Saturday got off to an exciting start as we met and got pictures taken with Olympic long track ice champion Derek Parra who even let us hold his Olympic medals.  Lake and Jonathan Nobles skated in the Advanced distance Disney Kids All-Star Classic skate along with a lot of the usual suspects from Team Florida , Team FAST and GT Speed.  The boys both skated great, Lake ’s form was amazing for someone who does not practice outdoors and Jonathan chased down and hawked a girl at the line!

Sunday it took a while for the excitement to build from the 4:30am wake up call.  We all made it to the Disney parking lot at 5 (dark:30am) in the morning.  It was fun seeing the over 1,700 skaters from 37 states and 7 countries lined up in the parking lot.  We saw our old teammate Barry Drenkhahn who was skating in the Pro division for the Wolverines team.

Race conditions could have been improved on and that is putting it nicely.  The temp was about 75 at the 6:00am start and the humidity was over 100%!  Since it had rained the night before a large portion of the course was wet.  I mean the wooden boardwalks were ‘unskatable’ wet!  Talking to some of the Pro’s afterward they said a large pack of them had gone down on one of the boardwalks and they all just slid into a pile across it!  The race was won by the amazing Joey Mantia of Team Florida/Hyper.  I think I saw more road rash than any skate or bike race I have ever been to.  SSC faired pretty well though with only one of the six of us falling.

GT Speed did not fair as well.  Kathryn Hyzer of GT fell twice and the second one earned her the award of first skater to make the trip in the ambulance to the Celebration hospital.  A broken wrist, but hey no new road rash!  Thanks to all of the SSC skaters and support families who retrieved Kathryn from the hospital and helped get her as far back home as Tallahassee .

Bill Fokes was possibly the smartest of the SSC skaters as he decided a few miles into the race that he was just not up to fighting the tretcherous course and bailed.  Harper and Matt Gressel both finished safely with no spills in just over two hours.  Pam Nobles took a fall early in the first of the two laps only to be caught just before she hit the ground by Reggie.  She regrouped but fell again on the wet pavement and decided to make her skate a half marathon, completing the first lap.  Reggie then went on to finish his first ever inline marathon along side Dan O’Neill with a time of one hour fifty one minutes.  A great race time for both of them.

I managed to overcome my fear of the wet surface and the two wet off-ramp down hills to finish my first inline marathon in an hour and thirty nine minutes.  I was actually guided into the finish area by none other than Derek Parra himself, avoiding the mistaken finish line turn made by a group of the pro women.  I actually placed second in my category and got to get up on the podium with Jennifer Rodriquez and men’s second place overall finisher Dane Lewis of Hyper to receive my medal.

After the race I got to meet famous inline skate web master Peter Doucet of Canada.  Read his report of the race and check out HIS opinion of the boardwalks from the Pro pack viewpoint!  He has some good pictures of his wild trip to Disney also.

Thanks to Dan’s wife Nancy and Pam’s mom and sister for their support during the race. 

SSC Results by Nancy O

See the race report on SkateLog.com

Official Disney results posted here.  

Report on GT's site.

Kids All-Star Classic Pictures!!

  Marathon Pictures!!