Race Report and Skate Test

I had managed to resist the urge to have their inaugural skate be the Baxter Inline Half Marathon, but these beauties

were begging for a skate.  I had an endurance workout planned for Tuesday and then the Summer Inline Series (SIS) races for Wednesday.  Being the Data Geek that I am, I decided to do a skate test on Tuesday, comparing my three different skate setups, and then use the winner in the SIS races the following night.  So on Tuesday morning (ah, the beauty of being off work for the summer--the ability to skate early in the morning to avoid the late-rising Teenage Mutant Skate Park Punks!) I packed up the above skates-- stock Bont Cheetahs with 4x100mm wheels--as well as my "usual" skates, custom Bont Apaches with 4x90mm wheels,

and then my "old setup,"

custom Bont Vaypors with 5x84mm wheels (pardon the crap in the photo, and actually I had different wheels on for the test--Hyper +G's rather than the Bank Robbers pictured--but I couldn't find the camera and this is the only photo of the Vaypors that I could find).  My workout called for "German Endurance," 5 sets of 2 minutes hard/2 easy/2 hard, with a 5 minute rest break between sets.  Since I time every lap and that pretty much consumes my "man the stopwatch" capabilities, I usually do German Endurance by laps rather than by minutes, so 2.5 laps hard, 2 easy, 2.5 hard.  The pace was supposed to be 80%, which in past years would probably mean 43-44 second laps, but these days (what with being slow and all), who knows?  I figured I'd do the test in this order:
1.  Current setup, Apaches with 4x90's with the bearings I've been using all season and, um, some wheels.  They're blue.  That's all I know about them.
2.  Vaypors with 5x84's, using an old set of the wheels I always used to use for oval workouts (Hyper + Grip) and the bearings that I would remove from the Apaches
3.  New Cheetahs with 4x100's and new bearings
4.  Apaches again, with 4x90's, same wheels but new bearings (the door prize ones from Baxter)
5.  Cheetahs again

Granted, there are still a lot of uncontrolled variables in there, most notably the "declining performance due to fatigue" factor.  But this is a good as I could get it, in terms of controlling for bearings, etc.

So, (insert drum roll) here are the results, by average lap times (note that the average lap times are sadly discrepant from the 43-44 seconds that I would have hoped for in the past, pre-slow, days.  Oh, well...)
1.  Apaches 4x90--47.4
2.  Vaypors 5x84--49.7
3.  Cheetahs 4x100-48.6
4.  Apaches 4x90--49.2
5.  Cheetahs 4x100--48.2

So it would seem that the 5x84 setup is clearly the "dog" of the trio--not to mention that the boots, which I used for long track as well as inline for 4-5 years, are now worn out to the point of being uncomfortable.  The scary part of the "5x84 is the slowest" conclusion is that all my best times in inline workouts and races are from when I was using the slowest skates.  Clearly, I suck even more now than I thought I did!

Second place is harder to define precisely.  The 5x84's position as second set in the workout means that their slower time is quite significant--my second set in workouts is often my best (due, no doubt, to my habitually not warming up enough).  So that makes it easier to determine "dog" status.  The Cheetahs are both slower than the Apaches and faster, though, and their place as third and fifth-set skates makes the fatigue factor more significant. I confounded the results somewhat by using different bearings in the Apaches in the fourth set than in the first, but that was a decision born of laziness--the old bearings were now in the Vaypors and would require removal if I wanted to use them in the Apaches again, while the Baxter bearings were ready to pop into the wheels.  So  I took the easy way out.  Still, I think the Cheetahs are faster.  And, subjectively, I was surprised at how good the 4x100's felt in the corners.  I was afraid that the taller wheels would mess up the corner feel (what little feel I have, anyway), but they felt very solid and confidence-inspiring, not only in the actual corner but in the corner entry as well, which has been the bane of my existence for many years.

With those results in mind, I decided to use the Cheetahs in the SIS races the next night.  The stock boots were pretty comfortable in the test workout, so I didn't think I'd have trouble (i.e., pain) in the races, and I was curious to see if I was any faster in the Cheetahs than I'd been in the Apaches two weeks ago.  What I didn't count on was others' reaction to the skates.   As I sat on the concrete steps getting ready for the races, no fewer than 5 racers paused, observed my new skates, and said "oooh, shiny!"  Now, this is exactly what I posted in my previous blog entry under a picture of my skates, but I'm quite certain that these people had not read my blog because, um, almost nobody reads my blog and it would be pretty remarkable if the 5 people who read my blog were the same 5 people who were commenting on my skates.  So I'm forced to assume that my skates are, indeed, shiny.  Really shiny.

So, the races.  We women (both of us...there was just me and RollerDome Girl, a teammate who had also been the only other woman in the first SIS races two weeks ago) were scheduled for a 4 lap and an 8 lap race, which sounded fine to me.  Local SkateShop Boy has turned over the running of the races to Columbian Flash, a very talented inliner, and I was afraid that, being a marathoner who probably considers 15 laps a sprint, he'd up the race distances--but he was merciful and kept them within my range of "I can do this without having to stand up to rest my back.  Maybe. Just barely."

The four lap race was first.  It went fine--no heart arrhythmia this time--if slowly; my total time was 2:56.7.  This is a rather meaningless statistic on its own, so I offer up this: in 2009--the last year that I did a race of similar length at the same time in the season--my time was 2:45.6, and my notation in my skating log says "Bad.  Slow, no snap, no foot speed."  Hmm, if 2:45 is "slow" and "bad," what does that make my current time of, oh, 11 seconds slower?!  That's almost 3 seconds a lap...and I'm wearing skates that my test would indicate are probably 1 second per lap faster than the ones I did the 2:45 in.  Ouch--I'm a slug!  Ooh, if I go back further in time the slugdom gets worse: in 2008, there were at least two occasions when I skated 5 laps in 3:21...in other words, 5 laps at a 40 second average lap pace, versus yesterday's 4 laps at just over 44 seconds per lap.  And the 5 lap races were in my "slow" skates, the 5x84's.

The eight lap race was similar to the four: no heart arrhythmia, no problems, no speed.  My final time of 6:10 was, again, dismal in comparison to the past--a 5:23 and a "slow, bad" 5:41 in 2009, and a 6:50 10-lapper in 2008.  Yes, that's right...2 extra laps in 40 more seconds.  That means the 10-lapper averaged 41 second laps, while last night's 8-lapper averaged 46.2 seconds.  Gaaaah.

Then, after the 8 lapper, as I was lounging on the concrete steps warming down from the race, Columbian Flash announced that there would now be a 1-lap race.  So I hauled my butt to the line one more time, and threw down a 42.39 lap...versus 2009's 41, so that wasn't so bad.  And it was better than the result experienced by poor Skater Dad (a teammate who, along with Skater Son, frequents the oval races); Skater Dad crashed in the final sprint of one of the races--after he hit the pavement I closed my eyes in horror and I swear the awful "flesh meets concrete" noises continued for at least 3 seconds.  Fortunately he was only scuffed, not broken, and even more fortunately his scuffed bits didn't include the leg which had only recently healed from a previous scuffing (I'd imagine that road rash on barely-healed road rash is an unhappy thing).

So it was a mixed-bag kind of night.  Fun, but slow.  New skates that are faster and feel better in the corners, but that I decided I don't like at speed on the straights--too hard to do the "proper" technique.  Unhappy with my performance, but happy I didn't crash.  Glad I went to the races, but just as glad that I have an "easy week" coming up (which, in this case, means "head to the cabin and do no skating whatsoever for five days").

And left with plenty to ponder during said "easy week," including "which skates should I use on the oval?," "why am I so slow?" and "what should I eat next?"  Come to think of it, there may be a causal link between those last two...more food for thought (pun definitely intended!).