A new career
Recovered of the accident, I wanted to spend more time on skating and the Club Pati Barcelona. One way to improve my skating capability was to invest some money in real speed skates for inline speed skating. These skates are completely stiff but they are made in the form of your feet. In this way one has complete control over any movement of your feet. To get such skates, I went to the Netherlands and contacted a company that made the speed skates for the Dutch team. When I got these skates I tried them out while we were on holidays in Lanzarote. I have to say that it was not so easy for me to adjust my skating movement to these skates. It needed some extra training.
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As I have mentioned before we promoted speed skating with the club by photos on Facebook. This was rather succesful. In the beginning we skated with a small group of dedicated skater as can be seen in the video below but a year later the number of skaters was much larger and the skating was worse,
Partially the skating was not yet very good due to the new members but also because we were not skating on an official skating track. The track was created by us on a square where the curves were not clearly indicated and the ground was not smoothly enough for a good style of skating.
In order to become more familiar with real speed skating circuits I suggested to make a trip to Geissingen, a small town in Germany, not too far from Barcelona. It was a brand new complex with perfect facilities where international speed skating races on inline skates were organized. I had seen an adverticement of this complex (see below) <if there were no races, they organized there for small groups of skaters training sessions with full board facilities for a very low price.. I had checked how this trip could be made for a few days, Including lodging and travel expenses it would cost not much more than 200 euros. An impression of this facility is presented in the video below.
In order to become more familiar with real speed skating circuits I suggested to make a trip to Geissingen, a small town in Germany, not too far from Barcelona. It was a brand new complex with perfect facilities where international speed skating races on inline skates were organized. I had seen an adverticement of this complex (see below) <if there were no races, they organized there for small groups of skaters training sessions with full board facilities for a very low price.. I had checked how this trip could be made for a few days, Including lodging and travel expenses it would cost not much more than 200 euros. An impression of this facility is presented in the video below.
Unfortunately I could not convince the board of CPB of this project and it did not make sense to go there alone. Therefore I went on training in barcelona but looked for another international activity where we could participate as a club or as an individual skater.
I found information about a marathon in Dijon which would be held in august. This sounded very interesting because Dijon is a nice town and there were races for different age groups. The housing facilities were not too expensive and one could reach Dijon very simply by train from Barcelona. I made this proposal to the club but again there was little interest for this projecct. Only Javier Domene was interested to join me in this trip. We spoke about this together and it turned out that his wife and Irmtraud wanted to join us in this trip. So we booked for the trip and the marathon.
In the meantime the Club Pati Barcelona had make a decision about the skating suit for the club members. So we went to Dijon in the new club suits.
The Marathon of Dijon
Before the start of the marathon we skated a bit to warm up. There was already public along the skating track and at some moment we heard a child loudly screeming to his father. "Dad, look, there are also Catalan skaters". These skaters were Javier and me. It was very obvious where we came from by our skating suits as you might imagine looking at the photo. It seems that this suit was a big succes. Now it was our task to show that these Catalans were also able to skate well.
Unfortunately I have to say that I probably disappointed the Catalans because I decided not to finish the marathon. I had not had enough time to train long distances, as 40 km, on my new skates. At some moment they hurt so much that I decided to stop. Fortunately Javier skated better than me. He finished in a reasonable time. I do´t know if the Catalans have seen his succes |
After this sportive part of the trip we had a very nice time in Dijon. Also the ladies got their share of the trip after the race in a nice restaurant whhere we enjoyed the typical French cuisine and very large glasses of beer.
After this experience I decided that it might be a bit too much for me, being 75, to skate full marathons of 40 km. Therefore in the next two marathons organized in Barcelona I skated only 20km. In both cases I finished what I wanted to do in a reasonable time.
The last race I participated in was the campeonato of Raval which nearly every year was organized. At that compeonato I met a skater who was even older than me Pera. It was in general a nice event but this time we got extra attention because the parents of children who skated in the campeonato, wanted a photo of their children with these two old skaters. We did not refuse this offer to be fotographed.
The last race I participated in was the campeonato of Raval which nearly every year was organized. At that compeonato I met a skater who was even older than me Pera. It was in general a nice event but this time we got extra attention because the parents of children who skated in the campeonato, wanted a photo of their children with these two old skaters. We did not refuse this offer to be fotographed.
At that occasion Pera told me that he was skating regularly at the ice rink next to stadion of the Futbal club Barcelona. This I did not know and I was exited to skate on ice again in Barcelona
go to skating with Pera