My birthday is this evening, I’ll turn (wait a second I’ll check https://www.myagecalculator.co…) 32 years old. After 30 years you feel old a bit, you’re not a young person anymore but also not old, it’s this middle ground that you can’t quiet categorize it.
Anyway, For the past 2 weeks I started to grow some interest in skating with ⛸️ rollerblades, If you’re like me spent most of your life in a third world country on a computer in your bedroom, Let me introduce you to the rollerblades.
It all started with a suggestion from my wife that we can give it a try, probably we’ve seen it somewhere on the internet couple too many times that the thing started to resonate, So we watched some YouTube videos on YouTube about the sport, and decided to start small, get a pair each and protective gears.
We checked amazon.de for it but after a bit of research I found that it comes in sizes -of course- !, And we can’t depend on our usual shoes sizes as it may differ from the blades sizes, so the safest way to get a good pair is to go to a good near sports gear shop and try them on to make sure we’re getting our fit.
Our usual place for sports gear is decathlon, so we dropped by decathlon Alexanderplatz in Berlin and tried them on, And maaaan… I couldn’t even stand up straight in them, the floor in this place was very smooth that I was loosing my balance and sliding the moment I drop my feet on the floor, my size was similar to my usual shoes size 42. To make sure we don’t break a bone while training or get too many bruises we got also protective gear, it’s usually a set for elbow, knees and wrist, and off we go to start our adventure. (the following is the protective gear picture).
So we went to the nearest park to start on the grass, we need a place where we put on the rollerblades and just keep our balance standing in them.
It was a challenge I have to say, I tried to learn skateboarding/long-boarding before that helped me a bit, but still the feeling that there is wheels under your feet is weird, like growing a new organ. The good news here is the more I wear them the more I felt comfortable at them, it took us couple hours to stand on the grass and make the V move we watched on YouTube, you make your feet in a V shape then move them in front of each other.
These rollerblades we got were for recreation, so they have a brake on the right blade, that’s useful to stop yourself if you started rolling involuntarily.
So the plan is to train for an hour everyday, to grow the skill fast and reach the same level of riding a bike.
The second day we went to an open playground near hour house, the ground was soil so it’s less friction than grass so we’re progressing here to lower friction every day, we trained for moving around step by step in the V shape move, we’re not rolling at all still, trying to keep our balance over the blades, but we already felt the progress.
Falling was the worst part, The advice we keep getting is to fall on our knees, but every time we fall it happens on our back, it’s good we’re just walking not striding so the fall isn’t too bad, and the protective gear was at least helping the wrist, I can’t imagine how will I write code if my wrist was hurt.
For the next couple days we thought of progressing to asphalt ground, so we choose a closed street beside our place that usually people use it for skating and kids use it for cycling, we went there and tried the walk and gradually progressed to striding, slowly gaining confidence in moving our legs.
I have to say it’s fun to learn, and painful sometimes :D, but the feeling that you’re on wheels and moving on them is awesome.
I trained for around 9 days so far each from 1 to 2 hours. Now I can move on asphalt, turn around, stopping myself (sometimes I panic :D), going over the stone sidewalk and down again, going up and down stairs (step by step).
This is already a faster progress than learning skateboarding/long-boarding, I think it’ll be a nice hobby to grow.
I may try to do a video or two while I’m training for documenting my progress over time.