Big Race – Big Heart – Big Results

G13’s dominate the 2011 Northshore Inline Marathon in Duluth Minnesota!

The much anticipated Northshore Inline Marathon (NSIM) was held on September 17^th and Powerslide sent in their heavy hitting team of Yann Guyader, Scott Arlidge, & Felix Rejhnen to challenge Joey Mantia and the rest of the United States to the title of the biggest marathon in the USA. In addition to the racing Jorge Botero and Kyle Joustra of Powerslide USA had a mission of their own to help new team member 17 year old Brooke Wright of Two Harbors, MN achieve her goal of completing the half marathon. This might not sound like a huge achievement for most, but try skating 13.1 miles with your eyes close, because Brooke lost her vision last year during a surgery to remove a brain tumor and skated the course with the guidance of Jorge and Kyle. In addition to guiding Brooke along the way Jorge and Kyle also manned the Powerslide / Matter booth that also included a silent auction table with items donated from all the vendors that would raise money to help Brooke and her family with medical bills from her surgery.

Now on to the racing…

With temperatures in the low 40’s at the starting line it was flat out cold! Once racing began the Powerslide Team wearing all G13’s immediately sent out Scott Arlidge on a flyer forcing the pack to keep the pace strong. Once Scott was caught Felix Rijhnen went on a flyer of his own in hopes of getting away or wearing the pack out. This continued for the first ten miles wearing the pack and Joey Mantia out little by little until Yann Guyader took off himself on a hill leaving the pack and never looked back. Yann had an impressive solo breakaway victory beating second place Joey Mantia by more than five minutes. Felix Rijhnen had an impressive 3^rd place finish, with Scott Arlidge bringing the team home in 5^th place. Tony Muse of the Powerslide USA Pro Masters Team won his division with great fashion also showing that the G13 is the wheel to be on as many other teams worked against Tony, making him chase almost every flyer as he was a solo team member in his division.

2011 was my debut in the 24 hours of Le Mans. I’d looked at the event from afar for several years, and over those years knew that one day I’d be in it. Powerslide really put the hammer down in 2010 winning by something like 13 laps over 2^nd place, Yann Guyader broke the lap record and the team took a new record in the event with a stunning 208 laps for the 24 hours. In 2011 I got the call up, and I was basically the rookie on the team. Going in, I was nervous, but of course excited. This event is different, it’s a little more laid back that the intense world of track racing or marathons, but at the same time our team was very focused on winning.

On Friday evening we had a short meeting between the skaters on the team that were already in Le Mans (some of the French guys weren’t arriving until Saturday morning). Everyone knows Pascal Briand is one of the most savy skaters in the world, and for Le Mans it was no different. In fact I think an event like Le Mans brings out the best in Pascal and that’s why he was once again our team captain. He had a strict schedule of who was skating at what times, what order we’d be skating in, and what lap times we’d need to be skating to be on target. I was impressed.

I guess you could say that things really kicked off at 11am on Saturday. That was the parade lap of skaters, plus a few extra. I heard reports of upwards of 10,000 skaters featured in the parade lap. Everyone was there, from bumble-bee’s, to star ship troopers, and a couple of ballerinas thrown in. This is when I first got an idea of how big this event really was. The lap in Le Mans is about 4.2km,  and in the particular part of the group I was skating in I couldn’t see clear road in front of me or behind me. This also posed a couple of problems because it looked like this was first time that some people had laced up a set of skates, especially because inside the first 1.5km of the lap is a short and steep downhill.

Shortly after the parade lap it was lunch time, and I knew I had to eat. I wouldn’t like to guess how many kilogram’s of food our team packed away over the 24 hours, but it was a lot. Next up comes the qualifications sprint to determine the starting positions on the grid. Ewen Fernandez qualified us in 2^nd place behind the EO skates team.

My first few laps around this time were probably the hardest of the entire race. I found it difficult to get my body moving again after the rest. Before long we were back to full strength of 10 days and we were once again into our rhythm until the finish at 4pm.

So it could be argued that we knew we were going to win from early on in the event. Once we lapped the second place team it was going to become very difficult for us to lose, but we still some unfinished business. We wanted to set the record. It wasn’t until we were inside the last hour of racing that we knew it was within sight.

To finish the event with a new record of 211 was a very cool experience. The crowd and atmosphere was amazing. All my nerves were soon displaced by our wonderful support staff. Sure there was 10 skaters on the track but a big thank you must go out to everyone behind the scenes who cooked our meals and gave us whatever we needed.

And in the words of our leader, Pascal, 211 laps in 2011, means 212 laps in 2012. We’ll be back.

Nationals are next door and we are taking pre-orders for wheels before races start.

Please don’t wait longer as our new Lethal combination is selling fast!

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Matter wheels are the dominating wheels in speed skating, no matter what race you are at, the champions will be wearing MATTER.

 
Check out below a mere selection of some champions who are committed to Matter wheels.

Our U.S. champions have proven the performance of these wheels together with many others.

U.S. Matter squad:

1. Ben Carey, Indoor’s National champion

2. Keith Carroll, Indoor’s National Champion

3.Kevin Carroll, Indoor’s National Champion

The Matter international champions squad:

1. Fabio Francolini, World champion
2. Yann Guyader, World champion
3. Andres Muñoz, World champion
4. Scott Arlidge, World champion
5. Kalon Dobbin, World champion
6. Matteo Amabili, World champion
7. Nam, World champion
8. Cecilia Baena, World champion
9. Sabine Berg, World champion
10. Mareike Thum, World champion
11. Nelson Garzón, World champion
12. Liana Holguin, World champion
13. Jorge Botero, World champion
14. Tony Muse, World champion
15. Felix Rhijnen, German champion
16. Pascal Ramali, German champion
17. Mark Horsten, Dutch champion
18. Jore vd Berghe, European champion
19. Kwinten Tas, European champion
20. Catherine Peñan, World champion
21. Nelson Garzón, World champion
22. Giovanna Turchiarelli, European champion
23. Peter Michael, World champion
24. Ewen Fernandez, European champion