Inline Skating

I think the best way to lose weight and tone muscle has got to be inline skating!  When I made my mind up a few years ago to try a half or full inline marathon, I practiced and worked on my technique, and I lost quite a bit of weight!  I finally got to the point where I like how I looked and I felt great!  After all the biking I've been doing the past few months, I'm not seeing any changes in my weight or even the muscle tone in my legs.  A few years go, just after a month or two of skating, my thighs and calves were more defined than they had been in years!

A year ago June I participated in my second Half Inline Marathon up in the Cleveland area.  The first one I did was in Columbus in August of 2009 and while my time was good, I was the second to last person to finish and it was a struggle.  But I was proud of myself and if anyone asked how I did, I told them the truth... I finished first in my age group!  That's the best part about being the only woman in your age group to compete!  ;o)  With the Columbia Station race, I improved so much (and they had a higher participation).  Instead of hanging back and letting all the faster skaters go like I did in Columbus, I jumped right up there and hung out at the front of the pack for as long as I could!

There was a lady who had passed me and stayed ahead for a majority of the time.  When I got to the last leg and headed towards the finish line, I made up my mind to catch up and try to beat her. At the very end was a hill that we had to climb, then a 20' flat stretch to the finish line.  As I came up beside her at the bottom of the hill I told her that we are almost done, let's finish!!!  We both struggled up that hill and at the top tried to gain any little bit we could to get ahead of the other!  I pulled up ahead of her in the last 5' to beat her!  I checked the stats to see that I took 3rd place in Women's overall and 1st place in my age group!  By no means am I the best skater or ready to compete with the big boys and girls, but I love the challenge of it!  


I've started watching my weight again and getting disappointed that with as much cycling as I've been doing, I'm not seeing any changes in my body, my weight especially. I took my bike in to have it checked out after my chain incident and to have the rear wheel squared back up. Saturday was the start of my first week of the summer of the girls being at their dad's house so I decided to break the skates out to take my mind off my depression.  Sunday I went out and had all intentions of keeping it casual, but I couldn't resist taking advantage of the head wind and testing to see how low I could get and for how long!  I finished 5.1 miles in 25.5 minutes, which is about where I was last year!  Excited about this, I went back out on Tuesday and when I realized that there was very little wind, I did a second lap for a total of 10.1 miles in 50.5 minutes!  On Wednesday the wind had picked back up, so I did a lap and a half for a total of 6.8 miles.


My ride in Wisconsin is 2 months away and after this week I've decided that I need to do more cross training with inline skating!