Today, I skated outdoors with Belle and D-Train. Originally we were planning to just do the Willamette Park circuit a few times ... but then D got the idea to go out towards Philomath instead. It's more fun, and also we realized that we had enough people for it to count as a practice if we skated for two hours.
So we skated from Willamette Park to the bike path, and on the bike path out to like 63rd Street or so. We made it up the first hill. I have no doubt that if it had just been Belle and D, they would have gone all the way to Philomath. I felt like I was at about half of my endurance after getting up that hill, though, so we turned around. (They were both very sweet about it.)
When we go down a big hill on skates, we call it "bombing" the hill. Or at least, that's one way of going down. Bombing is when you just get low and enjoy the ride. (That's as opposed to snowplowing to control your speed, or going down backwards on your toe stops to *really* control your speed.)
I bombed the hill. And Oh. My. God ... it was such an awesome feeling. It was amazing. I wasn't scared at all, even though I was not doing anything to control my speed. It felt like flying. I'll bet we looked pretty cool, too -- three rollergirls zooming down a hill.
When we got back, we realized we needed to skate another 10 minutes or it wouldn't be two hours and wouldn't count as a practice (that matters more for D and Belle than it does for me, since I'm not scrimmage-eligible anyway, but at that point I felt like I'd come this far, I wanted it to count as a practice). So we ended up doing the Willamette circuit at the end. I was pretty tired by the time we started that. I figured it was a good idea to push myself past the point of "tired."
What a *great* way to start the day! I'm so glad I pushed myself. This today was definitely the farthest I have skated outdoors. Just the Willamette Park to 61st Street part was about 14 miles round trip, I think. (Google Maps seems to think so anyway.) And then the Willamette Park part probably added another two. So, yay us!
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