LondonSkaters Speed Team - Speed Skating & Rollerblading Club in London

Hans · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 10:22 am Subject: Rennes Race report

Arrived in Rennes, checked out the skate village and the course, and my first impressions of the course were; it’s a very "technical" course with lots of hairpin turns and switchbacks, as well my personal favourites, the random surface changes. The roads have 0.5m raised cobbled strips in front and behind all the zebra crossings, as well as, many painted on, but “raised” and slick road markings. In the dry the course is tough (or interesting if I am trying to convince someone to race it Smile

), but in the wet, it should sponsored by the local hospital - it’s that lively!! The length of the race is 52km or 10 minutes after the leaders finish, whichever is sooner and you then just get waved off the track – hence why almost everyone finished at the 1:43 mark. I think the closed the course early because of the conditions which were atrocious.

During our warm-up, Fred and I were deciding whether or not to go with scrubbed wheels as we both thought it was going to rain at some point in the race. It’s a good thing we did, as it started raining heavily just as the race started, by the middle of the first lap, the course was soaked and felt more like an ice rink than a road race... Compared to Rennes, Duisberg in the wet was like bone-dry smooth tarmac. At the start, I jumped onto the back of the WIC pack, all was well until the final corner on the first lap when I stuck my foot on one of the wet cobbled sections and went down in heap... (I really need some good wet weather rain wheels) by the time I got up, needless to say the WIC guys had disappeared. I caught another pack and stuck with them for a while, jumping packs in a vain attempt to catch the WIC guys again, and falling badly one more time on a corner while over the cobbled bits and a painted line, (getting heavily kicked in the head by the skater behind me as he flew over the top of me and landed in heap breaking his arm or collarbone in the process, couldn't be sure what was broken, all I know is his arm looked very "wrong" and he was screaming in French)... I think I might need another helmet. My skinsuit is trashed and I am now down to my last one…

Learning points/highlights/crap bits:

Need to improve concentration/technique when skating over slick wet cobbles - if the elite guys can do it then so should I
I was quite annoyed with the race for not completing the full 52km - I was short by 2.7km when they stopped the race
Annoyed by the number of times I couldn't control my speed on the wet corners over the painted lines and metal grates
Need to relax when things are going wrong, I am pretty sure one fall was because I was tensed up/angry from my previous fall – aggression is good but in moderation at the right time
Experiment with thicker profile wheels in the wet
Happy with finishing 17th in the French Inline Cup classifications given the conditions
1.25hr warm up with Fred was very good, second race with no cramp
Very happy with confidence/aggression in jumping into the middle of a pack in the wet
Good for Le Mans if wet because getting enough wet weather practice on French tarmac

It was by far the hardest race I have ever done in terms of technique to stay upright and maintain speed. Results are:

1 (1) 01:29:30 PRESTI Massimiliano MMC MICRO SALOMON av. Speed: 34,99442 Distance 52km
2 (2) 01:29:31 ROMANI Pier Davide MMC MICRO SALOMON av. Speed: 34,9879 Distance 52km
3 (3) 01:29:31 GUYADER Yann TIMMERMAN POWERSLIDE av. Speed: 34,9879 Distance 52km
4 (4) 01:29:31 DOBBIN Shane ROLLERBLADE WORLD av. Speed: 34,9879 Distance 52km
5 (5) 01:29:32 BOTERO Jorge ROLLERBLADE WORLD av. Speed: 34,98138 Distance 52km
...
45 (41) 01:34:08 BEGG Wayne ZEPTO SKATE TEAM av. Speed: 33,27195 Distance 52km
...
70 (17) 01:42:03 BROWN Hans LONDON SPEED SKATER TEAM av. Speed: 28,98579 Distance 49.3km
94 (35) 01:43:00 HOUINATO Frédéric PARIS HOCKEY CLUB av. Speed: 25,33981 Distance 43.5km

Fred will doubtless add his experiences of the race

merten · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 10:36 am Subject:

Phew ... sounds like you guys skated in even much much deeper hell than we did in Hannover...

Hope you recover fast from those falls and did not damage your boots...

Fred_Paris · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 1:36 pm Subject:

It was a very nice week-end, I wake up on Sunday morning it was dry, not hot and not sunny so I decided to wear some more black, as it’s the perfect color for sport (and even more if you’re racing at night). I picked a dark shade of black to match the weather condition of the moment. I also decided not to wear my leggings as it wasn’t very convenient to go back to london to get them.

We did a good warm up (still a bit short I think but the best I did since I’m a skater). As it’s France and not Germany we started at 16h04 (that allow foreign skaters to make the start line on time).

The 50 first seconds of the race were fine, I manage to keep up with the pack, and then it started rainning, and it went wrong, I skated the race in a relative wet last year and it was a pain, so I didn’t expect the race to be nice.

At first I could hear the nice sound of my wheels touching my frames, that was embarassing actually… I tried to solve the problem using very technical procedure, such as hammering the ground with my front wheel (it’s very usefull to do it at the beginning of the race so that people can see you’re having a technical problem).

The course was a pain in the rain, and I had no grip, and I was kind of sliding in some turn, and strugling with the cobles. At some point my back reminds me he wasn’t too happy with skating. I skated the entire race on my own, wich is fine as I don’t like to share the cheering of the crowd.

But at least I had no cramps to my carve muscle, so I guess that’s good.

Christophe · Joined: 26 Feb 2004 Posts: 1621

Tough race, and nearly always wet... Well done still to you both!!

Michi · Joined: 11 Jun 2005 Posts: 652 Location: Hamburg

Wow guys, that sounds like and awful race.
Luckily you both turned out alive without broken anything.
And with really really great times!

Fred_Paris · Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 10:27 am Subject:

videos of the races are now available here :

http://seb.czech.free.fr/claire/rennes/