Have You Touched a Winner Today?!

I love being a winner.

Yesterday I competed in my very first speed skating meet.  In an act of pure grace, the organizers of this event relented and permitted me to race in my quads.  THANK GOD.  The inlines need a substantial amount of work before I don't look totally stupid while skating in them.  It's possible that the primary reason they allowed me to skate in quads is that no one else was racing in my division.  As a result, I WON!  You may think that winning was a forgone conclusion, but no:  I could have disqualified.
Speed skating meets seem to go like this:  Doors open at 5 am, races start at 6.  The people who are there appear to accept that 6 am is a perfectly normal time to be competing in an athletic event.  I disagree, however after about 30 minutes I forgot about the time and got caught up in the whole thing.  The racers were mostly kids.  They were between about 5 and 18.  Every single one of them was faster than every single adult I saw race.  It was astonishing.

Then there was this issue of apparel.  I mentioned before that speed skaters compete in a garment known as a 'skin suit.'  I'm going to go ahead and refer to it as a 'unitard.'  It is possibly the least dignified thing I have ever worn.  I had previously held some sort of belief in my mind that they were optional and encouraged, but I was informed that they are in fact required.  To try and ease the pain I elected to wear the most awesome tights I could find and ALL of my derby gear.  This caused one of the women in my heat to look at me with some concern and ask whether I knew that this was not a contact sport.
Oh yeah, did I mention I was the only one there in quads?
The races were 5, 7, and 10 laps and then we were done.  When I say laps, I mean big laps around the entire rink, not derby laps.  However, I was surprised that the entire thing went so quickly.  I was also surprised at how much adrenaline the it inspired.  I like racing.  It would be significantly more awesome, however, if I were actually racing against someone going at more or less my speed.  Having a goal of not being lapped more than once by people using faster equipment is kind of boring.  Therefore, I'm committing to actually figuring out how to skate on inlines.  Starting tonight.
<originally posted on 2.12.12>