A blog about skating and cycling, or vice versa

London Inline Marathon 2009#

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:23:24 +0000

The 7th London Inline Marathon (my, doesn't time fly?) was last Sunday. Full results have yet to be published, because as usual there are gremlins in the timing chips, but at the moment it's looking like I came seventh.

Which - if correct - is as much of a surprise to me as anyone, because it's the first race I've done this year longer than 10k and I was struggling even at that distance.

The race was held at Hillingdon Cycle Circuit, which is slightly under a mile long and has one longish gentleish uphill leading into a downhill with a hairpin at the bottom and a shorter steeper uphill out of that. Then there's the uninteresting half of the circuit, which is basically a long gentle downhill that goes around some turns and eventually gets back to the finish line. Repeat 27 more times.

It was a UK race, which means that people were playing silly buggers at the front (note: this is not true for Cat 2 track races in the way it used to be, and I for one am suffering in the new actually-trying-hard regime. But that's for another time). The typical lap involved an attack on the first uphill, coasting around the hairpin, walking up the second hill (I exaggerate, but not by much) then waiting around at the top while everyone caught up again until someone got bored enough to lead off and everyone followed them. The common variation, especially in the second half of the race, was basically the same but without an attack. In the atypical lap another skater tried to force his way into the line in front of me and instead tripped over: I then fell over him as well (some road rash on knee) and lost the lead pack as a result. But I caught it again a couple of laps later when they were waiting around on the top of a hill.

Think that's about everything of note. Much more fun than I thought it was going to be, because I thought it was going to be much more like this year's cat 2 races. I think this was the first UK marathon where I finished in the lead pack. (Unless you count LIM 2006, but I was a lap down on them that time owing to a stack on the first lap, so, really, you don't count LIM 2006)

Knee is a bit oozy and a bit sore, but not a big deal.

P.S In completely unrelated news, I have finally written my article on armswing. See sidebar