50km with the FSKs. That might just be practice and getting used to them - Monte used the same model of skate for skate Melbourne and apparently found them very comfortable, although he has also been skating for 15 years more than me. The plus side is that the skates feel more like shoes, less restrictive, and jumping already feels easier without the supportive / restrictive structure of the skate. The large 'soul plate' on the side of the skate also makes stalling on ledges etc really easy although the frames seem to not like the battering this gives them.

New skates

My old & trusty Salomon FSK skates are getting a bit long in the tooth so I've been keeping an eye open for a replacement.
They've still got a bit of life in them but the options to replace them are getting smaller as our local skate shop loses interest in in-line skates to focus on the more lucrative skateboard and scooter markets. I found these on sale in there the other day
the colours are a bit more - well, white than I'd like and I'm not sure how resiliant the boot will be to the scuffs & scrapes of everyday skating but they fit well & feel comfortable.
The scary thing about the new skates is that they have no brake and no easy way to mount one. I could just swap over the frames (ie the bit that connects the wheels to the boot) because the brake is mounted on the frame on the old skates - this is one of the main reasons why I wanted to go for this design of skate. But now I have them I'm curious to try them as they are. I managed to not use my brake on the 26km skate on wednesday and slowed down through a mixture of slides, turns, t-stops (dragging the wheels of one skate at 90 degrees to your direction of motion) and the occasional roll past the stopping point and return. But I always knew the brake was there if I needed it. In my mind the idea of skating without a brake is in some ways a metaphor for life - you should be adaptable and prepared to take a different route instead of just trying to grind to a halt when something gets in your way. I'll hopefully be able to let you know how that philosophy works when you you're rolling along at 2o miles an hour and someone pulls out of a driveway in front of you.
I've also been riding my fixed gear bike into the city a bit recently. Fixed gear bikes have no freewheel so if the pedals turn the rear wheel turns, and vice versa. You can slow down by pulling up on the front pedal and pushing down on the back pedal. It sounds foolish but it can slow the bike down pretty well - if you position your bodyweight right you can even get the rear wheel to skid.The classic 'fixie' film Mash shows how this works if you're brave enough. Those guys are riding brakeless bikes so they have no choice. Brakeless fixies are the current fad amongst hipster types & cool kids and for me they have a similar draw as brakeless skates. I was riding back home after a few social ales the other night thinking that I might takes the brakes off my bike to see what it was like, and pretty much as soon as I thought that my chain came off. And of course if you have no brakes then no chain = no way to slow down. I can recognise a sign when I see one - the brakes (or at least the front brake) stay on.

Wednesday Night Skate - the long one

This week the wednesday night skate did one of the longer skates in it's repertoire. We headed out through Roma St parklands, past the Royal Womens hospital & Northy Street markets, out to Albion and then across to Tenerife & back through New Farm. I was hoping to be able to show a GPS plot but my laptop crashed when I was downloading it and wiped the record of the journey from the GPS. This is the route from a similar skate a few months agoWe started at around 7.45pm and were back at the cars at 10.30ish having covered just under 26km.

Unfortunately what I can't show is my GPS plot showing my speed reducing from around 16km/h (10pmh-ish) to 0 in the space of around 6'. I wasn't paying attention and my front wheel dug into a crack on the pavement, dumping me onto my hands & chest with no warning. My kneepads & wristguards saved me from the worst of it but I was a bit grazed & winded. The first skating stack for a while when I was just 'skating along'. Nothing broken so it's all good :)

Wednesday Night Skate

Had a good WNS last night - a new leader meant a different route. Not sure if that was through navigational mishap or design but it was good to see some different parts of town, including Brisbane's oldest standing building (picture linked from Wikipedia)

The windmill was built by convicts in 1824, which I think makes it younger than my parents house :)
We skated along some of my favourite tracks and I had plenty of time to work on a new slide stop I'm trying to perfect. Works 90% of the time, but 10% of the time it spits me onto my knees. It's also taking a toll on my wheels - these are a couple of years old and have probably done over 1,000km. Could be time for replacements...

Melbourne Day 7 - Dawn skate

The last skate of the trip is always a dawn skate on the day that everyone flies out. It's a struggle to get up for but it's worth it as you skate along dark quiet streets, passing surprised workmen and drunken revellers straggling home.

In Melbourne we skate down to St Kilda (approx 20kms). We start before dawn and the sunrise can be breathtaking

We made it to St Kilda with a couple of falls but only one casualty. There is a pier at St Kilda with a stone breakwater at the end, and it's a great place to look back at the city
It's also the home of a small but thriving wild colony of fairy penguins. Unfortunately we arrived too late to see anything other than a penguin bum thrust out of the rocks in our general direction no matter how we tried to sneak up on them

On the way home we skated through Albert Park, which had hosted the Melbourne grand prix the weekend beforeAfter that all that is left is a farewell breakfast and some sad goodbyes
Well we stayed on for a couple of days, went wine tasting and had bracing walks by the seaside - but that's another story.....

Melbourne Day 6 - Mitcham

Day 6 was a little cold & overcast at the start and we were all hoping the rain would hold off - we would be a long way from tram & train stops for a while. We started off from Mitcham station with 45 hilly kms between us & the city.We soon warmed up as we got going
We soon met up with the freeway - the bikeway that ran alongside was fast and flowing so we made great time

but there was still time to show the locals that you're never too old to have fun along the way
We stopped for lunch at a pub called 'The Harp', who were very gracious about the large amount of sweaty skate stuff we dumped in a corner
After the pub there was time for a photoshoot
before a stiff climb to help burn off the calories and show us how far we still had to go

There was a fantastic little twisty downhill section just after this that I managed with virtually no brake, so I was happy to hit the level ground of the pipebridge at the bottom
From here on in we followed Merri creek bikepath past the Carlton & United brewery - lowering our heads in silent prayer for the senseless waste of so much promising barley & hops - and finally reached the Yarra. From here it was a long 6km to the apartments and a much needed sit (or lie) down

Melbourne Day 5 - Cragieburn

Day 4 was a rest day so on day 5 we strapped on our skates again and caught a train out to Craigieburn (approx 45km of skating). Craigieburn is one of the outliers on the planned development schedule of Melbourne. I think that they built infrastructure (train lines & highways) out to the outside points of their development area and are now building inwards. This means that Craigburn is a bit isolated, but as part of the infrastructure is a smooth, open & almost empty bike lane it's a perfect skate if the wind is behind you.

The marshals were as always both attentive and ruggedly handsome
and all the skaters seemed to be enjoying themselves

About halfway through the skate we had the choice of catching a train home or continuing on along some paths that hadn't been previously explored. The second half of the skate proved to be harder as sometimes the paths would turn to muddy tracks, we all ran out of water and the pace was up to be back in time. It was worthwhile though as it went through some beautiful scenery

threaded our way across narrow bridges (those slots are a perfect wheel-catching size)
Past some unexpected architecture
and across more of Melbournes industrial memories

Melbourne Day 3 - Maribyrnong

On day 3 we skated out to the delightfully named suburb of Maribyrnong. This was a skate I hadn't done before and I think it was one of my favorites because of the different scenery that we passed on the way. Initially we skated through Melbourne centre, through the Southern Cross railway station and around the Etihad stadium. The stadium is near the Docklands part of Melbourne which is home to many public works of sculpural art

These are just positioned with no explanation, leaving the interpretation to the mind of the onlooker. This is not necessarily a good thing

We continued through Docklands and onwards

Steve sternly dealt with a crisis of confidence when we suddenly realised that the pubs were open in town

whilst Monte struggled to find the true spirit of Easter

Soon we were out amongst the old industrial waterways with their iron-girdered bridges - Melbourne often makes me think of Manchester and apart from the blue skies this could be Salford Quays

The headwind was picking up at this point so we fell into a paceline to preserve some energy

Before we knew it we were at our turnaround point, happy that headwinds would soon become tailwinds as we headed back to the distant city.

We dropped a couple of tired people off on the tram to take the easy way home so the pace on the skate back was fast - I was struggling a bit to hang on. We passed Flemington race course (on the other side of the river) and I swear I heard commentary - 'and the englishman at the back is flagging'

Once the red mist had cleared I realised that we were back in Docklands

and only a short skate along South Bank until we were back at the apartments