The Londonskaters Speed Team#

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 11:15:21 +0000

I joined the Londonskaters Speed Team (LSST) last January. The other day I was in the pub (which in itself is not unusual) and accidentally managed to involve myself in some LSST meeting at which I was asked "what were your impressions of the club" and couldn't think of anything to say. So, let me see if I can now -

The basic point is this: the LSST is encouraging towards people who want to improve their skating. There are lots of people in London who can skate quite fast - or in some cases very fast: there are far fewer who actively spend time helping other people get faster, and generally speaking you can find them all in the LSST. There seems to be a belief in some other parts of the skating community that how fast you can skate is a simple function of how physically fit you are and/or how much talent you were born with, so there's little point trying to go faster except just by putting more effort in, and sometimes I want to shake people until they realise that's just not true.

I skated the LFNS as an ordinary member of the public (I usually marshal it) last week. That was really an eye-opener: so many people putting in so much effort to go really not all that fast. Perhaps we should flyer them: "join the LSST and in a month's time you could do this skate with your arms behind your back" ;-) Rant over.