Due to the COVID-19, I don’t really have much update when it comes to Roller Speed Skating. My team has not been together for awhile now and mainly our practices have been online. I can’t say if it has been working out or not due to my personal life getting into the way. I am leaving for summer training for the college I am attending in June, coming back for a month in July, then leaving for college in August. Because of this, my training has been focused on getting prepared for college since the college I am going to attend is military based. But back to Roller Speed Skating now, I have not been able to see how the practices have been going, all I know is that my team is enjoying it. 

When it comes to my two injured teammates, both are doing well. I believe that the more recent one to get hurt has been let out of the hospital and the other one has been getting better. Nationals has also still been on the table, however my summer training takes place during nationals so I will not be able to go. Even if nationals do not get cancelled, I don’t know if my coaches still plan on going. The coronavirus might still be around and because of what has happened already, I don’t think a lot of people are going to go to begin with. Also, two of our best guys are for sure not going so my coaches have to consider a few things to see if it’s even worth it to go. Going to nationals is expensive so if not a lot of our team is going, it might be a waste of money for them which could even be money they don’t have. 

I don’t have much else to say about Roller Speed Skating, I pretty much explained a ton about the sport and made some more personal posts so I do apologize for reiterating a lot of this stuff. I hope everyone is doing well during this Coronavirus. 

I know that the last couple of blog posts have been more personal than the first ones and this blog post will also be very personal. Even with this huge virus going around, my team has also taken a few beatings lately. We have had the rest of our meets cancelled for the rest of the season and Nationals may soon follow. With that, practice has also been cancelled due to social distancing. These have hit hard for our team since we aren’t just based in one city, not even one state. We have skaters that skate from all over the United States so it makes it very hard for us to be together and skate together. We have also just had two more incidents that have occured that have hit us extremely hard. 

Our two best skaters, that skate within the state, have just gotten into two accidents. Our faster one first got hurt, he was thrown from an ATV and landed on his neck. Because of this, he won’t be able to skate till mid to late into next year. He had to have a huge surgery because one of his disc was lodged in his neck and any movement would paralyzed him. He is alright now after the surgery but it will take him some time to recover and get back to himself. Then just about two days ago our second best skater got into a car accident. To rub salt into the wound, it was the coach’s son. He is in a pretty bad state with broken bones and a head wound but seems to be normal besides that. Both will be out of commission for a long time and will take time to recover. It has hurt the team very hard but has also brought us together. We have been trying to help both out and trying to help them recover. Only thing now is we have to keep them off their skates since they want to skate so badly. It’s pretty funny since my coaches have hid their skates. 

All in all, it has been a very rough couple months for all of us. We have tried to pull through and everyone is still doing things to help them stay in shape. Now we just have to wait to see if Nationals is still on the table or it will be cancelled. 

The impact of COVID-19 has been powerful and has affected everyone. When it comes to Roller Speed Skating, my, going to be last meet, was cancelled then the last meet before Nationals was also cancelled. I am pretty upset about the matter but it hasn’t beaten me down. Because of COVID-19, I have had my practices cancelled as well so I now do more outside practice. It has been a little bit challenging transitioning into more outdoor skating than indoor but I have enjoyed it so far. My main issue that I have personally, is that I don’t have the correct wheels so I slide around more outside on concrete. I have been deciding to get new wheels that are made for outdoor use but I have not decided yet since I will be leaving for college soon and I won’t be able to use the wheels very long. 

I believe that skaters in the same situation about their practices and meets being cancelled should try or do more outdoor skating. You could have a parking lot to skate around, maybe a paved trail, or even around town. I have personally down all of those including, when school was still going on, skating to school. Also doing this will keep you in shape and when you go back to skating, you won’t be trying to get back into it and your legs won’t feel like jelly. You can also do the same exercises as if you were still doing indoors but you will have to adjust to turns or people being in your way. It is challenging and you will have to control yourself so you don’t wreck or hit someone. Just the other day, I hit a small rock pile going into a turn and lost control. Luckly, I was able to catch myself but I could have done a lot of damage to myself. I also think that if you are going to skate outdoors, always have your phone, helmet, and gloves on/with you. If something happens to you, you can call someone and if you fall, the helmet will help protect your ed and the gloves will help so you don’t tear them up. 

The photo I will provide is of a common parking lot but in reality, what you are looking for is a lot of space, at least enough to resemble an indoor track. 

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. 

Roller Speed Skating might be the next sport to reach the Olympics. Two organizations in Europe are pushing and have been fighting to get skating sports including, Roller Speed Skating, Roller Figure Skating, and Roller Figure Skating into the Olympics. They started in 2000  where at the time, it was a huge chance that any roller skating sport becoming an official Olympic sport was very slim. However, they are still fighting and hoping to get the sport into the 2020 Summer Olympics. 

Being a Roller Speed Skater, I would love to see this sport become a part of the Olympics. This sport is dying even though we have skaters all over the world and in many different countries. More and more people just keep leaving Roller Speed Skating and, at least our organization, are running out of ideas to get more people into the sport. Having this sport in the Olympics will show people a new sport that is intense, fast, and very fun. This is actually one reason for me writing about this subject. I’m hoping that my blog will bring more people into this sport and to try and expand the Speed Skating community. I know it is also, Federation Internationale de Roller Sports (FIRS) and British Inline Skater Hockey Association (BiSHA), plan to help keep this sport alive. Another reason they seek to become an Olympic sport is that many Roller Speed Skaters turn to Ice Skating to help get into the Olympics. That helps the Ice Skating community grow but now we are losing more people and expanding Roller Speed Skating into an official sport in the Olympics, allows those Speed Skaters to stay in this sport and they can also join Ice Skating and still skate both sports in the Olympics. 

FIRS and BiSHA are working hard and trying their best to get this sport out there for more people to see. Roller Speed Skating is dying and expanding this sport and putting it on the world stage will allow more people to see what this sport is about and will hopefully have Roller Speed Skating a more common/popular sport to participate in. 

• The picture above shows a huge race at a really big event in Buenos Aires

Injuries in speed skating are a very common thing and there is not much you can actually do to fix it. All speed skaters don’t wear anything that would protect them against a fall besides a helmet. This allows us to stay aerodynamic but makes a bigger risk in case we fall. If a skater falls, especially at the speeds we are going, we can get major injuries from basic burns to broken legs and arms. Mostly, because we wear a helmet, it helps protect us from head injuries. 

There hasn’t been an argument, at least in the league I am currently in, about getting new gear to protect us better in cases of falls. It makes sense though. We haven’t had issues with injuries and usually if there is a bad fall, they get sent to the hospital and we don’t think much of it and just hope for the best for the person that fell. 

My view on the small issue is that we are great for the current moment of time. Yes, we will have bad falls here and there but adding gear to wear incase we fall will lower our times and not make the sport as fun as it is now. I would also say the majority, at least in my league, of the people would not support in making skaters wear more protective equipment and just stick with wearing a helmet. Everyone is not needed and a waste of money. For example, we just got a new timing system that allows skaters to put a thing around their ankle and the system on the floor will track your times. In some cases it was great to see who placed what and get an actual representation of their times but for others, their times could have been very off. My times were actually pretty accurate of how I skated that meet of about an average of 13 to 14 seconds a lap. However, one of our new skaters skates about 40 to 50 seconds per lap and the timer said she went 8 secs per lap which is national level fast. 

Now I know this example isn’t an example about protective gear but more about making it more convenient to see times, however I believe with this incident it will make people even more likely not to support new equipment and then having to buy them. I don’t ever see a proposal happening to make speed skating more safer as it is because it is as safe as it can be already. 

Nationals and Regionals are very important for skaters. It’s what we all train for during the whole season and we all look forward to it. Regionals is a huge competition for the inline skaters. Inline skaters will compete to move on to Nationals. Quad skaters don’t have to move on to Regionals and move they will move straight on to Nationals. The inline skaters that qualify in Regionals, will move on to Nationals and compete against other inline skaters in all the other regions. All the separate regions have their own meets and regionals but all inline skaters that win regionals will move on to Nationals. Nationals can be very insane for the large amounts of skaters and we can sometimes have up to three to four heats for each individual event. It requires lots of work to keep everything running smoothly and to keep following the schedule. However, even though Nationals is a wild and crazy event, it is the most fun a skater usually has. You get to meet skaters from all over the United States and get to learn about and skate against them. There are other things that don’t follow the schedule too. About 3 years ago, we were able to get all inline skaters on to the track all at once and we had a huge passline. It was a fun time and it was almost, or was, a world record breaker for the largest amount of speed skaters on the floor at once. Another event that happened 2 years ago, was one of the largest amounts of skaters jam skating on the floor at once. Jam skating is seperate from speed skating, but to give you a little bit of incitement about what it is, it is like dancing in a line on the outermost of the track. I will include the video to the giant pace line event so you can see it. I unfortunately can’t find the jam skate line however, and I apologize for that. Nonetheless, Nationals and Regionals are crazy events but it is amazing and a ton of fun. 

Imagine racing against four to six other people at high speeds of a gym-sized track at around eleven seconds a lap. At Roller Speed Skating meets, it becomes a reality. Meets are like tournaments where people from all over your region, or even country, compete to become the fastest skater in their bracket. 

Here in the United States, I skate in the Midwest region which includes states like Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Every month, not including July, December, and January, we have a competition in this region and race against one another. This February, we are having a second LOL, or Land of Lincoln, meet since we had issues with our original plan to go to a place in Indianapolis. People will be split by their ages and put against people their age. They are also split by their skates, Quads or Inlines, and compete against people with the same type of skate. 

These meets help bring people together and everyone tends to have a great time racing and meeting with people they have not met in a while. The only bracket that is not split by age is the pro division. The pro division skaters are some of the fastest in the region and even skate for the official United States team, Team USA. Team USA are the best Speed Skaters in the country and will go on to other countries and compete with them. 

A new thing that will hopefully be apart of meets this year will be timing bracelets. These bracelets are great for races so it will be easier to see who is in what place and if it comes down to a close tie, the timers will say who was faster. The only issue with these timers is that they are a pain to set up and they are decently expensive. Not something you can buy at the dollar store but not thousands of dollars expensive. We are still dealing with people paying to receive the watches so it will most likely just stay with using the timers for nationals and not regional meets. 

Roller Speed Skating meets are a blast and skating is even becoming more technologically advanced. It’s a place to meet old friends, compete, and all in all have a great time. 

When participating in Roller Speed Skating, a person must choose between skating on quads, Inlines, or both. There are huge differences in both and some people will like one over the other. Personally I like quads over Inlines because there are more easy to balance on and great for new skaters. I grew up skating on quads and can do tons of tricks and can skate very fast, very well. Quads are skates with 2 wheels on each side of your boot while Inlines have usually 4 wheels in a straight line like and ice skate. Quads are also heavier than Inlines do to the weight of the frame. Inlines are more on the lighter side to help pick up your foot more easier. Inlines however, harder to skate on for beginners, are faster than quads. This is because Inlines are thinner and more aerodynamic than quads. When these differences come to play at meets and championships, quads and Inlines are separated into 2 events due to inline skaters being faster than quad skaters. More of the pro-skaters skate on Inlines while more beginner or usually skaters that skate for fun than skate for competition, skate on quads. Also due to this, more and more research is being put into Inlines to find the best equipment to use to maximize the speed and skater can go. New wheels, boots, frames, etc come out for Inlines more than quads. This includes Pinnacle boots being very popular in the Roller Speed Skating community in the best few years. More and more inline skaters are converting to Pinnacle boots due to the amazing reviews and transformations from skaters. The Pinnacle boots are more tighter than all other race boots making your steps and leaning more sharp. I also converted to using Pinnacle boots and it has been improving my skating like crazy. There is one downside to Pinnacles, they are extremely tight and very hard to break in and become comfortable to your foot. The boot will tear your feet apart making you have lots and lots of blisters. Quads have not recently got new upgrades or improvements in the racing world and the biggest difference in the skates are that Inlines are built for racing while Quads are more rounded and can be used for racing but is a lot easier to use for dancing, tricks, and jam skating. All in all, the Roller Speed Skating world is not just one thing that everyone does but there are differences between everyone by using Quads or Inlines, the boots they have, wheels they use, and even each person’s form they have for racing on each boot.