The Big Catch Up, Blogs, Forums & Inspirado

The Big Catch Up: I'll be catching up SSW with all sorts of cool and interesting links over the next couple of days. I've got tons of information to put up, and I'll get to it. This week has been really busy- I still have to help a friend renovate his new home, meet with the President of Roller Sports Canada, and make a trip to my coach who has been making me suffer lately with tough programs on the bike.

I will post a series of entries on SSW over the next few days that will include all the recent links in categories such as blogs, forums, reports & results, photos, & videos. So here we go...

Blogs: I think my favourite recent blog entry is from Cheex Skating Blog- Michael Cheek gives an account of the West Palm Beach event in West Palm Review. He wrotes about many topics- he wrote 'To me the biggest story of the outdoor part had nothing to do with the speed. A lot of people in the US aren't accustomed to the rough style of racing that usually goes on outdoor. I'm not really a big fan of the tough fighting style of racing. But it's the way it is. So if you saw a lot of grabbing and pulling outside, just realize that was nothing compared to the way international races are run. However in the last few yrs the US team has been a little less aggressive than a lot of other teams. And i think it has cost us a lot of races. I think with the return of Harry Vogel to the scene things might just get a little more rough. A lot of people probably aren't going to like it, but I think it's gonna help in the long run. Harry raced in the old days with Chad, Keith, Derrick, etc.. And he defiantly races at a rougher style then we're used to. He absolutely refuses to be bullied on the track...'.

This is a cool link from Zen And The Art Of Speed Skating- check out Desktop Friendly #1. It's on my desktop.


Road Rash Chronicles has a cool entry called Drenched and one from a few days ago called Il Peloton Design Contest. About the Drenched entry, I was on the bike today and I was completely soaked! Lately, I've been bringing a change of clothes to the gym so that I don't freeze to death while doing push ups, V sit ups, pull ups, and boxing after I've sweated buckets while cycling.

Andrew's Speed Skating Blog is more like a news website- but it's called a blog so I'll talk about it here. The webmaster has been putting a lot of GBC-related news, more specifically about the teams- see Zepto 2008 World Cup Team, Orthomol-Sport Rollerblade and Etap-Race Team, and Team Speedlager 2008 finally out of the closet.


Zepto's Mathias Schwierz out in front- photo from Andrew's Speed Skating Blog
Candy Wong's site Dream Chaser On Wheels really lives up to its motto; 'On The Road To Become An Inline Speed Skater' with entries like It's Only A Practice and Jab And Run.

Jacky Shoe's site Passion On Wheels - he's got all sorts of stuff for us to read- see New Warm Up, Snoopy, New Passing, and Two Links- I liked this last one.

Aaron Arndt's blog is one of my favourites out there. I think he's got a lot to say and he commands a captive audience. His recent entries include Wednesday repeat... and One Picture (where amongst other things, he talks about Andrew's Speed Skating Blog).

Forums & Inspirado: I like Jack Black & The D (Tenacious D). That's where I got the word 'Inspirado' from. I got a few 'D' DVD's and I've spent many hours listening to and watching JB & JD's antics.

Let's get naked...part III?- maybe this will inspire more men to join the sport? More people? Check out We Love To Skate.


There are many tips about developing leg speed in the thread Developing Leg Speed.

Here's another topic that may interest you; Questionable qualites of good coaching????.

This one's good- it's by Bill Begg- Promoting Speed racing??????- and I like these words; 'The winners allways got applause, as they were either a young Hero who had held off these fast finishing super stars, or A backmarker hotshot, who had overcome all odds & gained a remarkable Victory, always to a lot of applause'.