For my next post I wanted to step away from the more informative type of posts I make and make it a bit more personal. I will try and keep it mainly about Speed Skate but this post will be more personal and bring light to my life a little. I have Speed Skated for about 10 to 11 years now and it has been the thing that describes me the most. It is most likely the most important thing in my life and it’s what helped make me into who I am today. This summer, I will no longer be skating for Team Illini and I won’t be skating for awhile.
I am currently finishing up high school and after, I will be going to a military college. This means for at least my freshman year in college, I won’t even be able to leave campus to continue skating. I have also realized that this coming weekend, March 14th and 15th, will be my last meet to compete in. I won’t be able to go to the last meet of the season cause I will be out of town and unable to go to the meet and Nationals is when I will be doing some summer training for the college I’m going to. The summer training will help me prepare for college and just make it easier to adjust. I did not really think too much about this until just recently and I guess it’s kinda weird to think about. I have done Speed Skate my whole life and I have made many friends and consider my team as a family and it will feel a little off not having Speed Skate practice a time where I can just forget about everything and just race and have fun. Speed Skate is a stress reliever for me and it is just very hard to think about not skating. I want to keep skating and I want to get better and faster, but it sucks that I won’t be able to competitively skate for about four years or only skate if I get a break off of college. I guess life just finally caught up to me and in a way, I don’t want to grow up and just want to keep skating.
All in all, life goes on and I will also continue to skate but I think a lesson to consider for others is to keep doing what you enjoy doing and sometimes, you will have to give up some things to continue and reach different goals in your life. My goal is to join the military as a commissioned officer and my military college will help me get to that point. However, I will have to give up Speed Skate to reach that goal and I will also have to give up a ton more things to reach that goal.
The US Roller Speed Skating Blog 