By Brian Jackson
A former national speed skating champion is holding new training classes in Ottawa to encourage inline skaters to trade in their wheels for blades this winter.
Members of the Ottawa Inline Skating Club have registered for the course and are led through plyometric exercises by coach Barry Publow on Tuesday nights. Publow, the Canadian speed-skating record holder in the 300-and 500-metre races, said most rollerbladers don’t keep ice skates in the closet, but he plans to change that.
Speed skating “is a fun off-season way to stay in shape,” Publow said. “It requires a lot more finesse [than rollerblading]. On wheels you might not notice a mistake in your technique, but that same mistake is major on the ice.”
The services offered by Publow will help skaters adapt to the more difficult slippery surface, says Inga Petri, vice-president of the inline skating club, and a participant in the class.
Publow’s boot-camp-style workouts target the smaller leg muscles that are so important to skating — on wheels, and on blades.
Designed to increase power, the exercises force the muscle to expand and quickly contract. That translates into rapid muscle building, Publow said.
Participants mimic a skating motion both on the spot and while moving up a steep hill. Many exercises involve rapidly hopping from one foot to the other.
“Imagine the ground is hot,” Publow tells his class. “Don’t burn your feet.”
Whether taking up ice speed skating for recreation or more serious goals, class members hope Publow’s training will mean fewer spills on the ice.
Class member Mike Garvin is new to skating, but optimistic he’ll be speedy on the ice after training with coach Publow.
“After the first night, I could barely walk for the rest of the week,” Garvin recalled.
Garvin says he’ll join the Ottawa Pacers, a speed-skating club based in Kanata, to maintain his skating form over the winter.
Mathieu Leblanc had just returned from Calgary for school when he signed up for Publow’s class. Out West, he passed through the first phase of Own the Podium, a program with a mandate to make ice speed skaters out of athletes from other sports.
Leblanc’s inline skating experience made him a candidate. Eventually, several athletes will be selected to represent Canada’s Olympic team in the 2010 Vancouver games. Leblanc hopes Publow’s classes will be one step up to the Olympic podium.
When ice speed skating “you don’t have much room for error because of the thin blade,” Leblanc said. “You have to get your technique very precise.”
Petri skates on the Rideau Canal, but said she will stay away from actual speed skating despite her training in the class.
But Publow said he’s confident both recreational and competitive inline skaters will get onto rinks around the city to keep fit this winter, saying members of his class have already shown interest. He plans to host another ice speed skating camp in Quebec at the end of November.
Ice skating is better than the alternative of indoor inline skating on tracks that are not usually longer than 110 metres,
“Not everyone likes to go around in little circles,” he said.