Athens-to-Atlanta: World's Greatest Roadskate

I'd like to meet:

Skaters, volunteers and friends.

Athens-to-Atlanta welcomes skaters from six continents. We'd like to meet more skaters from small towns - anywhere in the world - skaters that would love to find other skaters out there that share a love of the open road, of meeting new friends and reconnecting with old ones, and of celebrating together through this annual gathering.

For road skaters of every flavor - fitness, recreational, speed skaters, inline or quad, pro and team skaters - Athens-to-Atlanta is the most anticipated event on the calendar of skaters the world over.

From San Diego to Boston, from Sweden to China, from Australia to Japan, from Russia to Korea, from Montreal to Columbia, from Detroit to Hawaii, from Seattle to Ft. Lauderdale, from Tahiti to Timbuktu - the training season for the skating-year culminates in Athens-to-Atlanta.

Old (and new) friends gather on Friday night for a skating survey of the evening skylines of mid and downtown Atlanta, celebrate on Saturday with a fun-skate in downtown Athens, and tighten their laces at dawn on Sunday morning for the 7:30 departure for the skate to Piedmont Park in Atlanta - 87 miles away (or one of the other events offered).

Athens-to-Atlanta: every skater's favorite road skate.

TRAINING FEATURES:

Note: speed skating skills NOT required for A2A - but better skating is always a good thing... Stay tuned for more great videos.

These videos do not cover basic, core-conditioning: crunches, back-ups, pushups, etc. - or cardiovascular conditioning with a heart-rate monitor. For that info, see the A2A Group Forums or the A2A Listserv

DRY LAND SKATING
Courtesy of the Ottawa Inline Skating Club - thank you for these great training videos!

PLYOMETRICS for DRY LAND SKATING

Plyometrics increase strength, coordination and balance; the following two videos cover the basic skating leap and cross-overs.

PLYOMETRIC: SKATE LEAP WITH TOUCH BACK

PLYOMETRIC: CROSS OVER BOUNDING

For self guided plyometrics training (with 30+ demo videos),
visit the extensive online program online at the

Ottawa Inline Skating Club

- and their excellent resource list at the bottom of that page.

THE DOUBLE PUSH
An essential speed skater's tool. Superb training from eight-time winner of Athens-to-Atlanta, Eddy Matzger: how to "double push" - or power stroke on the outstroke AND the return. Eddy breaks the stroke into bite-size parts, then puts the pieces togther. Thank you, Eddy.

Courtesy of LondonSkaters.com: thanks, Mike!

Click to visit:
Eddy Matzger's "Skate Central"
Eddy Matzger's Workshop Schedule
Scheduled workshops - near you, and at the Skate Farm
Eddy Matzger's Skate Farm
- Train at Eddy's farm in the beautiful Virginia mountains

DOUBLE PUSH FOR PACE LINE BREAK-OUT
Pascal Briand, Team Salomon World Champion Speed Skater: great use of Double Push to break-out of a pace line and decisively take the lead (including slo-mo review). Coaching by Christophe Audoir.

PACE LINE BREAK-OUT
Team RollerBlade DP - watch slo-mo of skater leaping out to attack with a sprint (great footage).

TEAM TRAINING
Great Slovenian speed skating team footage:

EXTREME HILL BREAKING - THE DEATH ARCH

Eddy Matzger taught himself to skate on the hills of San Francisco... His amazing, uber slalom-breaking performance on an narrow, rail-less arch over a river in Seoul, Korea:

Courtesy of LondonSkaters.com: thanks, Mike!

_____________________________

INSANE! BONUS VIDEO
80 KPH ON ONE LEG
BACKWARDS ON 10% DOWNHILL GRADE!

Meet Enrico "Fearless" Perano :

Music:

Any music you can skate to!
Wheeled-mania: buckle-up for some crazy rides!

THE 31-WHEEL ROLLER-TRANSFORMER!
Ten wheels weren't enough... Roller-Transformer Frenchman Jean-Yves Blondeau tackles bridges, garage ramps, iceless concrete bobsled chutes, the streets and sidewalks of Paris and the French countryside on his custom-designed 31-wheel rollersuit - fully equiped for rolling on feet, hands, elbows, knees, chest and back... And he does.

NOW FOR SOME SERIOUS SPEED
French cruise missle Jean-Yves Blondeau - in his 60 MPH, 31-wheel, full-body inline skate wheel suit - competing in the 2003 IGSA (International Gravity Sports Association) World Championships.

If you're dying for one more Jean-Yves video, click Urban Roller-Commando Transformer video.

NEW YORK BICYCLE MADNESS!
To Guns 'n Roses Welcome to the Jungle - Lucas Brunelle's classic video of a cycle couriers' jam race in heavy New York traffic... this is beyond insane:

Hats off to bicycle and skate messengers everywhere...

MOZART - BY ROLLERBLADE
A New Yorker plays the theme from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor - on bottles, with specially equipped RollerBlades:

Creative ways to waste time

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

LEARNING SPEED ON SKATES
Saudi Arabian style - to beautiful Middle Eastern music:

Saudi Speed Skating Practice for 2015 Olympics

Movies:

All the great skating movies:
"The Rink" Charlie Chaplin
"Shall We Dance" Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers
"The Fireball" Marilyn Monroe & Mickey Roony
"Monkey Business" Cary Grant + Ginger & Marilyn
"It's Always Fair Weather" Gene Kelly & Cyd Charisse
"The Shaggy D.A." Dean Jones & Suzanne Pleshette
"Skatetown U.S.A." Scott Baio & Melissa Sue Anderson
"Zanadu" Olivia Newton-John
"Wheels on Meals" Jackie Chan
"Roller Blade"
"Subway" Isabelle Adjani
"Solarbabies" Richard Jordan, Jami Gertz
"Roller Blade Warriors" Kathleen Kinmont & Jack Damon
"The Rollerblade Seven" Scott Shaw & Frank Stallone
"Prayer of the Roller Boys" Corey Haim & Patricia Arquette
"Airborne" Shane McDermott & Seth Green
"Return of The Rollerblade Seven" Scott Shaw & Joe Estevez
"Boogie Nights" Mark Wahlberg & Burt Reynolds
"Blade Squad" Yancey Arias & Kirk Baltz
"Brink" Erik von Detten & Sam Horrigan
"Virgo" Heidi Fast & Minttu Järvelä
"Dogma" Ben Affleck & Bud Cort
"Rollerball" Chris Klein & LL Cool J
Documentaries/Shorties:
The Woes of Roller Skates (1908)
Around the Equator on Roller Skates (1932)
Eddie Duchin and His Orchestra with a skate team - ALL on skates (1933)
A Date to Skate (1938)
Every Dog's Guide to the Playground (1991)

Television:

CRASH VIDEOS The Agony of Defeat

Spectacular inline skate crashes and recoveries (please don't recommend videos of crashes that resulted in serious injuries):

NEAR MISS WITH BUS
It doesn't take an extreme skater to lose focus for a moment:

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS CRASH
An American skater crashes just a few meters from the finish at the Inline Skating World Championships in Anyang Korea:

CRASH HIGHLIGHTS
Motley Crew "Wild Side" - World's top speed skating athletes in speed skating crashes and falls during races:

Books:

Some great skating books:

Children's
"It's Great to Skate! An Easy Guide to Inline Skating"
Alexa Witt and Nate Evans (Ready to Read/Level 2)

Beginning (some to Intermediate) "Babes on Blades" Susan Davis
"In-Line Skating Basics" Cam Miller & Bruce Curtis
"Get Rolling: The Beginners Guide" Liz Miller
"Fitness Inline Skating" Liz Miller
"Inline! Beginning to Intermediate" William Nealy
"Fitness In-Line Skating" Suzanne Nottingham
"In-Line Skating" Mark Powell & John Svensson
"The Complete In-Line Skater" Joel Rappelfeld

Intermediate
"A Basic Guide to Speed Skating" Barry Publow

Advanced
"Advanced In-Line Skating" Liz Miller
"Speed on Skates" Barry Publow

German
"Ausdauertrainer Inline - Skating. Training mit System" Kuno Hottenrott

Spanish
"Patinaje En Linea" Joel Rappelfeld

Heroes:

BEAUTIFUL SKATING

FREESTYLE ON THE GREAT WALL
Spectacular setting & skating. World Champion Sebastien Laffargue (myspace.com/universeb) and Zhuo Cheng... beautiful work, gents - thank you for sharing:

MORE SPECTACULAR CONES
From the UK, courtesy Neovich at myspace.com/neovich - thank you!:

Slaloming

FROM CONES ON THE WALL - TO DOWNHILL Sebastien Laffargue in the World Inline Downhill Championships from France in 2005 - great video: