In action - around kilometer 37 or so. I was easy to pick out with my pink - flowered children's bike helmet. Or perhaps it was the bright yellow-orange shorts that made it easy to pick me out?
Ship of Opportunity
11 years ago
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Why Not?
It all started when a guy from Tasmania decided to run a marathon in Berlin. The medic on Emerald, who is Australian and friends with this guy, thought “hey we crew change through Brussels, Brussels is just a skip away from Berlin (especially compared to Australia), and the marathon is the weekend after crew change, ‘so Hey I should go run the marathon after crew change in September.” This was June. So Stru, the medic, went to sign up for the marathon, however all 40,000 spaces were full. Sadden, he told his friends of the misfortune, who lamented, but responded joking and laughing “ha there are still spaces in the rollerblade marathon”. Stru thought “hey why not”, then turned to me and said “Laura, you should totally do it too” and I thought “why not” and so we both signed up. Thus started the rollerblade escapade.
Minor details included:
- Neither of us had actually rollerbladed in the past 10 years
- I did not own rollerblades
- Stru had rollerblades buried in a closet in Cairns
- 42.2km is a long way whether by foot or by rollerblade
The next break, back in Oslo I went and bought a pair of rollerblades, telling the sales guy “I need a fast pair, you see I ‘m going to be in a marathon”. He just turned and raised one eyebrow. I practiced around Oslo a bit. My fear before buying the skates was whether or not I could go fast enough for the marathon. I figured that I could ice skate decently. However I soon learned and realized that ice skating is always done on a perfectly flat surface. Rollerblading, meanwhile has hills involved, however small. And stopping is a whole other ball game. This is unfortunate because Oslo is known for its hills. This is fortunate because Berlin is known for being flat.
Training (however limited it was) came to an abrupt stop when I returned to the vessel. I had thought through many possib
ilities, including tying myself to something and skating around the helideck, but I ultimately decided there was no way to actually train on the boat. Although I did manage to find some amusing looking exercises on the internet, which I did try to do on the helideck (much to the embarrassment of Stru).
I got off the vessel one week before heading to Berlin. However, between rain and traveling I was not able to get back on my skates before heading off. I met up with Stru in Berlin (who by the way purchased his skates in Berlin). We decided to take a train over to Poland in search of better training ground (ie no cars to hit) and to get in touch with my Polish roots. We went up to the Northwest corner, which is a nice beach area, as well a ferry point for going to Copenhagen and Sweden. Our new fear was getting picked up by the slow bus during the race. In fact we had no idea how fast we could actually go – could we do 2 min kilometers or 5 min
kilometers? All we knew was that the bus picked you up at a few points if your time was clocking in slower than 2 hours 30 min and that the last person over the line last year timed in at 3 hours 9 minutes.
While exploring the area we found the perfect training grounds – the road from the ferry. Perfect – flat, straight and very little traffic (only when cars got off the ferry, so only once every 10 minutes). Now we could time ourselves. When going with the wind we clocked in at 2 min 20-30sec kms, while against the wind we were getting times of 3 min- 3 min 30 seconds. Finally we had a sense of our time. We just might be able to pull this stunt off with officially 2 days of training under our belts.
So back to Berlin we went, meeting up with the whole crew of Stru’s mates from Australia and then racing the next day. We both managed to finish- Stru with a time of 1 hour 54 minutes, I with a time of 2 hours 2 min 24 seconds (ah I think I could have made it under 2 hours, but oh well, at least I left the pickup bus in the dust). And we both had a fantastic time. We had hoped to “see Berlin” by skates, but instead we got the grand tour of Berlin pavement, so I can tell you much more about the sewer covers, and trams tracks rather than the sites, but so it goes. The Berlin inline marathon is the largest in the world, so there were heaps of spectators, bands on the streets and the final stretch took us right under the Brandenburg Gate. So overall a great time. I would definitely do another one in the future.
And to cap off the weekend, the next day, the running world record was broken – 2 hours 3 minutes and 59 seconds (yeap that’s right I skated it faster – my current claim to fame)
Minor details included:
- Neither of us had actually rollerbladed in the past 10 years
- I did not own rollerblades
- Stru had rollerblades buried in a closet in Cairns
- 42.2km is a long way whether by foot or by rollerblade
The next break, back in Oslo I went and bought a pair of rollerblades, telling the sales guy “I need a fast pair, you see I ‘m going to be in a marathon”. He just turned and raised one eyebrow. I practiced around Oslo a bit. My fear before buying the skates was whether or not I could go fast enough for the marathon. I figured that I could ice skate decently. However I soon learned and realized that ice skating is always done on a perfectly flat surface. Rollerblading, meanwhile has hills involved, however small. And stopping is a whole other ball game. This is unfortunate because Oslo is known for its hills. This is fortunate because Berlin is known for being flat.
Training (however limited it was) came to an abrupt stop when I returned to the vessel. I had thought through many possib
ilities, including tying myself to something and skating around the helideck, but I ultimately decided there was no way to actually train on the boat. Although I did manage to find some amusing looking exercises on the internet, which I did try to do on the helideck (much to the embarrassment of Stru).I got off the vessel one week before heading to Berlin. However, between rain and traveling I was not able to get back on my skates before heading off. I met up with Stru in Berlin (who by the way purchased his skates in Berlin). We decided to take a train over to Poland in search of better training ground (ie no cars to hit) and to get in touch with my Polish roots. We went up to the Northwest corner, which is a nice beach area, as well a ferry point for going to Copenhagen and Sweden. Our new fear was getting picked up by the slow bus during the race. In fact we had no idea how fast we could actually go – could we do 2 min kilometers or 5 min
kilometers? All we knew was that the bus picked you up at a few points if your time was clocking in slower than 2 hours 30 min and that the last person over the line last year timed in at 3 hours 9 minutes.While exploring the area we found the perfect training grounds – the road from the ferry. Perfect – flat, straight and very little traffic (only when cars got off the ferry, so only once every 10 minutes). Now we could time ourselves. When going with the wind we clocked in at 2 min 20-30sec kms, while against the wind we were getting times of 3 min- 3 min 30 seconds. Finally we had a sense of our time. We just might be able to pull this stunt off with officially 2 days of training under our belts.
So back to Berlin we went, meeting up with the whole crew of Stru’s mates from Australia and then racing the next day. We both managed to finish- Stru with a time of 1 hour 54 minutes, I with a time of 2 hours 2 min 24 seconds (ah I think I could have made it under 2 hours, but oh well, at least I left the pickup bus in the dust). And we both had a fantastic time. We had hoped to “see Berlin” by skates, but instead we got the grand tour of Berlin pavement, so I can tell you much more about the sewer covers, and trams tracks rather than the sites, but so it goes. The Berlin inline marathon is the largest in the world, so there were heaps of spectators, bands on the streets and the final stretch took us right under the Brandenburg Gate. So overall a great time. I would definitely do another one in the future.
And to cap off the weekend, the next day, the running world record was broken – 2 hours 3 minutes and 59 seconds (yeap that’s right I skated it faster – my current claim to fame)
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