Off To New York 100k, Fyling Fossils, Ottawa Indoors & Believe, Pictures- (Bellusco, USA ST, & TISC), Love's Video With US Long Track Team

Off To New York 100k: There is a good possibility that while you are reading this, I am in my car along with Herb Gayle and Morgan Williams doing the 8-hour drive to New York for the New York 100k. We are very lucky because Oliver Martinez is letting us sleep at his hourse, which is steps away from Prospect Pack, the venue that's used for the race.

I was chatting with Steve Robillard the other night and he told me he thought the 100k is an easy race. FYI he finished 2nd in last year's 100k. Easy?? Is there such a thing as an easy 100k? I hope I feel half as good as he felt last year and that I can walk and talk after (hopefully) finishing the distance.

Will I be posting updates soon after the race? I don't know. If I can, I will.

It's quite a busy weekend; along with the 100k, there is the Berlin WIC Marathon- a mega-skating event that, if my memory serves me well, has alomst 10 thousand skaters. Rumours have it that the Berlin party is pretty damn good too. See the Team Rollerblade preview.

In the spirit of long skates (marathon distances and beyond), here is a link to Boaz Arad's 100-mile skate...

...wait, 100-miles? Uhh, I thought I was on cheap drugs for doing the 100k (for the record I'm not), but 100 miles???? Woaa, that's hard core. The last time I saw Boaz was at the party at the world championships. I was busy trying to stop the ground from turning and the walls from moving side-to-side... But yeah, the video's really cool; you get to see plently of landscape, and these 5 guys who did this make me want to do something like that!


So seeing that this weekend is the New York 100k and next weekend is Athens to Atlanta and that I am sure that some people are skating in both back-to-back ultra-marathons, there are probably some questions about what wheels to wear. See what posters are putting up in What wheel to use at A2A? .

Fyling Fossils: Maybe you remember these guys- the Flying Fossils- from this year's Montreal 24-hours inline. Maybe you don't. They were a bunch of 50+ year old skaters who formed a team for the 24 hour relay and they did well, finishing 2nd in the advanced category.

I am honoured because I've coached, skated with, and raced some of these guys, and don't let their wrinkles & grey (or no) hair fool you- they have tons of experience, they are fit, and they've been around long enough to put a young whipper-snapper like me in his place when it needs to be done!

You can read Ed Duncan's report from the 24-hour inline- he's one of them Flying Fossils.


Ottawa Indoors & Believe: The Ottawa Inline Skating Club will have an indoor component to their 2007-2007 program- click here for more information.

When I received their newsletter via e-mail, there was a link to a video- Believe by Suzie McNeil- I was really happy to see this video, because I've been teaching this very song to all of my students and to my grade 4/5 choir so they could sing it for the Terry Fox Run at my school. The video is really cool because it features Clara Hughes, one of Canada's 2006 winter Olympic long track gold medalists.


This is my grade 4/5 choir singing the song earlier today at our school's annual Terry Fox Fun- they sounded great! We did the Terry Fox run outside around a 500-meter track- when it started raining and all the students had to go back in the school, one of my little grade 1's said about the rain that 'It's raining because Terry Fox is crying'. I asked why she thought that, and she told me that Terry Fox is crying of joy because all the kids are running and helping to fight cancer



Pictures- Bellusco & USA ST: Pattinaggio Bellusco has a few photo galleries of youngters- see gallery 1 and gallery 2.


Photo from Pattinaggio Bellusco
You can find some short track ice training photos from Midland, Michigan, leading up to this weekend's American Cup #1 thanks to Ohno Zone; Thursday training, Wednesday training, & Tuesday training.


Wednesday practice- photo from Ohno Zone
You can find some picutures of the Toronto Inline Skating Club's last official 2007 outdoor practice thanks to l3xh2k.


Eric Gee working with Jay Brown at practicing bag cross-overs- they're as effective as the luggage lifts the Koreans were doing at worlds- photo from l3xh2k
Love's Video With US Long Track Team: For you long track ice fans, you will definitely get a kick out of reading Andrew Love's most recent post Picture, video + a Muscular Quiz. The video that Andrew put up is sweet-