"Although I hate to judge before all the facts are in ..."#

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

You remember what I was saying before about people who watch videos of speed skaters and ape the movements they see without understanding why? I may have mentioned the Norman Wisdom school of armswing, for example. Well, recent events suggest I've been doing something similar. More on this when I've thought about it a bit, but in the meantime, anything you've read here about technique in the past month should be treated with the same kind of scepticism as you'd usually reserve for, say, a weblog by some random person on the internet.

[ skating log: not an awful lot, to be honest. I've been feeling a bit off the pace, and don't quite get the same buzz when my ankles are (it seems, though I'm sure it's not actually true) perpetually sore. Sunday Stroll marshalling on (as the name suggests) Sunday, then route check yesterday. Today was a watching-videos day, tomorrow is a skate-to-work day. A very rough total of the listed skating for January suggests I did about 421km, but I doubt that's accurate to more than about 25km either way ]

Falling for the hips#

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

When we last left our intrepid zero he was concentrating on "that falling from the hips stuff". This is just a short note to say that having tried skating that way for a bit (my cadence feels much faster again, but one thing at a time) I think there's more going on than just gravity and "the fastest way to an inside edge".

The point is, I think, tentatively, that I'm not just leaning my hip away from the direction of the push, I'm using muscle power - probably, at a guess, my hip abductor - to push my leg outward, and this pushing force is available to me before I get onto an inside edge. This clears up one question which has been nagging me: "what's so bad about landing on an inside edge anyway" - it limits the push to what can be achieved with the quads and neglects any possible input from hip abductors. Which, given that they're responsible for keeping the hips level while balancing on one leg (as we do for about 40% of the time while walking) and so are pretty strong, would be a bit of a waste.

http://www.gla.ac.uk/ibls/fab/tutorial/anatomy/glutealt.html#T2 # gory pictures

http://www.roberts-1.com/xcski/skate/secrets/#timing_adductors_quadriceps # Ken Roberts was here already

[ Edit: I subsequently remembered there are some other and more fundamental reasons for not having an inside edge setdown, as in you probably don't want to start falling before you've recovered the trailing leg ... ]

Something of the weekend#

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

I had better write about the weekend before I forget it: it was great.

Friday night was my first LFNS lead. If you can find a guy in an orange hiviz and absurdly large wheels in amongst the photos, that was me. Went pretty well, though due to absurdly large amounts of traffic we ended up cutting a couple of miles off the route at the end (didn't get to Millbank Prison) so that we could get back before closing time. We went past/near Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple, Middle Temple, City of London Magistrate's Court, Bow St Magistrate's Court, Newgate (now Old Bailey), Tower of London, Marshalsea Prison, the Clink, Bridewell, the Fleet prison, and then about as far as Parliament Square before deciding to head straight to Victoria and back to Hyde Park.

Saturday morning we had 8 LSST members out at Richmnd Park to play on the hills (lots of fun) then we went to the cafe at the carpark for tea and random bits of food. After that, back to Hyde Park for a spot of slow technique work up and down the Serpentine Road, and to do Mike's Long Slow Skate. Then, eventually, when it started to get dark, to the pub.

On Sunday we Strolled down to the river to skate along bits of the Embankment (both sides) then up the Charing Cross Road and across Fitzrovia/Marylebone back to the park. And I was wearing my new socks which seem to have more or less eradicated the ankle pain that's been plaguing me lately. Not tried them for any seriously extended skating yet, but all the signs so far are very promising.

Yesterday was a day off. Skated to work this morning, and have the LFNS route check tonight. That brings us more or less up to date.

Wetter the rain that fell, than surf in Holborn#

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

As a general rule in this blog, the more strained the pun in the post title, the more boring the post.

Route check Tuesday night was moderately brisk and good fun. By the time I left the pub afterwards it had been raining for long enough to make the ground rather slippery, and when I got back halfway across town to the office (where I keep some shoes for this kind of thing) I found that the security guy had bolted the front door so my swipe card was no use, and had to skate the rest of the way home too. Thumbs up for greased bearings: I wiped off the spray on the boots and wheels when I reached home, then span the wheels a few times while holding over an electric fire, and six out of eight of them were still spinning freely the next day. The other two only required a small amount of additional force and are now also spinning freely.

Day off yesterday (meetings after work to which I needed to carry a laptop), skate to work again this morning. Tonight I'll be retracing the second half of tomorrow's route just to make sure I remember it, then skating randomly around back streets between Hyde Park and Parson's Green looking for a route for Sunday.

[ let's say 30k total for Tuesday and 5k for this morning ]

one of really nice things about south#

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

One of the really nice things about the South Ken/Chelsea/Fulham area - in fact, two of the really nice things: you can plot a route from A to B by random walk down back streets that point in approximately the right direction, and it turns out that (a) they're mostly not cul de sacs and as a rule will get you somewhere you wanted to go; (b) they're not only completely skateable, but mostly actually pretty nice surfaces. Looking forward to the Sunday Stroll now.

Some useful-looking stuff about frame alignment and tabbing. As I said before, I'm now only getting pain on one ankle lump instead of four, so it may very well be a question of fiddling with the frame (what I'd really like to do with said frame is get it replaced, in fact, as it's subject to the Sniper 100mm product recall, and I've been putting off adjusting it in the expectation that'll happen sooner rather than later)

[ Prolly about 12k for the LFNS latter part RC then another 12k for the Stroll scouting, then 3k back to the office. Plus this morning's trip into work, but I counted that in the previous post ]

No comment#

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Seen on a web page:

Those who have trouble fitting in exercises into their schedule can always do this exercise while watching television

supinatingfragilisticexpiankledocious#

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

I tabbed my left boot on the inside (using carefully shaped bits of non-slip pvc tape: I am being slightly but perhaps not sufficiently paranoid about the possibility that it will all come apart), to remove some of the builtin ten degree cant. The difference is ... interesting.

First observation is that I'm having to learn where my edges are all over again: if I setdown normally I'm on centre edge not outside - at least, I think I am. The good news is that it's now much much easier to skate one-footed on that side (and this is before I've done anything particularly meticulous about getting the frame alignment right at the front) and judging from the effect of 15k or so (last night's outing) in that configuration, the pressure on the ankles seems fairly even on both sides. Today my right ankle feels more tender than the left - in fact I'm wondering about tabbing that frame too, for symmetry if nothing else

Other change: stopped using the neoprene sock things, and now using some "invisible" socks with very thin material under the heel. I think this is allowing my heel to sit slightly lower in the boot so that the ankle bone fits better into the recess the boot provides for it.

I spent lots of time reading various web sites on the construction of the knee/foot/ankle. More about that some other time, but I will note in passing that Human Anatomy Online has some really good pictures of (parts of) dead people with knives stuck in them.

Blazing Sunday afternoon#

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

The Stroll was cancelled last Sunday when it became abundantly clear that it wasn't going to stop raining. But look what's on this week

On closer inspection of my boots the other day I noticed that the carbon fibre bit stops at about the height of the ankle lumps, and everything above that (i.e. the bit where it gets narrower again) is actually just leather. Why is this important? Because although carbon fibre doesn't change shape when you stick old rec skate wheels (I knew there would be some reason for keeping them, and I'm just glad it wasn't "you'll need them to get a decent rocker when you want to start doing freestyle slalom", or I could be having them lie around unused for years) into the top of the boot to push the sides apart, leather does. And has. And so has the foam padding, which may be giving me an extra mm or two as well. The right boot got a 76 mm wheel (which actually I am not at all sure why I dont' still have it attached to a skate; there's plenty of meat on that yet) and I am now wearing it without pain despite the bones still being sensitive from Saturday. The left boot got something that looks more like a 72 and isn't yet in the same shape, but I shall give it a day or so and see if that helps. Of course, this could still be another dead end like all the preceding ones, I won't know until I've skated some appreciable distance on them.

Still haven't tried reverse tabbing the right boot, though if I'm going to I ought to do it long enough before Sardinia (two and a half weeks and counting - ulp) to get a feel for it. In the mean time over on the "how deformed am I" channel, I am spending all my idle moments attempting to stand on one foot. Except for periodic brief respites standing on the other foot and wondering why it's so much easier, anyway.

round up#

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

From two updates in the last two weeks the reader may determine that I'm either (a) having too much fun skating to be writing about it, or (b) not doing enough skating to have thought of anything interesting to write. Unhappily it's more towards the latter end: continual experimentation with my ankles (the "have we got it right this time? Seems good so far ... so far .. so far ... ow!" cycle of optimism and letdown, and the awareness that in a week and a half I'll be off to Sardinia and will either have to have found an accommodation with them that doesn't involve violence, or admit defeat and take rec skates as well) have left me rather unexcited about just going out for the fun of it.

Currently we're up to

• very thin socks, because having briefly tried skating unstockinged I have to report that the smell from the boots post-skate is pretty repugnant
• neoprene ankle support (nb wear these under the socks or they slip off)
• "reverse tabbing" both frames to eliminate the 10 degree cant. Which means I'm not standing around perpetually on the outside edge when I don't need to be (e.g. when waiting for traffic). What's so great about the outside edge anyway? There's less rolling resistance on the tops than the edges.
• compressing the padding around the ankle bone area by sticking wheels in the top of the boots while not wearing them. Yes, I know there's something a bit odd about trying to get rid of padding in the boot while simultaneously adding it around the ankle (see previous point)
• doing up the ankle ratchet a bit tighter. This tends to inhibit forward bend at the ankle but does mean the heel is being held more firmly in the heel pocket.
• taking the skates off when I stop skating, instead of sitting around in the pub in them for possibly several hours.

(yes, all of them at once). The last two of these have not yet been proven not to work, but so far I've only tried a route check and a Sunday stroll with them, which is not really long enough to expose the problem. Today I have some kind of head/nose cold and shivers, and am disinclined to do anything more to narrow down the problem, or indeed much else that involves moving more than six feet from bed.

[ Total skating since I last blogged: Tuesday route check, Friday LFNS, Saturday route check, Sunday Stroll. 65km? Sounds more in km, of course. ]