On The Trail

IN THIS ISSUE...

• Publisher's Message
• Surface Cracks
• Until Next Time

Publisher's Message

Welcome to the ninth issue of On The Trail! The Inline Skating Center will publish ten issues of the newsletter from now until the end of October covering a wide range of topics about inline skating on marked trails.

In today's issue, we're going to introduce a couple of tactics you can use to handle cracks in the surface when you're out trail skating.

Surface Cracks

Surface cracks, like road snakes, can run either horizontally or vertically to your direction of travel. You can consider a crack in the road as an inverted snake in terms of the application of the following maneuvers.

When the crack runs horizontally to your direction of travel:

1. Apply your brake to slow down to about half speed.
2. When you're about two feet in front of the crack, quickly lift your right skate off the road and place it about twelve inches out in front of you.
3. After you clear the crack, set your right skate down on the surface.
4. At the same time lift your left skate up off the road.
5. After your left skate clears the crack, place it back down on the road.

If the crack is running vertically to your direction of travel, and you need to get to the other side for whatever reason, you have to employ a slightly, different tactic.

This time you need to hop over the crack in a lateral direction. Let's assume the crack is located on your right side.

When the crack runs vertically to your direction of travel:

1. Skate to within six inches of the crack.
2. Lift your right skate about three inches in the air.
3. Now set it back down on the pavement about twelve inches on the other side of the crack.
4. Quickly lift your left skate in the air.
5. Move it to the other side of the crack.
6. When it's close to your right skate set it back down on the pavement.

Until Next Time

In the next issue, we'll look at the crossover turn and see how you can use it to skate around wide curves or sweeping bends in the trail.