Carlesa's Inline Skating Blog

The Jeep World of Adventure Sports will sponsor the 2008 IGSA World Championships - Maryhill Festival of Speed on NBC TV Saturday, October 11th! The event will be on the air from 2:30pm until 4:00pm Eastern Time or from 11:30am until 1:00pm Pacific Standard Time in the United States. You will need to check your local TV listings guide for the exact broadcast times in your region of the country.

The Maryhill Festival of Speed and IGSA World Championships was held in Goldendale, Washington, USA on August 27th through the 31st. Visit the IGSA site for event results.

For more excitement, visit their Myspace.com home page to see a video of the recent GoFast! Speed Days IGSA World Cup race.

If you enjoy roller sports and are willing to travel, USA Roller Sports needs you for their volunteer athletic trainer program. Certified athletic trainers are needed for training camps at the U.S. Olympic Training Center, at the National Figure and Speed Skating Championships and for the USA Roller Sports World Teams that compete all over the world. What a great way to have your transportation, lodging and food expenses covered and go to USA Roller Sports training and event destinations, too.

Find out if you qualify by visiting the USA Roller Sports athletic trainer recruitment page. Or you can contact Lori Brandon, a member of the USARS Sports Medicine Committee for details.

The NBC News/Philadelphia coverage of the Amateur Inline League (AIL) Aggressive Inline Skating World Championship at Camp Woodward West in Tehachapi, California is now online. The news feature includes stunt footage and interview clips with Shawn Martin, a 12-year-old bronze medalist at the event. Online viewer response comments from the inline skating community have been mixed. Many feel that it is too bad that a pro level adult skater wasn't shown to represent the highest end of aggressive inline skating. But others saw the value in showing a kid doing stunts and getting recognition for his performance.

Some points made in the comments include:

• 2,000 emails came in to the station asking for information about the sport as a youth activity.
  
  
• Kids will relate to kids, and this could draw more youth into the sport at a time when new blood is needed.
  
  
• This TV segment could jump-start inline skate requests on Christmas lists.
  
  
• More media coverage like this can stimulate other skating activities and related purchases.

If you check out the event results, you will see that there are several levels and age categories included in this competition. The official AIL 2008 World Championships Video Edit includes more of the senior level skating that was not shown by NBC. Just remember that any and every bit of media coverage for roller sports is good news. No skater or sports discipline will be famous if the armchair athletes don't know they exist or can't relate to them.

Roller sports are gliding through the media this week. The French Inline Cup, held last weekend in Lyon, is the subject of a 15-minute video segment produced by Sport+ TV in France. The segment was televised on Friday October 3rd at 16:45 and shown again on Saturday October 4th at 7:30 and 11:45. There is still one showing scheduled for Tuesday October 7th at 0:45. Let's watch for clips of this media segment to be posted.

It's not too late to slide into a Camp Rollerblade Day Camp. You'll get 5 hours of professional instruction with a one-hour lunch break, unless otherwise indicated. The two day camps remaining this season are being held on Saturday, October 11, 2008 near Washington, D.C. and on Saturday, October 25 in Miami, Florida. If you need additional information or would like to register for either camp, just visit CampRollerblade.com.

Photo Courtesy of Camp Rollerblade

If your team is running out of ideas on ways to raise money for that next out-of-town event, uniform expenses or gear, plan a "Tricks for Treats" skating club fundraiser. The theme is great for October, but you can do it any time of year. This is appropriate for any inline or roller sport discipline and can be held outdoors or at a rink. Sell reasonably priced tickets in advance and treat it like a Halloween costume skating party with an exhibition of your team's skills. Team members come as themselves and in addition to the short exhibition, they will offer to do "tricks for treats" - no donation too small. It's a great way to show off your sport and educate everyone on the maneuvers, stunts, content, formations or footwork in your skating style, too.

Encourage children to come - they are next season's athletes and we want them to choose roller sports. Be sure to use email, flyers and word-of-mouth to pass the word. And take advantage of any local radio, TV or newspaper coverage you can get either before, during or after your party.

Use this as a starting point, and then add-on or customize to suit the needs of your club and guests:

• Get donations of healthy snacks to pass out.
  
  
• Have goodie bags, raffles or door prizes.
  
  
• Let guests skate if the location permits and give a 10 minute mini-lesson for those who need to get jump-started.

Friends, family and fans will come for the opportunity to dress up, enjoy some open skating with you and get a chance to see you do your inline skating thing.

A heart rate monitor consists of a wrist watch/receiver and a transmitter worn on your chest. The display can guide you by showing how hard you are skating, so you can get the most out of your skating sessions and burn more calories in the same amount of time. Advanced models can even measure heart rate variations to help determine the user's fitness.

Heart rate monitors are popular electronic fitness gadgets, but they are not required by every skater. On the other hand, HRMs are certainly a worthwhile toy for many fitness skaters. And they are also a very useful tool for any competitive skater who can make good use of the detailed training information that most heart rate monitors can provide.

Here is more detailed heart rate monitor information:

• Heart Rate Monitors and Inline Training
  
  
• Before You Buy a Heart Rate Monitor
  
  
• Using a Heart Rate Monitor
  
  
• Do You Need a Heart Rate Monitor?

It's fall time in my inline and quad skating classes. For both new and experienced skaters, fall time is not just a season - it's a requirement. This is because every skater must know how to fall in order to learn basic and advanced techniques and to survive the everyday imperfections in the roller sports, the skating surfaces and the environment.

• The Art of Falling
  
  
• How to Fall on Inline Skates
  
  
• How to Get Up From a Fall on Inline Skates
  
  
• Wipeout - Make Falling a Game for Young Inline Skaters

Remember that most skaters will develop at a faster rate and move to much higher levels, if they take the time and make the effort to master the art of falling on inline skates.

BattleUK returns again on Saturday October 11, 2008. The venue for the event will be the Victoria Leisure Centre in Nottingham, the same site that was used for BattleUK II last season. BattleUK III is now a "two cone" event in the World Slalom Series rankings and one of the top five WSS events in the western hemisphere.

Held each fall, the Nottingham Skaters' BattleUK event attracts competitors from the UK, France, Germany, Holland and Belgium and as far away as the United States, Korea, Singapore and Australia. This has become one of the most popular annual freestyle skating competitions in the western hemisphere. BattleUK features freestyle slalom as the main competition, but there are also speed slalom, freejump, slide and dance contests that rival other top events in France, Germany and Russia.

• More event information is available by visiting or contacting the Nottingham Skaters.
  
  
• See highlights of last year's BattleUK II event.

Photo © Lance Brown

This weekend the 35th Real Berlin Inline Marathon expects as many as 8000 skaters to start the race. This event is the final leg of the World Inline Cup and the world's biggest get together of the season for both the professionals and the proficient in the inline skating community.

In addition to the marathon event, there will be festivities at the Inline Village Fair and at the Brandenburg Gate. Rollerblade will give away 200 MP3 players in race kits. And the event will also be televised on RBB on September 27th and 28th.

So, who or what is the mysterious "Real" that keeps this important marathon event going? Real is a large chain of retail superstores in Germany that sell everything from groceries, electronics and housewares to vacations. They sponsor youth sporting events, too. This company is real-ly making an effort to give back to the community.

Graphic © Real Berlin Marathon