Training with Laure
Every Wednesday evening I went by car to Terrassa for the speed skating training of Laure. We were training with 3 or 4 people. I was by far the oldest, Laure and Nestor Pini Barreiros were approximately of the same age, around the 35. There were two younger skaters Roger Vallverdu´ Iberón who was around 25 years old, a skater from Part de Lobregat but he trained with Laure because he studied Sant Cugat, close by Terrassa which is far from Part de Lobregat. The last participant was a young guy, 16 years old from Terrassa. His name was also Roger but I have forgotten his family name.
We normally started with exercises to warm up which was new for me. After that we started to skate in different ways. Sometimes we had to skate as fast as possible, sometimes as easy as possible. Sometime long distances and sometimes a sprint. The most difficult exercise for me was skating using the doble push. It is as easy for an ice skater to learn inline speed skating as for an inline skater to learn ice speed skating.
We normally started with exercises to warm up which was new for me. After that we started to skate in different ways. Sometimes we had to skate as fast as possible, sometimes as easy as possible. Sometime long distances and sometimes a sprint. The most difficult exercise for me was skating using the doble push. It is as easy for an ice skater to learn inline speed skating as for an inline skater to learn ice speed skating.
I can´t show a video of one of the training sessions in Terassa because it was too dark when we skated. However occasionally we went to a town closeby Lyca d´Ámunt, where we could train on a real speed skating track for inline skaters. There we did training for races.We did training of 25 rounds where the speed was increased every round. I liked that, especially because I could follow them quite a long time. I made a video of a sprint training of my skating mates: Laure Roger and Nestor..The training was done inpreparation for the championship of Cataluña which was coming up
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To my surprise this championship took place at the Placa Willy Brandt behind the Hilton. This square was on a distance of 2 minutes walking from where we lived. It seems that this square was big enough to create an official track for a speed skating championship. That was interesting new information for me as we will see later.
Because I was not yet formally registered as a member of a speed skating club I could not participate in the races. However, I was there to support the colleagues of my skating team. |
What you see in these videos is that the curved parts of the track are much smaller than in an ice speed skating track. That means that the skaters enter the curve without making strokes only at the other side of the curve they try to increase their speed again. For the moment I could only learn how to skate on such a track.
Given that I was one of the few members of his team in Barcelona, Laure wanted to arrange that I could also participate in the races. Formally this turned out to be a problem because they had administratively as category for the oldest skaters a category of skaters between 40 to 50 years, while I was already above 60. They had to adjust this system and that seemed to be very difficult. It took more than a year before this was arranged. For me this was not an issue. I skated for my pleasure and not so much for winning races. In the end he succeeded and the next year, I could participate in the championships
Given that I was one of the few members of his team in Barcelona, Laure wanted to arrange that I could also participate in the races. Formally this turned out to be a problem because they had administratively as category for the oldest skaters a category of skaters between 40 to 50 years, while I was already above 60. They had to adjust this system and that seemed to be very difficult. It took more than a year before this was arranged. For me this was not an issue. I skated for my pleasure and not so much for winning races. In the end he succeeded and the next year, I could participate in the championships