2026 Season Review: From Hockey Skater to Speed Skater · Skate Intelligence
My Skate Journey · Oct 5, 2026 · 35 min read
2026 Season In Review: My Skating Journey up until now
Two years ago I didn't even know Inline Speed Skating existed as a sport, this year I managed to win my age group at the North Shore Inline Marathon, the biggest race in North America. Here is my journey of how I got here, my hope is to share some of the things I did - analyze what went well, what didn't go well, and hopefully some of these will help inspire others with their own journey.
To start, it's a little disingenuous to give the impression that I went from not knowing how to skate to winning a race in 2 years. Growing up in Canada I played ice hockey and was a decent ice skater back then. I played from ages 5-17 then picked up inline at the age of 32, so a lot of my journey has been getting back to where I was after a 15 year break and completely reworking my technique from hockey skating to inline speed skating. Having a hockey background, it’s pretty unsurprising that my strengths as a skater is explosiveness and top end speed while my weakness is endurance (both from a physical and technical standpoint), so that has been the main focus for me as I’ve transitioned into inline speed skating.
When I was planning my move to New York in 2024, skating was not on my radar at all. Somehow the Youtube algorithm gods pushed The Stuttering Skater’s videos to my feed. It looked so liberating watching him skate through traffic in the city - I thought I could do this too since I could Ice skate when I was younger. So I bought a pair of inlines as soon as I landed in NY and it’s consumed my spare time ever since. I started attending Wednesday Night Skates, then Big Apple Roll, then Tuesday Night Skates, before realizing that I would need to change my technique away from hockey skating if I didn't want to crash and burn every session. That's when I discovered speed skating and the Empire Speed team.
Before diving into 2026, I want to give a recap on my 2025 season to provide some context on what motivated me this year. 2025 was my first season speed skating and joining the Empire Speed team. I originally joined with the intention of just "improving" my technique, getting faster and more efficient for my social skates. At the time I had been doing a lot of Tuesday Night Skates in NYC and had some trouble with endurance (makes sense now, since I was skating like a hockey player). What I didn't know is that I would become obsessed with the mentality that these speed skaters possessed - a desire to be incrementally better each and every day.
Unfortunately it just so happened that I had a 1 month sabbatical at my day job for staying at my company for 4 years, which was scheduled well in advance for September. I would later find out that this was smack in the middle of race season, causing me to miss North Shore and NYC Marathons. I came back from my travels out of shape and did the Miami Marathon out of FOMO, but I began cramping after just 1 lap out of 5 and labored my way to a 1:30 finish time. Given the circumstances I was not too upset about the time, but I knew I could do so much better. In many ways I felt like I had wasted a year having missed the 2 biggest marathons the team participates in and having a mediocre result in Miami, so I ended the season super motivated for 2026.
One silver lining from the failures is that I was able to connect with Jimmy Blair in Miami to get molded for a pair of Custom Pinnacle skates. This would be crucial for the improvements I would make for 2026 as I never realized how much dead space my previous skates had. The cost of a custom skate feels very high compared to any other skating expense, but if you think about comparable racing sports like biking then skating is a relatively affordable sport. Having a fully personal piece of equipment that eliminates pain when skating is well worth it in my opinion, though I acknowledge that I may be saying this from a privileged viewpoint.
A lot of skaters, at least in states that can get a little cold like NY, just stop skating once the weather turns south in the winter. There is a small group of skaters from NY’s Tuesday Night Skate who are a little crazy and will skate in any weather - this group happened to include me and a fellow speed skater Andrey. Tuesday Night Skate literally has not missed a week in ~2 years - I strongly believe that the fact that we skate year round contributed to both of us improving at a much faster rate than normal. We didn’t need to spend time rebuilding our technique at the beginning of the season and were able to really hit the ground running when the season started.
I highly recommend more people check out Tuesday Night Skate in NY. Not only is it a bit longer and faster than WNS, it is a lot less restricting. There are no rules like “You must stay behind the lead and in front of the sweep” - which btw are ABSOLUTELY necessary in a skate as big as WNS. There are stretches where the lead will just say “hold up at 110th street” while we’re still in the 40’s, which means dozens and dozens of blocks where we can push as fast or a slowly as we want. Late at night if we catch all greens during that stretch it is a magical feeling. As a speed skater these stretches are where I can go crazy with practicing and experimenting with my technique. In addition, as someone who didn’t grow up in NY this has been the #1 way for me to explore and get to know the city. I see so many people complain that WNS is too slow, too short, etc…. What are you guys doing? WNS isn’t the place for that - come to TNS!
Empire Speed didn’t stay still in the offseason either. Whether folks were skating or not, each member had their personal training regimen which could include indoor bike sessions, weights, plyometrics, etc…
As a team we had the privilege of using Allegra’s dance studio to run a weekly slideboarding session. This ended up being transformative for me in terms of learning proper body weight transfer and building the muscle memory of pushing straight to the side. Things didn’t click for me immediately - during the sessions I had trouble mentally connecting slideboarding to actual skating. For example, I’d ask questions like how were we supposed to simulate the underpush of the double push on a slideboard, because isn’t that what we are supposed to be working towards mastering? This would take time to connect over the course of the season.
First time slideboarding. Lots of room for improvement
Slideboarding really helped build solid fundamentals and muscle memory. I am definitely doing much better this year pushing straight to the side, transferring body weight, and making sure I have a recovery motion.
Routine Changes: Earlier I mentioned cramping at the Miami Marathon. However this was not the only time I cramped throughout the season, my legs seizing was a consistent problem for me even throughout my training. I remember leading an annual skate event where skaters took over the NYC running marathon route after the route is closed to cars before the runners start, I fell to the ground with cramps which was kind of embarrassing. In the offseason I started foam rolling (suggested to me by a fellow TNSer Kristine), stretching more consistently, and making sure I take a protein shake after every workout. I’m not sure which one of these helped the most but I can happily say that cramping has not been an issue for me in 2026.
What I would do differently for 2027
More consistent cardio workouts: 2 workouts a week is not enough consistency. When I began skating prospect park again in the Spring I was feeling winded after just 1 lap. I got a zwift ride during the season so I am looking forward to getting a solid 5-6 days of cardio in weekly in the comfort of my own home.
More Strength training: I did a few sessions of isometrics every week in the offseason and when I’m travelling which has helped me build muscle strength and endurance. I don’t do this during the season since it adds too much soreness and fatigue, but there is room to increase the volume and variance in strength training this year. I think the lack of serious strength training is one of my biggest gaps and where I could get the most noob gains (low hanging fruit) as a skater.
Less Skating(!?): Although I’ve said that skating weekly was effective, I may not be able to commit to it as consistently this offseason - more on this later.
Mentally, not much changed for me between the offseason and beginning of the season. Races were still a long way off in September and I had been skating consistently anyways. It did take a week or 2 to get my lungs back once I practices started again in Prospect Park, which points to me be being slightly out of shape and not doing enough cardio in the offseason. Adiel, Allegra, and Andrey from Empire Speed attended the Carolina Reaper Race in May. I think it’s awesome that there is a race at the beginning of the season as kind of a warmup race and for the sake of not having all the races happening in a 3 week span in September. I’d love to go this year or next if the time works out. Aside from that I just hopped right back into our regular speed skating sessions and social skate routine. Speed skating practices is where I learn proper technique, Tuesday Night Skate is the one social skate that gives me the time and space to put a lot of that into practice. When I can, I also try to swing by Pier 76 on Friday nights to get some drills in. It is probably the one big piece of flatland on Manhattan that is perfect for skate practice and drills. The amazing waterfront and sunsets are a nice bonus.
The way our Empire Speed practices usually go, we start with drills and then go into a few slow laps, ramping up the speed until people get dropped 1 by 1. Everyone gets dropped by coach eventually - the goal for everyone is to hang on as long as possible and hang on for longer and longer each practice. As the season went on, every time I was struggling to keep up with coach Adiel and Allegra (I have never ended a practice with them) my mind would go back to the fundamentals of what we learned on the slideboard. Rather than trying to increase my cadence or push “harder” like I used to in order to keep up - I would try to extend my strides, make sure my toes are lined up and my outer push is complete, as well as commit to a full body weight transfer - really leaning into my underpush and moving my center of gravity over my skate. By the end of the season I felt like I was able to hold on to Adiel and Allegra for twice as long as before when we do our Central/Prospect park laps, and I was setting new lap PRs every few weeks.
For Central Park I remember getting a sub 20 min lap one week and being very proud of myself, just to shave another minute off the very next week. In prospect park, I was even able to crack the top 10 for one of the Strava lap segments which I never thought I would do this season given the caliber of skaters that come through during the marathon. When your bottleneck is technique, sometimes you can make huge sudden improvements when you have an “AHA” moment. So whenever I see a clip of myself skating and don’t like what I see in my technique (i.e. I am never low enough), part of me is excited because it means there is room for easy growth.
SegmentJun 11, 2026
Central Park Lap (E 90th start)
6 mi · 0% avg grade · Manhattan, New York
18:33
attempts
29
faster than first try
−17:36
off the KOM
+1:34
Jun 5, 202529 efforts · faster is higherSep 10, 2026
In the beginning of May, my life would change forever as I introduced a new member into my family. I’m not going to go too deep into the beauty of introducing a child to your life in this post. There are a lot of other forums to discuss that and I hope it’s something everybody gets to enjoy. But there are certainly adjustments and sacrifices that have to be made with regards to your daily life, your hobbies, training, etc…. So I’d like to share some of the ones I made when my daughter was born in May.
The first few weeks, oddly enough, I found the easiest to deal with. I was on paternity leave from work so I was able to provide care for my daughter most of the day. As a newborn she really didn’t need too much other than going through several cycles of eat, sleep, and diaper change. I was able to take care of most of these cycles around the clock so it wasn’t too much work for Mom to take 1 or 2 cycles if I wanted to go skate.
Once I got back to work, things got a little more difficult. I couldn’t do the night shift since I needed to get up for work in the morning. I also couldn’t do the day shift since I was working, so if I go out to skate on a weekday after work I’m really able to give attention to my daughter at all that day. So social skating (Tuesday Night Skate, Wednesday Night Skate, Friday Pier 76 sessions) were out the window, but I was still able to maintain one weekday skate which was the Thursday Night Empire Speed practice. The Sunday practices were a bit easier to make, I was ok with sacrificing a bit of sleep the night before and come home around noon to take care of the baby.
A few weeks after becoming a dad I decided to get a Zwift ride and Kickr Core 2. There was a Prime Day discount on the Zwift trainer and a whole bunch of cycling gear (bibs, shoes, etc..., the cost really stacks up!) so I decided this was the time pull the trigger. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while since I see a bunch of my friends indoor biking on Strava. As a new dad this was the perfect time to dive in.
Zone 2 volume is something I’ve lacked as someone training for endurance sports, so it is perfect that I am now able to do cardio in the comfort of my own home. I’ve never enjoyed indoor biking before but the whole experience being gamified and the drafting dynamics included in the game really make it fun and relevant to inline racing. Mentally it’s so much easier to push yourself when you have to fight to stay in the peloton rather than if you were just watching a Youtube video on the side or reading a book.
Theoretically, Zwift allows me to hop off the bike as soon as my daughter needs attention. I started my Zwift journey by doing a few group rides, and while those were a lot of fun they do require uninterrupted time. It was hard to leave the group ride if my daughter starts crying (which is kind of the point of me indoor cycling), so I later transitioned to the auto pacer rides so I can teleport back to the pacer if and when I needed to hop off the bike, and solo Z2 workouts on days I just want to flush out my legs. I’m still a beginner zwifter but I’m sure I will have more learnings to share at this time next year. I guess one learning I can share so far is that a fan is absolutely necessary - I was sweating buckets the first 2 weeks where I didn't have one.
During the peak of the season I was able to stay active 5-6 days a week via Zwift, which was probably more than before I became a father. While only 2 of them were skating sessions, they were very high quality sessions (Empire speed practices) and eliminated what my AI assistants call “junk miles” (i.e. WNS) from my regimen, so it may have been a net positive. It got rid of unproductive fatigue and ensured every time I was skating I was practicing proper technique.
Side Note: My AI usage this season probably deserves it’s own blog post, so stay tuned
Going into September my goal was to finish on the podium for every race I participated in, which would be the Breezy 10k, North Shore, and NYC Skate Marathons. I didn’t know if that was realistic or not but what’s the harm in aiming high? This is my first full race season so a lot of it will be about setting benchmarks for future goals even if this goal wasn’t met.
Playing around with some sprints after the race while waiting for the awards ceremonyAlison and I - with Allegra probably catching up after the hairpin
This was a local bike time trial that extended registration to include skaters. It’s awesome that somebody is willing to put on races like this as inline speed skating isn’t exactly a mainstream sport nowadays, so I’m very grateful to Alex the organizer and encourage everyone in the NY skate community to support these whenever they come up. The participants ended up being mostly members of Empire Speed in the Adult race and a LOT of kids from Idols - a local junior skate club. It is awesome and encouraging to see the next generation of skaters be so much bigger than the current one.
I’m pretty sure we all knew from the start this was a race for 2nd. Coach Adiel was a few minutes ahead of all of us just casually doing cardio. In a full marathon there is no way I am keeping up with Alison and Allegra who have so much more endurance and experience than me, but in a 10k (effectively one central park lap) I knew I had a shot if I skated smart. A few nights before this race we did some race simulations in Central park and I was able to hang onto Allegra who was actively trying to drop me so I thought, maybe delusionally, that I could keep up in this distance. Alison on the other hand I hadn’t skated with all year but know he’s at a similar level to Allegra. I was never able to keep up with him last year, but looking at his Strava he’s mostly been biking lately so my hope was that he was a little out of practice on skates.
As the race started we got into a paceline behind Adiel. The course was about 4 miles west with a tailwind, then a hairpin turn into 2 miles back the way we came into a headwind. I think I was sitting behind Alison at the beginning in the 3rd position, with Adiel in the 1st position. About a mile in Adiel started breaking away from the group. When he was maybe 100 feet from the rest of us I was feeling good so I decided to solo chase. This was stupid - I ended up burning a lot of energy for no reason, I did not close the gap to Adiel, and Alison and Allegra caught up to me anyways. We did, however, drop the rest of the field in that surge. There was no way I was ever going to hang onto Adiel for the whole race, but my thought process for chasing was if I was able to draft him for a minute or two and nobody follows, that might just open up a gap that can’t be closed in such a short race. I don’t know if that would have worked or not, but I definitely acted too late and half assed it. If I wanted to chase I needed to do that immediately as soon as he started creating a gap rather than wait until he was 100 feet ahead of the rest of us. Luckily the race was too short for this mistake to burn me.
The rest of the race was a 3 man paceline with Alison, Allegra, and I. It was actually pretty chill and relaxing since none of us were that interested in pulling. I probably ended up pulling the most, but every time I was at the front I just slowed the pace down to whatever I was comfortable with to conserve energy. If somebody else wanted to go faster I’d be happy to let them take the lead, and if it came down to a field sprint at the finish line that was a scenario that I felt would be in my favor, so the plan was to save my legs for that.
The hairpin turn at 4 mile mark was deceptively difficult. Even though the road looked spacious and we slowed down for it, my turn was so wide I almost hit the curb. I know Allegra also had trouble with it and ended up falling behind there and having to catch up, and I later learned that she actually wiped out there. During our previous Central Park race simulations Adiel joked that when Andrey expended a lot of energy to finally catch us after an attack, Allegra immediately (and unknowingly) took off again and dropped him. I tried to avenge Andrey here - I could hear her panting after hauling ass to catch up and tried to surge immediately to see if I could drop her. I couldn’t, her endurance was too good. But maybe it burned a bit of her energy reserve. I definitely feel like her falling behind at the hairpin tired her out and prevented her from skating to her own strength which is being able to maintain a high pace for much longer than I can. From that point on it felt like a game of chicken with the pulls until we came off what looked like a highway exit and I saw Alison starting to make a break. I was not familiar with this course, but I looked up and saw the finish line on the horizon which meant the time to sprint was NOW. Luckily, I had preserved enough legs to sprint to the end. I’m not sure how much of it had to do with me being on 4x110 (and brand new Manao wheels) vs Alison’s 3x125 but I was somehow able to hold on and take 2nd place.
My first podium finish
Race Retrospective
What Went Well:
I was racing for placement rather than worrying about time (something I would somewhat fail to do at North Shore). Our time in this race was in the ballpark of 19 minutes, which is actually slower than what we can do in Central Park despite the tailwind for 2/3 of the race and it being a completely flat course.
Kept a pace I was comfortable with when I had to pull
What I Would do Differently:
Chasing Adiel at the beginning. I needed to either react more quickly or not chase at all. It ended up being wasted energy
Possibly could have spent less time pulling. But it was a paceline of 3 so pulling was unavoidable.
This was definitely my A race, the race I have been so desperately wanting to do having missed out last year. Everyone told me how fast and fun this course was, and it seemed like a course that suits my strengths well (fast and not a grindfest like Prospect Park hill x8).
At the beginning of the season, I set a goal for myself to finish the race in 1:20. I had never skated anywhere close to that at Prospect Park, so it being a point to point race with a net elevation loss it felt like a reasonable stretch goal. As I did more research into how much time people shave off their Prospect Park times (some upwards of 20 minutes), it became clear that I needed to be more aggressive with my goal. I shifted my goal down to 1:15, and started to get into my own head that I can actually win something. Maybe my age group, maybe the advanced 1 wave.
My gameplan heading into the race was simple, start off fast - sprint if I have to in order to avoid the chaos at the beginning, then fall back and not pull or attack for the rest of the race until Lemon Drop Hill at the earliest.
Jumping out to the front of the pack at the startEmpire speed leading the pack
As the Advanced 1 wave lined up at the starting line, I was able to weasel my way to the front of the wave right up at the start line with my teammates Andrey and Asael right behind me. So when the gun went off, I was able to just take off and get to the very front of the race. So far so good - I was leading the race for about 2-3 minutes before I bothered to look behind me. What I saw was the biggest paceline I have ever seen (I literally could not see the end of it), in addition to a SECOND paceline that started creeping up towards me. I was, however, happy to see that the person directly behind me was Andrey, so I turned around and told him “I’m going to accelerate to try to break up the pack”, which was one of the strategies suggested by coach Adiel. I ended up attacking one small uphill, fell back a bit and Andrey attacked the next uphill. I’m not sure how well this worked and if we even dropped anybody - I didn’t look back as much as I should have during the race; but at the very least that 2nd paceline didn’t catch up to us.
Falling back in the paceline is something that I will need to work with coach on for next year. In practice we do drills moving up the paceline and falling back to the end of the paceline, but we never practice falling back into the middle of a paceline. I was not willing to fall back 100+ spots in that giant paceline so I tried to squeeze into any gap I could find in the top 10 positions. Because the paceline is moving faster than me as I fall back, I almost took out the guy I was trying to squeeze in front of. This psyched me out a bit and resulted in me just opting to pull for a lot of the race, which went completely against the gameplan and my strengths, more on that in a bit.
Anyways, a few other skaters started to trade pulls for a few miles until those people started falling off. It ended up being Andrey and I trading pulls for much of the race which was not a good strategy. Daniel Uribe from the Junk team who we had met a few weeks ago in Prospect Park ended up skating with our pack (I think he had some kind of injury and had to fall back from the elite pack), and when he saw me at the front he was like “Jeff, what are you doing that’s not how you race!”. Valid criticism. It was a combination of being uncomfortable falling back into the paceline and being overly worried about my time (I had set that sub 1:15 goal) that caused me to stay at the front for as long as I did. I think Andrey and I were skating like it was a time trial rather than a race. Luckily it worked out for us in the end but we definitely did too much work for too many people.
Andrey ended up pulling us through the shitty construction zone leading up to lemon drop hill. At many points throughout this stretch I thought I was actually going to drop, my legs were getting pretty fatigued at this point, but I somehow managed to hang on. After lemon drop hill the pace picked up quite a bit as we were nearing the end of the race. I was able to (intentionally) fall back to roughly the 10th position to get some rest here. I knew I needed to save some legs for the final push. As we headed up the ramp on the highway exit, disaster almost struck. I must have hit some kind of crack, my legs went into a hawk position (something I have never practiced) and I felt my legs seize a bit. With a stroke of luck I was able to pull my feet together and stay upright, but that took quite a lot out of me. I think we were all laboring at that point. As expected, after 26 miles of tailwind, as soon as we looped around the Duluth convention center we were met with a face full of headwind. I had no legs by then, so I tucked in behind Andrey here and braced myself for the last hundred-ish feet of the race around the next corner.
In the end I was maybe 4th or 5th in the paceline to cross the line. I would later learn that this was enough to win my age group by just 1 second. Mission accomplished. While I would have liked to also have been first overall in the advanced 1 wave to cross the line as well, there is no award for that - though I think there should be. I am genuinely very happy that one of the people who finished ahead of me was my teammate - Asael. Asael (50-54), Andrey (40-44), and I (30-34) were all in the front of the lead pack the entire race and finished within 2 seconds of each other, and all ended up winning our age groups. I am very happy to see this because something I struggle with mentally is aging. I started this sport pretty late in life at 32 and am now 34, I feel like I'm running out of time and that I wasted my 20's from a physical and talent standpoint. I am on the wrong side of the hill so one of my fears is not being able to improve from here. As I age I will certainly lose some of my explosiveness first which is currently still my biggest strength, but seeing the two of them do so well gives me hope and inspiration that there is a higher ceiling I can reach and that I can still improve from here.
Three age group Champions - Andrey, Asael, and IPodium photo
Race Retrospective
What went well:
Able to start the race off according to plan. Was able to lead the race at the beginning and avoided all chaos of having to fight for position with 100+ skaters.
Results wise, this was a huge success for myself and my team. We all smashed our PR's and personal goals, while 3 of us won our age groups. Adiel and Allegra also took home the national champion titles in the elite wave, and Empire Speed came in 2nd place overall in team placements behind only Shea Stokes, which is a team of professional, funded, world champion caliber skaters.
Skating as a team: Having Andrey and Asael along allowed a few moments where we were able to coordinate surges, allow each other back into the paceline, etc...
What could have gone better:
Strategy wise this race was a huge disaster, for myself and Andrey specifically. Way too much time and energy spent pulling which almost cost us the race. Ironically it was my fitness/endurance, what I considered to be my weakness, that managed to help me hang on to the front of the group until the end. Being able to stay at the front of the paceline the entire race is certainly something I can be proud of physically, but should be ashamed of tactically
Surging: After this race and the Breezy 10k, it was clear that I underestimated just how hard it is to break away from a large pack, from the standpoint of both someone initiating a surge and someone deciding to react. During my first acceleration at North Shore, I really expected fewer people to be able to follow, but the paceline stayed with me. We may have dropped a few skaters, but I couldn't see the back of the pack either way. Mid-race surges by other skaters were equally easy for us to close, nobody was ever able to break away and maintain the distance. It seems like in order to break away and hold a gap, you need to be head and shoulders above the rest of the field Bart Swings style - the way Adiel was at Breezy Point. In the future, every surge I make needs a clear purpose with tempered expecations (like dropping a struggling skater panting behind me or shedding the back 10% of the paceline) and must be an hard sprint, not a gradual acceleration.
Race was cancelled due to the Nor'easter storm and the downed trees in Prospect Park. Not much worth talking about - my heart goes out to the organizers who spent so much time trying to make this race happen and probably need to eat a lot of the cost, as well as those who flew in to the city to participate. Hopefully you were able to enjoy NYC even in the rain - not the worst place in the world to be stuck
Setting clear goals: I never realized the value and power of goal setting in life until this season. The mentality of every session having a clear purpose and building towards a goal makes them so much more meaningful and productive.
Competition: Without thinking about the races I don’t think I could have been as motivated to work as hard as I did, and make the progress that I did. Like everyone else I have days where I feel tired, I don’t feel like getting off my bed or my couch. But then the thought creeps into my mind that someone who I will be racing against somewhere is skating, working harder than me - the thought of that gave me the drive to get up skate or work out every day. When people just work out with a hand-wavey goal of getting fit, I don’t think that is effective or mentally sustainable - people need to set clear goals and milestones, and competition is a form of that.
Cross Training: Introducing Zwift to my regimen in many ways saved my season when I wasn’t able to skate much, and I am excited to ramp up the intensity of the rides in the offseason rather than just Z2 training. I would also love to get into outdoor cycling, even if just for fun. But whether I can do that will depend on my living situation and if I have space to store a bike. Maybe I’ll settle for a Brompton, who knows. But eventually I would like a road bike because it opens me up to a much larger community. I expect there is a higher density of cyclers who share the same mentality as speed skaters - people who are committed to being 1% better each and every day and carry a growth mentality. The people who have that in the Skate community is embarrassingly low.
Results: I could not have asked for anything more - 2nd place in Breezy point, as well as winning my age group at North Shore with a time of 1:10. I am bummed that I couldn’t test myself against elite skaters in Prospect Park at the NYC marathon, but maybe it’s good to leave something to be desired for next year.
What I would do different:
Commit to not over pulling: In both my races I spent way too much time pulling, I need to just be more shameless and not care about time or what people think of me. I will also need to figure out how to safely fall back to a position further back in the paceline. That was a skill I needed and never practiced; what we did practice a lot was moving UP the paceline, something I didn’t do once. Maybe if I was racing Elite/Pro wave the paceline dynamics would be different, but I think this should be part of our team’s Chaos drills.
Strength Training: As I mentioned in the offseason retro, this is something I lack and where I think I have a lot of room to see rapid growth
Social Skating: While I think it was a net positive to reduce the volume of social skates during the season, I do think I need try to attend a few during the season (time/child permitting) to remind myself how much fun and liberating skating is. It's not that my training isn't fun, but I was so singularly focused on North Shore that I got a little mentally burnt out towards the end of the season. Besides that, social skating is also a great way to market and recruit for Empire Speed - whenever someone asks "how do you get so fast" I point them to our IG. I have always been (hypocritically) adamant that Empire Speed does not have enough of a presence in the social skating scene, so I need to be the change I want to see.
Moving to 3x125(?): Undecided whether I want to commit to moving to 3x125 from 4x110. On one hand, my ankles were pretty fatigued after North Shore even on 4x110 and I’m not sure if it makes sense where we train (Prospect/Central Park) with the uphills. On the other hand, all the top elite skaters are on 3x125 - sometimes you gotta throw yourself into the deep end and commit to making it work.
Coming home from North Shore with a gold medal mattered to me for one simple reason, even if 99.99% of the world couldn't care less about an inline skate race.
At the end of the day, I wanted my own success story to share with my daughter one day — a firsthand example of what it actually takes to set a goal, then embrace the structure, commitment, determination, and quiet sacrifices required to reach it. This is why I'm taking the time to write this down in the first place. It’s easy to give others advice on how they should live or work hard, etc..., but that carries little weight if you haven't found success in your own life first. I’m not going to force her into speed skating if she doesn’t want, but the mentality that I carried into this season is something I’m very proud of and something I think will translate well into whatever she (or I) chooses to pursue.
My 2027 season has begun. I’m not going to lie, at this moment my motivation is not as clear as it was at this time last year. My goals aren’t quite set yet. North Shore is definitely still my "A" race. I’m not sure if I want to do Advanced 1 again, or give Elite a shot. From what I hear the surge and stop dynamics of Elite may actually suit me better stylistically, but I worry I’ll be racing to not get last place rather than racing to get 1st in Advanced. I will see how I feel by summer next year. I will also need to podium for the NYC 42k since it didn’t happen this year. My goal this year was to hang on to the paceline of the top 100k skaters for 8 laps while they do their 19 - this will need to carry over to next year. Most of my teammates do the 100k in NYC and that is certainly the more “prestigious” race but at this time I don’t think signing up for that is putting myself in a position to shine at what I do best.
One non performance goal I have on mind is to help grow the Empire Speed team and the sport of inline speed skating in New York. NY has a strong social skating scene but a relatively small speed skating scene. It is such a privilege that we get to skate with and learn from Elite skaters like Adiel and Allegra, completely free of charge out of the kindness of their hearts (conversely we usually get free banana bread). Not nearly enough people in the city know about or take advantage of this. Not everybody needs to aim to be a top level competitive speed skater, but I see way too many people who pile on the miles without ever improving. There is no reason why a skater should not aim to be faster and more efficient if you are skating anyways - it just makes the experience so much more enjoyable. I see a lot of people at WNS get so excited from bombing a downhill. I think its the adrenaline of the wind hitting their face at speed that makes them feel that high. But why do you need a downhill, you can get that sensation anytime, on a flat, if you learn how to skate properly. I wish more people knew how big of a difference minor changes to their technique can make. I remember talking to a friend of mine Sebastian from TNS who was complimenting my endurance during one of our skates - I told him my endurance is actually average and it’s actually my technique that makes me work much less then everyone else, and he asked “So the difference between you and the rest of us is just technique?”. Yes Sebastian, yes it is. I’m not sure if he believed me hehe.
A longer term goal which I have not shared with anyone until now is to be, at some distance, the fastest skater in New York. There are 2 ways I know of to "prove" your speed: one is racing, the second is Strava segments. The shortest race I have access to is 10k (~6 miles). At these distances and above I see the gap between myself and seasoned skaters like Coach Adiel, Allegra, and a few others as very big. Besides that, I am pretty sure genetically my body is built more for sprints rather than long sustained efforts. Over the last 2 years I've been working hard to improve my endurance but there is only so much you can do to fight against biology. I can become a very good long distance skater but I don't think I will ever be the "best" (as in competitive in pro/elite races), so realistically I will need to hunt some shorter distance Strava segments if I want to prove anything. I had a goal this year to get at least 1 KOM on Strava and have been able to accumulate 8 so far, though I realized most of them are meaningless stretches on the West Side highway that no speed skater ever does. The one I am proud of is Cat Hill Skate, as that is a short sprint on the Central Park loop. It's a stretch that I believe most speed skaters would try to push hard on at some point, and a short uphill sprint like this is my bread and butter. I also had to knock off Francisco (founder of Junk Wheels and my Coach's former coach - owns the KOMs for almost every meaningful segment in the city) to take that top spot. But I guess I will find and hunt more segments like this going forward - open to other ideas.
Segment · KOMAug 13, 2026
Cat Hill Skate
0.2 mi · 3.8% avg grade · New York, New York
0:39
attempts
87
faster than first try
−0:47
King of the Mountain
May 17, 202640 efforts · faster is higherSep 15, 2026
To whoever reads this, if anyone at all, thank you for your time and I hope my journey and learnings will help yours as well. Now that I’ve built this blog maybe I’ll start doing this more regularly, after every event/milestone rather than once a season. I know blogging isn’t “in” anymore and people are more interested in Vlogs but I don’t feel like I’m charismatic enough to step in front of a camera and talk to myself for an hour. I’m treating this as a journal where the main audience is future me, my daughter (when she learns how to read), and my skater friends/teammates.
Coach Adiel: Words cannot describe how fortunate we are to be able to learn from and train alongside such an elite skater, all for free and out of your own passion. I am sure you would get a better workout if you skated on your own or chased bikes rather than skate with us (relative) slowpokes but you always make sure the practice is valuable for everyone who attends. I wish more people in the city would take advantage of this privilege and am committed to recruiting more people to the team.
Allegra: Adiels' other half. Thank you for doing so much for the team: allowing us to use your dance studio for offseason training, making banana bread for us every chance you get, organizing the North Shore trip, etc.... The two of you set the bar so high and that elevates the skill level of the entire team - being able to chase you and Adiel and seeing how long I can hang on before I inevitably get dropped is what I look forward to most on a week by week basis and where I see the most growth personally.
Andrey: Without a doubt the person I've skated the most miles with for the 2nd straight year (and ever). Your relentless commitment to showing up each and every day pushes not only me but everyone else to get up, go skate, and be the best version of ourselves even when we don't feel like it. Having you around on Tuesdays makes it so much more fun when we go on breakaways, sometimes several minutes ahead of the rest of the group. It makes them still technically a "group" skate haha
Jim (TNS): One of my favorite people in the city, you have done such an incredible job running Tuesday Night Skate all these years and keeping it fresh, safe, inclusive, and fun for everyone. I think TNS is where I "found myself", it is such a liberating feeling exploring parts of the city I'd usually never go on skates and I feel the most alive when I am at TNS. I haven't been able to come as frequently as of late due to daddy duties but I do plan to keep coming regularly, so don't worry I'll be around :)
Everyone else part of Empire Speed and Tuesday Night skate. Listing everyone would blow up what is already a big wall of text, but if you bothered to read up to this point you're probably in one of these 2 groups already and know who you are. Thank you so much for all you do for the skate community and I look forward to more skates with you guys in 2027 and beyond.
1 comment
Way to go!!!! 🔥