Roadskater.Net- Skate Strong & Road Rash, Link, Italy Track Championships, Hegarty’s March 29th Training Update, Disney Is Coming

Roadskater.Net- Skate Strong & Road Rash: Roadskater.net is one of the internet skating hubs humming with activity. A couple of articles that might have you looking the the Roadskater.net direction include a report from the Texas Road Rash by Artem Papkov and a report on the ‘Skate Strong’ Workshop.

Link: G-Skate has a whole lot of goodies for you to buy.

Italy Track Championships: The Italian track championships are taking place Maggio 17th to the 19th (that’s May for you non Italian readers). I love the flyer!



Italian skaters near the front at the 2005 world championships in Suzhou, China
Hegarty’s March 29th Training Update: Andrew Hegarty is sharing a lot of details from the early days of his adventure in Europe. If you can’t be there with him, you can perhaps live vicariously through his posts. I thought I would quote a few of his words from his most recent post March 29th Training Update- about Bill Begg, he writes ‘Bill has this way of making you feel really, really great about yourself and that makes you want to train more and harder and do whatever it takes to get better faster. How much is that worth? Everything in my opinion’ and on the trails, he says ‘There are hills, some steep and short, some shallow and long; this makes things a lot of fun! The trail curves and turns under bridges and through quiet residentail neighbourhoods that have amazing pavement. There are SKATE trail markers everywhere and there are people on speed skates everywhere; you don’t feel out of place here… you belong!’.

Disney Is Coming: Are you excited about this weekend’s Disney Marathon? I wish I could be as excited as you are if you’re going. If you’re not going, well, hopefully you and I will have lot of pictures and stories to read next week. The Inline Planet has published an article about the event Disney Marathon Draws New Skaters.


The guy's red t-shirt says it all: Remove before flight- Ryczard Adamczuk with his arms up, probably shouting something like 'Peter Doucet rocks! Let's all give him our money!' at the start of the 2005 Disney Marathon

Flying through the Disney complex in 2005

Early morning in the lead pack at the 2003 Disney race
For all the bad rap the event has received in the last couple of years, there’s still a lot of buzz and excitement about it in the skating community. Gillian Clarke recently received a free Disney race entry that she won. While we were getting ready to start our indoor practice, she offered it to any takers. I'm not sure who took up her offer, but soon after that, Aaron Arndt tried to convince me to drive down with him to Florida for the competition... I've done that before. Remember my report? The one on the 2004 trip which took place when I left on Friday at 11pm to the time I arrived at my house on Monday at 6am, and which featured about 4500km's of driving, one race, one Friend (Eric 'Hip Hop' Gee), very little sleep?


On the way down to Disney in 2004- Eric Gee sleeps while I show my excitement on having spent the previous 15 hours straight driving- all with my hairy chest (which I now shave), my stupid glasses(that I've thrown out), and my ill-fitting hat (that I only wear when it's really really cold)

In was thrilled in 2004 to come back with a trunk-load of oranges- a whole weekend on a few hours of sleep, but it was worth it, especially when I got to work at 8:30am on Monday and gave fresh Florida oranges to my kindergarten students