Zephyr Skating Tours

A few years ago I read about someone who spent a couple of weeks skating along the Danube. It struck me as a great holiday as the report I read said how good the roads and paths were, and in addition the entire route was slightly downhill.

This year Zephyr Staking Adventures are organizing a 6 night/7 day tour along the Mosel River from Thionville in France, through Luxembourg, finishing up in Koblenz in Germany.

The website says tht if you take the long route, the total skate is over 535Km, howeverhere are shorter options available.

The trips start on 13th & 20th July and cost about £1000.

Full details on their website

BladeSoc & The Nottingham Skaters

The University of Nottingham’s BladeSoc, and the Nottingham Skaters meet every Saturday (during term time) in Cripps Car Park at the University at 1.00pm for a few hours good humoured and (strictly) non-competitive skating.

Yesterday I went down to Nottingham and enjoyed my first proper skate of the year. There were almost two dozen skaters of various abilities who turned out that afternoon. Some were complete beginners who were shown the basics of stopping by Jim, who is an ICP accredited instructors, right up to very serious competitive skaters.

The first part of the afternoon split down into a couple of main groups, one group playing hockey, and the other dodging a few cones. After a couple of hours the group took off on a skate around the university campus, stopping at the end in the student bar for a drink and a bite to eat.

It was a great afternoon. The only thing I was sorry about was that it had been so long since I last went down.

http://www.bladesoc.com/

http://www.nottinghamskaters.com/

BladeSoc's FaceBook Page

Nottingham Skaters FaceBook Page

Bend Your Knees

I saw an article on Inline Planet today giving the 3 top skating tips. Although two of the tips were specific to racing – swinging the arms right, and something to do with the ankles, however there is a tip regarding bending your knees.

Every skater knows that regardless of your discipline you can never bend your knees enough:

"The lower you are, the farther you can extend your legs."

And more interestingly:

"…pretend that you're sitting in a chair as you move down the straightaway."

I can see that this will maximise the power that is transferred from your upper leg, through your skate to the ground, furthermore, because you can extend your legs further it means that power is being transferred for longer for each stride you take.

Most of all I like the idea that as you skate down the road you should pretend that you’re in your favourite armchair!!!

Reference

London Inline Marathon 31st August 2008

The 6th London Inline Marathon is to be held at Hillingdon Cycle Circuit on the outskirts of London. Registration for this event is now open and the earlier you register the cheaper it is!!!

Full details on their website.

Dan Daniels - Trans-USA Skate Record Attempt

I read the other day about a guy who’s skating across the USA. Dan Daniels set off from San Deigo Ca, at the start of the month and is heading towards Jacksonville Fl. Dan is continually updating his own blog on his MySpace account.

I’ve unsuccessfully tried to think of ways to express the feat of this endeavour, the best way to share it is for you to read (and subscribe to) Dan’s blog.

Welcome Back

As promised I’m back, and with a new format. Using Blogger I’m hoping that things will be a lot easier to deal with. I never got around to sorting out the main pages of DaveySpeedstar.com, it’s something that will take a fair amount of time, and something that hopeful (if the weather ever gets better) I won’t have time to do as I’ll be out skating.The blog should be up and running properly over the next few days once I’ve sorted out all the links.