Our program today brought us back to road skating with a morning session of technique drills performed on a quiet stretch of road not far from Gerlev and an afternoon tour to the beach. It may not sound like much but take my word that was plenty of skating for anyone with inclination.
I was training with the same group as I was yesterday on the track consisting of elite skaters at Sk8skool, masters skaters from Rolling Vikings, as well as our international contingent. Assistant coach Sarah went through a big selection of drills designed to tweak our technique for straightaway strides. We covered everything from 2-leg slaloms, single leg glide, 1-leg slalom, shoulder dip, outside edge set down with lean, dolphin kick, driving the knee forward at setdown, lightly click skates together after recovery, and skating with an extended glide phase focusing on traveling forward in a completely straight line. We concluded practice by skating in small packs bringing all the drills together into the best technique we could muster.
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We did a subset of these drills previously during Sunday on wet pavement. Although my leg muscles are feeling the accumulated fatigue from days of intense training, I skated much better today by comparison. There was a lot more control in my skates, edges, and direction of travel. When we finished the practice with pack skating, I was generating good speed while maintaining a comfortable cruising form. Of course, being on road instead of track, I was in my element and completely belonged in the pack. It didn’t hurt that we were training on a beautiful road with picturesque backdrop of Danish countryside.
In the afternoon, the plan was tour to the beach with ice-cream break in between. With such a large group of skaters with various speed and endurance, coach Sooty gave us a choice of 26km, 38km, 42km, or 60km route and we were encouraged to skate with others of similar speed. My first choice was to skate 38km only but there was nobody of my speed to skate with unfortunately. I joined the 42km group consisting of Harry, Max, Tegan, Nadine, Jeffrey, and Lars. Despite having a map in our hands, we got lost pretty quickly. Luckily, assistant coach Sarah’s group with the Sk8skool boys caught up to us and we happily followed along.
We skated on both bike lanes and roads with a good mix of intersections, roundabouts, and railway crossing to deal with. Some pavement were nicer to our feet than others but I would say it was pretty much your run-of-the-mill road skate condition. My group moved at a good pace with Lars and Harry pulling the pack most of the time. We took a brief water break at 13km and again at the 21km mark. Our last break at the 29km mark was more relaxed. We stopped to enjoy some ice-cream and a few of us took a dip at the beach. I loved my double scoop of marzipan and walnut ice-cream topped with a flødeboller! Our pack grouped up with Sarah’s pack and we all returned to the starting point barrelling down the bike path with little regard of pavement quality. Obviously I’ve skated fast in a pack before but it was quite a different experience to bomb down a bike path in a large pack! I was completely at ease in the pack and this gives me much confidence in my road speed this season.
As for post-skate reward? Swim, sauna, and barbeque dinner at the next door Legepark in beautiful evening breeze sound pretty good, doesn’t it? It was especially nice to see smiling faces all around the table as we dug in to our dessert of apple cake with crème fraiche.
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