Aaron Arndt's Must Read A2A Report, Dave Cooper Returns, Kalina Jumps

Aaron Arndt's Must Read A2A Report: The website AaronArndt.ca has posted a report on the 2006 Athens to Atlanta. It is a must-read. The report is filled with great stories, strategycial advice, how to skate with integrity, and inspirational messages. Just to give you a taste of some of the important parts, I've quoted a few here:

'Eddy Matzger, who has won the race more times than most have started it, is sitting down inside of a huge cardboard box, with “A2A 25th Anniversary” painted on the side. Amazingly, he was planning to start the race while still inside the box. Perhaps even more amazingly, others were fully prepared to start directly behind this huge box'.


Here's the box that Aaron is talking about- perhaps Eddy Matzger is in the box as this picture is taken
Some good advice from Aaron: 'The guys wanting to ‘stay in’ make their way towards the front of the pack to be in a ‘good position’, and so a few of the [more anxious] faster guys react by moving up in front of the guys they don’t want to get caught behind. This process only has to repeat once, and already the pace is higher than anybody really wants. [My advice btw, is observe the hierarchy. Hold a spot you deserve, not desire, in a race like this. Trust me, it is in the interest of everyone.]'.

Fueling your body properly during A2A is critical: 'My support car didn’t make it to either of them. By now I had also ran out of fuels, and liquids, and hadn’t yet heard from him at all. I was worried. I thought maybe he crashed the car, or got a traffic ticket, or was completely lost and I wouldn’t see him for the entirety of the race. How would we meet back up? Did he crash my car?…'.

Aaron on strategy: 'The pack reacts differently depending on who is doing the attacking. If a guy who is struggling to stay in attacks during a slower part of the race [which happens from time to time], the reaction would be quite different than if the strongest, or the favorite to win were to attack. So, the pack (to some degree) assesses the threat of every attack before it reacts. At least normally this happens. Sometimes the guys are so anxious in the pack that they panic in reaction to every attack. That’s bad. This far into a big race, the anxious types have long since been weeded out of the pack, and the pack wasn’t so hyper-reactive/responsive. I’ve always thought that this is a really neat dynamic in inline racing. It is kind of like chess, where you are playing with time gaps, and ‘calling bluffs’… wait, more like poker. Yeah, I said it. Skating is like poker'.


Aaron Arndt before the 2006 A2A: Does he really have any clue what kind of adventure he's about to embark upon? I think so; he's finished A2A a few times
Finally, Aaron on his battle to the finish with Mauro Guenci: 'He tried to go by me with more speed than I had, but I saw that coming and accelled to match him as he approached. He still attacked pretty hard for around 100m, but I wasn’t going to loose the draft, and he gave up the attack. To tell you the truth, I was completely red-lining the whole time. That was pretty much all I had to stay with him on this first attack. I didn’t want to reveal that I was so tired, so when he carved hard to the right to force me into the lead, I countered to the left for a few strides even though I was just about dead. My shins were preventing me from balancing comfortably now, and I was really faking that I wasn’t about to keel over. He got in my draft rather easily, so I forced him in front of me. He was skating kind of squirrel-y and I just kept shoving him to keep him in front. He attacked a little to gap me, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I might not have much left, but I was still going to challenge him to the line.'

Dave Cooper Returns: Since we're on the Athens to Atlanta topic, this would be a good time to link up to an article from The InlinePlanet. It puts the spotlight on Dave Cooper, the legendary skater who won A2A in 1989- anyways, make sure you check out the article because if offers an informative historical perspective on our sport.

Kalyna Jumps: Some of you might have heard about Kalyna Roberge's jump over a fallen Korean and Chinese skaters during the relay final of the short track world cup in Montreal a couple of weeks ago. A few of you asked me if I had it on tape, but I don't. However, someone else posted it; it's an exciting relay and worth the 5-minute watch- The jump happens at the 4:29 mark in the video. (click here of view below).