LondonSkaters Speed Team - Speed Skating & Rollerblading Club in London

Natasha · Joined: 09 Jul 2004 Posts: 2973 Location: Basingstoke

Sounds like a great race, Ray (going by the time, not the road rash!) And bless those spectators for the encouragement.

Farhana · Joined: 20 Sep 2004 Posts: 259 Location: Surrey

Wow, fantastic time considering you had a fall and lost some time. (and skin)
Well done to you both.

Rick · Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 5914

Nice to hear that it wasn't too wet. I have memories of skating through puddles that gave bow waves and wakes. With those times in those conditions its time to start thinking about your start to get the best line for your ability. Nice work.

darylw · Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 33 Location: Bristol

It was great to meet Ray and Helen in Frankfurt, at pretty much the last marathon of the season (and my second). The organisation was better than Stockholm, although still not perfect. The free massage at the end was only for runners !!

Well, as Ray mentioned, I had a few mishaps along the way. The course was good though, apart from the tramlines, which weren't covered in any way. The last fall was a bit hard, it was on a fast 90 deg bend (or maybe me going too fast !!) about 7km from the finish. I went down pretty hard, pulling both calf muscles and hurting my back in the process. A couple of spectators came over to help me up, with me being particularly embarassed about only being able to say 'Danke Schon'. I must brush up on my German ! Then came the ambulance, with the paramedic asking me which part of my leg hurt and I was only thinking 'got to get going again' ! I said that i'd be fine and started to skate off, only to be told to come back as I had a form to fill in !! After wasting perhaps 10 minutes, I limped home just 19 seconds over the 2 hour mark - if only I had ignored that form !! I guess I was maybe a little complacent, as the surface was generally excellent; but maybe I wasn't paying enough attention on the bad bits !

Well done Ray for beating your Berlin time and I hope that your leg is healing up ok.

Anyway, it hasn't put me off; i'll be back next year for more fun marathons and hope to meet some more of you then.

Daryl

Ray · Joined: 30 Mar 2004 Posts: 806 Location: Dagenham

Thanks Guys,

I'll learn to keep my eyes open for the whole marathon in future!

Thanks for the offer of capturing stills from the video Hans, I'll take you up on that - Helen's got some pretty good (if somewhat erratic) footage. I think I can record from the mini-dv tape onto cd on my pc

Daryl and we met a guy from Stuttgart (Matthias) after the race - he'd just completed his first marathon in 1:43 - he was praising the Stuttgart Half-Marathon and complained about the unguarded tramlines in Frankfurt, it seems that they fill them with ropes as was done in Berlin.

So I think I'll go to Frankfurt again next year and maybe the short race in Stuttgart as well!