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inline-skate to snow transition
Last year at this time I found my first couple of days skating on snow
jarring and bit unpleasant after three months of using inline skates (e.g. like "Rollerblades", though mine are Salomon). This year it went smoothly and pleasantly, and I'm real happy with training on inline skates. What I found unpleasant last year were the slowness of snow versus pavement, and the irregularities of early-season snow versus smooth city streets. So this year I put rubber wheels (e.g. K2 Continental 80mm) on my inline skates for two or three days in early December to slow me down. This was definitely less fun than my usual fast polyurethane wheels, but it made my first days on snow feel OK. (And my improvement from all that off-season focus on legs-and-hips-technique felt great.) Irregularies of snow: I've gotten a lot more experience with rough and variable pavement in my road-skating adventures in summer and fall this year, and that seemed to help my handle the irregularities of snow. I definitely felt that my control in skiing up steep hills with irregular snow in the last couple of days was helped by all the hills with ruts and rough pavement in my road-skating adventures. One technique trap I feel into last year is that inline skates make it easy to start the leg-push from close underneath -- never mind "glide on a flat ski", when rolling on pavement you can _push_ with it flat, or even on its outside edge -- and it works effectively (unlike on snow). So this year on pavement I made sure I also took lots of opportunities to push quick off the inside edge of my skates, like up every little hill. Now on snow I'm finding no problem getting continuous leg-pushes whenever I choose, and I'm finding much more confidence to push my no-poles skating drills into steeper snow than last year. Another technique trap on inline skates is while recovering the skate up forward again after the leg-push -- it's natural to get into allowing the tip of the skate to point down toward the ground -- which is impossible when wearing a ski. What I did about this in my inline practice this year was Nothing. The dire consequences were that I caught a tip a little once during my first half hour on snow -- and that seemed to be enough to stimulate my muscular-control module to fix the problem, without any of my conscious intervention, and I never noticed it after that. Ken P.S. My dad is great -- he wears the same size skates as me -- and he's letting me use them when the weather turns cold. So I put the slow rubber wheels on his skates, and kept the fast wheels on my own skates so they're still ready to go for fun times. |
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