LondonSkaters Speed Team - Speed Skating & Rollerblading Club in London

Rick · Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 5913

Always 1st May every year as it's a holiday in Germany. The Frankfurt TNS crew organise this event every year.

www.skate-challenge.de

I am keen to go some time and it's just before the Flaeming weekend for people wanting to burn some holiday and have a good time. I have had offers from my contacts in Frankfurt TNS to put people up. Some of them are staying with me for the Santa Skate 2011 so you can have a chance to chat with them there. They are a great bunch.

Just post your intertest for now to see what the numbers are like. Now I'm changing companies and not able to do USA Coast to Coast in 2012 I am probably going to go so that's 1 interested.

It's a Tuesday in 2012. Wont be on a weekend until 2016 (Sunday) when we will have a BH on the Monday.

roger · Joined: 26 Feb 2004 Posts: 531

We (myself and Kay) took part in this race on Tuesday, and it was a good one. The course, race organisation and weather were all top notch. The only thing missing was my fitness!

The most unusual thing about this race is that it is also a big bike race (4000+ cyclists) so that was a bit of a worry, but they managed to keep the skaters and the cyclists apart to a large extent. The only slightly worrying moment was when one of the lead bunches came past towards the end of the race. 100 cyclists passing at 50 kph could be nasty if it went wrong!

My race went reasonably well until about 30km when the combination of a hilly course, a lack of on-skate training, and a surfeit of cycle training (we were training in the mountains of Majorca a day before) caught up with me and I had to drop off the paceline I was on. I felt, for a few minutes, like I was going to have to stop and lie down, but then I recovered a bit and was able to roll on to the finish with a few other stragglers, for a 1:30 finishing time.

Kay took things a bit more calmly and enjoyed the race and the atmosphere to finish in 1:48

If you get the opportunity to skate this race then I would highly recommend it. The course is slightly hilly, but the surfaces are good, the roads are wide, and really it was a very safe and technically easy course. There was also a 70km option, where the 70km skaters continued on for a second loop at the end of the 42km race, but there did not appear to be that many people doing the longer option, so I think the second loop might get a bit lonely.