Inline Skating 44 Miles on the Silver Comet Trail (Slowly). How About Your Recent Workouts?

No matter how far or not, how fast or not, I love to hear people's stories of skating. Ten words or a hundred paragraphs, tell us what you've been skating, cycling, lifting, or anything. Or just tell me what's up lately. So here's my freewriting exercise. I'll try to type it out once and not do editing other than spelling and such... Well, eebee and I went out for a long skate today, thinking we would do about 30 or 32 miles. She's been training to skate and I've been training to type, read, watch p2p tv of sporting events, so you can imagine who had the lower heart rate, ha! You guys know that we believe in having a device that shows average heart rate, and that our experience has shown that if we end up with an average over the average we usually have ended events with, there's pain to pay. Well eebee was cruising along with great form and low heart rate (I think skating on a flat track is something she enjoys as far as practicing form and it showed out there today; maybe I need to check out the only track I know of that might allow me to skate). Well there was no way I was keeping below my usual average, especially not my typical early season one, without really embarrassingly slowing us. I was actually feeling good and tempted to think I could beat the numbers. Sucker! But I was feeling good (and stupid) enough to banter along with her and agree we'd do two hours out and turn around. That ended up being 22 miles, and included some long mildly downhill stretches. We made it almost to Rambo, turning around with that intersection in sight where eebee had sandskated and took a fall that hurt more and lasted longer that we thought it would. I had a similar fall at slow speed that hurt tons and did plenty of damage, so it is definitely easy to get hurt going slowly. Maybe it's easier, even. Once we turned around I knew I was going to be in survival mode quite a lot on the way back. I hate when that happens! On the way out, between 16 and 17, we saw a guy in cycling jersey, cycling shorts and cleats, who wandered in front of our path and made figure eights walking around a rock staring at the grass. We asked if he needed help and he said, "No. It's too late to do anything about it." We rolled on but decided we'd inquire again later if we saw him, and send him some help if we saw someone on the trail who could help. After we passed he Paulding County Chamber of Commerce (20 or so?) we saw a trail ranger with a small vehicle and we told him about the guy who was "talking to a rock" (eebee's description). We told him we thought the guy might have hit his head but we didn't know. Eebee remembered that he wasn't wearing a helmet and we both remembered we did not see a bike. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar Momma. This was more strange since it was so near where the woman had been attacked and killed a few years ago. The ranger said he'd check it out. So on the way back while my quads were cramping and I was really in survival mode, I did entertain myself somewhat on the possibilities of the staring at grass walking in cleats man. When we passed the rock around which he had been circling it was a bit strange. Some squirrel made a noise in the woods and we were both a bit spooked, ha! Not long later we saw the headlights of the ranger's little four-wheeler and we stopped to ask him what was up. He said the guy's bike had broken down or maybe even broke period, but he had gone back there to look for his sunglasses. We figured Oakleys or Rudy Projects or something like that to be worth it. We never saw his bike. But the ranger said he had given the staring at grass guy a ride back to his car, so that was the desired outcome from our perspective and we hoped it helped the guy who had obviously had a bummer day. He was so bummed he just walked straight across the path in front of us unflenchingly. I tried to survive by breaking down the route back into chunks of 4 miles or so, and pretended that at 4 miles we were finished, because most but not all of the last 4 miles are downhill. The other challenge of the day was that I was down to metal on my skate brake, so at the intersections my right foot was rolling on the grass and left was on the pavement, which mostly worked great, but not as well as a skate brake. We got through mile 4 and glided down in pain, trying to decide whether being on two legs in a tuck was more or less painful that skating on one leg at a time. The answer changed along the way. We got along to mile 2 or so then we saw the one person we had expected to see out there at some point, Clarence, who had done the much of Carolina Century and Athens to Atlanta with us. Well I did my best to have a personality but it was hard even though I really like Clarence and love to talk with him about skating. He turned around and slow skated with us, and by now I think eebee's muscles were tired too, so we were a motley crew, or a mott the hoople, maybe. We got back to the car and I was feeling my legs would explode. Arrgh! I knew there'd be a wave of cramps that would hit after I stopped moving, because I'd been cramping for 20 miles or so. So I think my conversation was lacking at this point quite a lot. But I felt good to have made it no matter how slowly (our 11 mph turned into 10.3 or so). Clarence took off to skate back home and we were done. On the way home at first my legs felt great and I said something to the effect of my legs felt all better. That wasn't true of course, as ten minutes later I could feel it again. But all in all, it was a good day and a successful skate. I hated to hold up eebee, as we are usually more closely matched over the long haul, but she seemed to have fun anyway.

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