Sunday, January 22, 2012

Twenty-Five in Five

So, we didn't make it to Iowa City.  A winter storm rolled in, and everyone was worried about making the drive.  After one friend reported a 6-hour trip to Chicago (it's normally 3 or fewer), staying in seemed the prudent thing to do.

Tonight's practice brought a surprise - skating 100 laps, in blocks of 25.  The WFTDA Minimum Skills require that you be able to skate 25 laps in 5 minutes, but up until now that's been kind of overlooked as a "don't worry about that, we haven't all tested on that anyway" sort of thing.  Now that we're an apprentice league, it's something to take seriously.  I've been wanting to see how close I could come, and the A and B teams have been doing the 100 laps at practice, but I didn't want to go there and slow them down.  So, in theory, I should have welcomed the chance to try this tonight.  But theory doesn't leave you lying on the ground panting.

The good news:  At tryouts in March, it took me 1:10 to do 5 laps.  I made my first 5 in just under a minute tonight.  The bad news:  That was the last time I was anywhere close to being on pace.  I gave up trying to skate all 25 laps and just tried to skate as fast as I could, since no one could start their next set of laps until everyone was finished with the previous set - we'd still be there if they were waiting for me.  On the last set, I averaged just over 3 laps a minute - 17.5 laps in 5 minutes.

We're supposed to start testing in the few weeks.  That 17.5 laps was skating clockwise, when I couldn't really manage crossovers, so I think proper technique will bring me up to 20 laps fairly easily.  That means just 5 more laps to squeeze in.  Why do I think that's going to be a lot harder than it sounds?

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