Sydney, Australia
To download a short film (size 2.9 MByte) about 24skate #2 in Sydney click on this
picture:
Sunday June 12, and the day for Sydney’s leg of the second 24Skate event. There was a
thick layer of fog in the air and as I left home the roads were somewhat wet, not a
good sign for fast skating. However things started looking up as I got closer to the
venue, the fog was lifting and the roads appeared to be drying out. This turned out
to be a false hope however as when the venue came into view I could see that the
surface was covered with a glistening sheet of water.
Getting out of my car at 8:30am, 30 minutes before our scheduled start time I noticed
that the air was completely still. A lack of wind would ordinarily be good conditions
for fast skating, but in the case of having a wet track, no wind would result in a
longer drying time.
The skaters got about warming up before the kick off time of 9:00am, while our
‘officials’ went about trying to sweep some of the water off the track to help it
to dry out.
In all seven skaters had committed to participating in the event, each of varying
abilities and ages. The track was a rectangular circuit, 333.3 metres per lap
(with three laps equating to 1 kilometre).
As the start time neared, we settled on a skating order and number of laps that
each skater would complete during their turn. As 9:00am ticked over Adam Mullard,
our first skater, took off from the starting line. Each skater then relayed through
the order, taking their first lap at a tentative pace on the wet greasy surface.
The first half-hour proved interesting as the skaters settled into a comfortable
rhythm. The greasy surface resulted in a number of slips, but fortunately no falls
and in our first somewhat wet half-hour we covered about 15.25km - averaging about
30.50 kph.
During the second half-hour some dry patches gradually started to appear, and although
the track was not completely dry, we were able to pick up the pace and covered
31.526km by the end of the first hour.
During the third half-hour the track continued to dry, again allowing the pace
to increase. At the one and a half-hour mark we had covered 48.2 km at an average
of 32.12 kph.
For the final half-hour the track was more or less completely dry and by the end
of the two hours we had covered a total distance of 65.070 km – an average speed
of 32.535 kph.
I would like to thank the below skaters, who along with myself took part in the event:
Andrew Tiffany, Dennis Sweetman, Peter Thompson, Matthew Hendy, Adam Mullard,
Lee Mullard.
And of course the parents who helped out:
Neil Hendy, Angela Mullard, John Mullard, Stephen Thomson
Daniel Thomson
History of this page:
27th of June 2005: Screenshot of video
17th of June 2005: First version