LondonSkaters Speed Team - Speed Skating & Rollerblading Club in London

Gav · Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2004 8:25 am Subject: Gav going to Gross Gerau

I've been invited to go along under the auspices of North London RSC by Nick Mckenzie ... so I'm going to go off to Germany again the week after Hamburg and get my ass whipped Smile

The Gross Gerau Curriculum is pretty high profile track competition over 2 days, all distances from 300m up to 20km I think. And apparently its on a European championships level. Well, I think it will be a learning experience Smile

Christophe · Joined: 26 Feb 2004 Posts: 1621

Wow!... Good luck to you then!
And enjoy the skating(/ass-whipping Wink

) ...

Gav · Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2004 8:25 am Subject:

What an experience! I really wish I had had a video camera so I could've got some footage of these guys racing. Never in my life have I seen technique, and track racing like that.

Gross Gerau is a town just outside of Frankfurt, which has a well reputed speed club with their own track. Actually 2... a slightly banked 220m track (which they did the 300m sprints on) and around that, a 304m flat track which they did everything else on. Wow, were these tracks fast!

There were about 500 skaters there, in all different age groups. Clubs and national teams of a very high standard. The Danish, French, German, Finnish, some of the Italian, some of the Australian, some of the NZ national teams were all there. Almost every team attending was fully sponsored, and had their best skaters there.

It was an amazing atmosphere ... so many people, all set up around the track with their canopies, all watching and cheering the races. A few people said to me that besides a few missing teams/people, the standard of the event was like it could have the Euro champs.

So there were 126 racers in my category. The 500m were done in heats of 6, then quarterfinals, semifinal, finals. I had a terrible start, and finished last in my heat. However, time wise I didn't come stone last out of everyone Smile

(6th last)

The 10,000m Elimination was just crazy. 2 heats of 50 skaters whipping around this track. These guys are so fast that I managed to stay in for about 5 laps (out of 33). And they make it look sooo easy!!

Oh yeah, I also got mistakenly entered for the 300m time trial - thought I wasn't doing it until I heard my name get called (oops!) so decided to do it anyway. Only the pros do this, its a seperate event. I came stone last with my 32:59. One other guy did 31:30, everyone else did 27-29. Even all the girls, and possibly even junior girls beat my time Smile

Hey, I'm not a sprinter!!

So that was Saturday.

Sunday started off with the 10,000m points. I was determined to stick in a little longer. Wasn't really enough time to get on the track before hand though, so I had to rely on my jog to warm me up. I lasted for about 6 or 7 laps I think. A very amusing comment, when I was standing next to Kalin Dobbin when people were lining up for the heats. They were talking about not having got out on the track, and he referred to the heat and said "well thats ok, at least I have a 10,000m warmup now". This would be the race that I couldn't even stick with 1/4 of the way! Smile

then again, he is one of the top skaters in the world.

So all in all, a amazing experience. To race with these guys, and even to warm up on the track doing laps with them, lets you see what speed skating is all about. They refer to marathons as "training" Smile

It showed me what it will take to really become Elite. I hope to do a few more track races over on the continent, because skating like that makes you learn a LOT!

Alastair · Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2004 9:49 am Subject:

That sound's awesome, Gav! Would have loved to have seen some video footage. I daren't go along in person in case I get entered in a race by accident!

Gav · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2004 11:36 am Subject:

doh! As bigSteev mentioned on SR.com, forgot to mention Nick M's results Smile

(or maybe I was intentionally not drawing attention to it Wink

).

He was in the 30-40 years category, and placed 2nd overall. They only did 2 races over the weekend. A 1000m (he came 3rd) and a 3000m (1st). He was robbed of first place though, he had a terrible start in the 1000m, starting behind a bunch of slow skaters... so he spent half the race getting past them and moving his way to the front, so by the time for the final sprint he had worked so hard. He easily could have taken it if he had had a better starting position.