Il Peloton’s Ursula Hendel was in Gijon, Spain, at the 2008 World Roller Speed Skating Championships scouting gear and watching the excitement. You can read the first article she shared with SpeedSkateWorld.com- Gear Talk – Part One- By Ursula Hendel

Ok, the World Championships is over, but I’ve had a lot of catch-up work to do, so I just got around to the tallying. As I mentioned before, I went to the Worlds to check out the gear. It’s very important as an equipment distributor to see what the top skaters are skating on, and the Worlds is also a chance to see what’s new.

My research may not be 100% accurate, since I’m human after all, but it is rudimentarily scientific – I had a notebook and a pen and everytime a skater hit the track I wrote down what they were wearing.

BOOTS
Boots were neat. Last year there seemed to be only really the big three (Bont, Luigino, Powerslide), but this year it was open season on boots. There were quite a few boots that I did not recognize and had to inquire about including the shiny gold boots with no name made by the Korean coach who didn’t want anyone talking about them.

I’d say well over half of the skaters were wearing full customs, but there were quite a few stock boots as well, most notably on the feet of Joey Mantia who had stock Luiginos. Although the Big Three topped out the charts in about even numbers, I spotted boots by Mariani, CadoMotus, Simmons, Tru-Rev, Cityrun, Canariam, Shenkel, and our homegrowns made-in-Canada boots handcrafted by Apex, SEB and EGC skates.

FRAMES
Frames were also really interesting. Of course the 110mm dominated on men’s feet this year, as expected, as they were allowed for the first time. But I was surprised to see that about 80% of the women have also moved onto 110mm setups. A lot of men opted for a 3x110-1x100 setup in the sprint races and then changed to 4x110s for the marathon.

Many of the women were on a high-low 110mm frame for all of the events, including quite a few on a really neat 2x110-2x100 frame from Cado Motus that is 12.4” long. Those Cado Motus frames impressed me enough that we brought back quite a few pairs for our inventory. I think a shorter frame base will make is easier for skaters of both genders to move into 110s.

I also noticed not one, but two, highly decorated skaters who had traded in their sponsor’s frames for Cado Motus frames after sanding off the logos. My tally ultimately revealed that Luigino had more frames on the track and road than any other companies.

WHEELS
Wheels were kinda boring. Matter continued its crushing dominance, especially if you consider the Atom wheel part of the family. And I had to, since sometimes they were hard to tell apart. There was some mixing of yellow and white Matters, and black hub and orange hub Atoms, but not a whole heck of a lot else going on.

Despite my best searching, I could not find a single wheel out there from lesser-known manufacturers like Tru-Rev, Gyro, Labeda, Sk8Force, StarGrip, AmWing, or even the once-deified Hyper. It seems that almost no one was taking chances.

The notable exception was MPC. They made a selective appearance, with quite a few women on the track on Street Fight Golds (but not men) and with everyone rushing the Cado Motus booth to get the Storm Surges for the rain. Oh yeah, and those crazy Koreans on mysterious MPC prototypes.

SKINSUITS
The one area where I continue to be disappointed is in the skinsuit department, especially considering that these are national teams. Many of them range from horribly boring to just plain horrible and the competition for the ugliest suit is far tougher than the competition for the best.

The best suit was Canada’s by a mile, with only distant challengers like Chile and maybe China Taipei. Ok, so I am totally biased and self-interested in my assessment but I’m pretty sure my claim would withstand the most objective assessment: Canada definitely was looking cool.

Goodness knows what next year’s World will bring in the world of gear, but I’m well prepared for 2009.

Yann Guyader won the most recent stage of the French Inline Cup at the Herbiers near Nantes. The race took placa under nasty weather conditions including plenty of wind and rain.

Yann Guyader broke away early in the first 10km's of the race along with Kevin Gauclin, Ewen Fernandez, and Julien Levrard. The group maintened its lead the entire race. The win was contested in a sprint, with Guyader finishing in front of Gauclin and Levrard.

In taking the win, Yann Guyader clinched the French Inline Cup title- tying Matthieu Boher in points but taking the series win because the tie breaker going in favour of the skater with the final victory.

PICTURES- Click here for pictures from Francois & Marie

RESULTS- You can find complete results on Sport-up

Men's French Inline Cup Final Standings
1- Yann Guyader
2- Mattieu Boher
3- Kevin Gauclin

Photo from Francois & Marie

Photo from Francois & Marie

On a personal note. Let me just say the this was the hardest race I have ever skated. I personally skated the 52 mile race and never knew that there was hill that was 52 miles long! The hills never went away. Even though I had to sit for a while at the last check point...but I finished! This race is BRUTAL! Congratulations to all even those who could not finish.

They have arrived. My new and first pair of Pinnacle customs. I had no idea how nice customs could be but they sure are a chore to get on and off the feet. Once I'm in though it's like nothing I ever wore before.

There's a feeling I get when I have to read through the crap that goes through the inline scene. I personally have no problem with disagreements or rivalries, but I do have a problem if people take these things too far.

Quite simple Nicole was on MPC 100 mm as we only had the Bont in 110mm prior to the Worlds, the 100mm arrived a few days before, but were our road wheels. Our track wheels to handle the coated floors had not been refined at that stage, this was unfortunate as the road was the same sort of coating, but Nicole did run 7th in the 20,000 on the hard Pink Wheels on the road, in her first try out on them.

Now in the top 10 are 4 skaters who are World Class International Inliners, who have represented Holland, in fact 2nd placed Sjoerd Huisman recently raced a full Worlds program with a 6th placing in the 20 km road Elimination, Also Gary Heckman a 6th in the World Inline Marathon & 10th in the 10km points & 11th in the 20 km Elimination, go o show that many top performers can do the change overs with no problems.
The other Inliners to make the top 10 overall ranking list were 7th Roy Boeve, 9th Karlo Timmerman & 10th Ingmar Berga- Bill Begg

Taking the big engine and planning on being "Competive" at the World Cup or Olympic level on Ice, requires a very large amount of Precice Technical Training, and is quite different from the way Marathon A and B riders train.

This is why so very few Dutch marathon skaters make a World Cup or Olympic team. A FEW have , but again the Technical side is so different- Pete Dykstra

• 87 Mile Overall Results [by division]
• 52 Mile Overall Results [by division]
• 38 Mile Overall Results [by division]

Finally, going up the final hill, Charbonneau caught and passed George and rolled across the finish line with a one-second lead.

"My legs were cramping up bad, but I felt real strong," Starykowicz said. "Then, 300 meters from the finish, we spread out and looked at each other, waiting for someone to go.

"Mejia went first and I got right behind him. I sprinted hard and just caught him at the line."

It appears as if the WIC has been working very hard, to resolve one or two issues, but everything looks like comming into alignment for a good 2009 season, at the latest call. I am sure they will advise us all in the near future.

Photo from Kevin VanLancker

• Pictures on Bildmaschine
• Kevin VanLancker's pictures
• REAL Berlin Marathon pictures
• Lots of really good pictures on Runner's World
• Pictures on Berlin.de

Picture from Runners World.de

Anyway this time around I thought I should make an effort to learn the double push as it seems this is the only way to go fast and win races..so at the tender age of 41 I have begun learning,please follow the link to the video and tell me what you see,I have been trying this for a week or so....

Photo from Roller En Ligne

I've seen a lot of flattering posts on this site from my customers, and I want to take the opportunity to thank you all. I appreciate it very much. I also sometimes notice posts from people who've never had any experience with my company, but yet trash it... but then my loyal customers step up and set them straight. I really appreciate that. I've made mistakes here and there, but you know that you're doing something right when you see that type of loyalty.

ERIC GEE CUSTOM is now officially a registered business in the province of Ontario, Canada.  What this means is that I now have to collect retail sales taxes.  Hahaha.  Other than making things official, I now have greater access to suppliers for my various projects and experiments.

...read more in The Birth of EGC.

I really wanted to be there racing it out with the boys. Reading the updates makes me so happy and also super jealous!

Heute gibt es bei de Grafschafter mal wieder einen Geburtstagsgruß an und für sich, und zwar aus den schönen Lage. Ein Gedicht, wat die Kreatinität von unsere Kinders deutlich zeigen tut.

Hi Ha Hossasa

Der Jan-Hendrik aus Lage, der wird 14 Jahr

Bis jetzt konnten die Bullen dich aufm Rollern noch nich packen

Darauf lassen wir es heute richtig dick krachen

Du hast heut Abend nix zu lachen

3 Liter Grünen, den musst Du wohl sowieso alleine wegmachen

Da hilft kein Jammern und und kein Weinen

Denk an den Roggen, der muss auch ganz früh schon keimen.

Deine Bude „Lager-Spritnasen“

The best way to build speed is with high-intensity interval training, which involves increasing the intensity of your workouts while decreasing their duration.

They say the best is saved till last, well that certainly was the case with the final World Inline Cup race for the 2008 season. The Berlin WIC marathon was spectacular. With good weather this year there were spectators lining the streets of Berlin to see thousands upon thousands of skaters zoom or in some cases roll by. There was actually live coverage on a Berlin TV station which could be viewed by those awaiting the skaters at the finish line. There was atmosphere, crowds, thousands of skaters and press.

Photo from Roller Girl: Nicole Begg