Calling birds.#

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 12:00:00 +0000

It seems that some of the rolling hills on Monday occasioned the wrong kind of rolling for some of my teammates, so in a rearrangement of the original program our hosts decided that we would spend the morning on "skating safety" - this was supposed to happen on Saturday instead of the silly walks, but was rained off. We skated out around the bay following the same route as we did on Friday, and stopped near the far end to practice and/or learn some speed control: slalom, t-stops, snowplough. I still can't perform any move that involves scissoring left - though I think I'm getting there.

But hey. Uncontrolled speed is much more fun anyway.

In the afternoon we headed to the go-kart track for some more technique work: mostly on crossovers. I found it interestingly slippery, to the point that I could feel my wheels slipping (and hear them squeaking) if I put a lot of power in my push - but really that's just an excuse for having fallen twice trying to be clever. Total damage: small rip in legwarmer (right knee), bleeding graze on left elbow, top layer of skin lost on right elbow, very sore right hip.

They also rearranged the groups a bit today. I put myself back in group 2 (of six) on the basis that I know I'm significantly slower than at least two of the people in group 1 and if they're typical then I'd struggle keeping up. Impressions so far: I'm quite a bit faster than the average group pace (certainly have a lower cadence than we collectively achieve in a paceline) but am correspondingly more crap at the technical stuff than many of them. It all evens out.

I'm still in Simmons boots! Ankles felt tender when I first put them on this afternoon, but after a few minutes when the boots had warmed up and I laced them properly, no more problem. With luck (and a morning off tomorrow) I might make it through the week without having to break out the powerslides. Let's see how it goes.

In the evening we were supposed to have a dance class in the bar. I fell asleep with a beer in front of me (there may also have been some previous history of alcohol abuse), waking only when the place closed, went to bed, fell asleep again and stayed that way until about 8am.