Join the ISSA 25 cone series. One cyber race every second month!

Regular sessions allow newbies to join our community and discover slalom racing.

John Gilmour

IMHO the great thing about the 100 cone event is that there are no set standards except we can expect to use "the standard" cone size. So there is really little bickering over hill- surface, wind conditions- whatever. The fact that the start is at the first cone and finishes at the last cone (we cou...

John Gilmour

IMHO start ramps should not make site selection easier. You should find a spot that does not need a start ramp.....then put a start ramp up. Making a big ramp and having a slight pitch makes for a lousy race in general compared to having a decent hill and no ramp. One place where I think a start ram...

John Gilmour

I completely agree with Jack that we need more race- but more local races and we someday need a tiered system of races. What we actually need most are "permanent local slalom courses". People should not look to Myself, Jack Smith, and other Old generation skaters to start these. We've done it alread...

John Gilmour

Ready for a long post? A few things about the road- some related to this thread and a few things not. This is to paraphrase from some things I read/head about paving and road usage. Uuuuh, I actually made it all up. Road Quality. In The USA we have many different paving contractors and our road qual...

John Gilmour

This post is of course related to further growth of the sport- and is made under the assumption that this sport MUST grow to continue to support the manufacturers and hence availabily of the gear. BACKGROUND: With the largest amount of "coming out of retirement slalom Pro's", FCR's series based in C...

John Gilmour

I gotta know....is there smack already flying around in your yahoo class amongst the students...sidebets?

John Gilmour

Greyhound has a special starting at $15.

John Gilmour

Adam! You gave Magnesium Mids to Ed Economy- I need those for Europe! I swear I'll give them back to Ed after I'm done with them.

John Gilmour

My thoughts are that slalom has to be presented correctly to the public. I started a "night skate" to help fund my races to Europe in the 1990's. I had heard about one in DC and decided to start my own version of a "Niteskate". I charged Inline skater women $10 for light sticks (Most were from my In...

John Gilmour

All things considered, if there ARE Hooters girls at the race- I automatically win, because I can't lose. A hot bath is one thing, a steak dinner another...BUT....Now we are talking REAL racing. No wonder those Nascar drivers put it all on the line. Let's assume we were watching a new wheeled sport ...

John Gilmour

The funny thing about the cone spacing is that if you think you can go faster by making the cone spacing larger by say.....1 foot. Well there are 99 cone spacings in 100 cones so you just made the course 99 feet longer. Somehow it all seems to come out pretty much the same. At about 7.5 feet on a se...

John Gilmour

One of the best East Coast slalom venues in terms of having both good pitch and surface- no crown on the road either. It has potential for one of the best race sites. Setting a course on the steep hill was tricky though as there were places where the pitch changed and hte speed of the course was mor...

John Gilmour

We really should.

John Gilmour

Well I did not have my warm bath or steak-and the Canadian Bacon for breakfast wasn't helping. I managed to get to the race a little late (couldn't find the race site) and searching for for a "balanced meal" I gulped down 3 of these "Energy Protein -no carb drinks" not realizing until I drank them t...

John Gilmour

A j series of cones is also a pretty cool challenge. Imaging the small letter j now set another straight set of cones after the j going in the opposite direction.

Takes some judgement- but it is fun.

John Gilmour

I happen to like tight slalom- but 5.5 feet is very tight for most people starting out.

Have you tried any other distances in this space?

And are you referring to the distance on center or the space between the cones?

John Gilmour

I think you are right about a lot of the video content. Unfortunately as not many skating adults are buying videos -the producers cater mostly to adolesent kids. I think it would be really funny if tennis adopted a hardcore image. Somehow McEnroe's temper tantrums weren't all that convincing to me. ...

John Gilmour

Started on Hang Ten with Chicago trucks and Hang Ten wheels, Then a Wayne Brown Kicktail with Road Rider 4's and Suregrips, then I got my first real turny trucks. Bennett Hijackers. Changed everything. I couldn't mount the Bennetts on my Wayne Brown as the hole patterens were different and I did not...

John Gilmour

Maybe Wesley just has had a different experience. I am not a huge fan of organized sports like Baseball, Basketball, Football,etc. (Damn if we could have the salary of just one benched NBA player for our entire sport we would be making real progress) Why, Perhaps because so often I see one player ta...

John Gilmour

I do think slalom can be a great spectator sport. It was in 1976. We would have hundreds of people line the entire length of a course standing within 3 feet of the cones- perhaps 5- 8 people deep. The people would part as the skaters went through- and jump back in to watch them go by. We were flying...

John Gilmour

I thought of slalom as a sport when it was a sport in the 70's. Then it became a form of less tedious exercise for me in the 80's. In the 1990's it became a social sport. Now slalom has many of the same attributes available as it is social given how many people meet each other. Alone it is a form of...

John Gilmour

One other trick. You can also attack a 100 cone course first pumping aggressively- attaining a high top end speed and then trying to get a clean "straighter" line to carry you through the 35-70 cone mark. Then pump like a SOB for the remaining 30 cones. It seems like you get Lactic acid buildup by t...

John Gilmour

Directional changes are really what tight slalom is all about at the higher levels. What Andy said about gimmee gates is also true. A gimmee can turn into a non gimmee if the speed is high enough. We had One gimmee is a recent practice which was not a full gimmee. Gimmee gates leave you wondering in...

John Gilmour

Before I went to the French open in 1995 I tried running 140 cones regularly. You really had to struggle to make 140 cones by 110 you were hating it- and the last 30 seemed to take forever. Then going to run 100 cones did not seem so bad and your fade would start around cone 85. At about 5 cones per...

John Gilmour

I think it is a great idea to have pictures appear for posting. Anything to encourage involvement is a good thing and it is a sort of reward similar to what happenens on Ebay when you have good transactions. Nifty if you could get multiple pictures for more posts or larger pictures. If you happen to...

John Gilmour

When I have to rehab after a catastrophic accident...the Total Gym is one of the best things for it.

You can't cheat- and it is always around for you to use.

Best thing for you to rebuild your quads would be one legged incline squats on a shallow incline with the Total Gym.

John Gilmour

I have 107 cones so anytime you are up for ...let's rock.
Sr. Tucker- best of luck to you to pull off a clean run. I've done it before - but you tend to get tired and make more mistakes as you go.

John Gilmour

http://www.hammacher.com/publish/10402.asp?promo=pe_exercise also http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1970502965 I had a great device that I used since I was 3 years old. It was a set of arched rails that had a platform which was attached to each end by 1/4 inch thick elastic bands. Y...

John Gilmour

.1 sec penalty per cone. And I believe they were 6 feet on center at teh French open in 1995.

BTW who knows what the current womens 100 cone record is?

John Gilmour

As there was no standardization for the 100 cone record before I see no reason to attempt to introduce a standard now. In the Olympic Broad Jump people postulated different records being set for high altitude vs low altitude. IMHO, as I have run the 100 cone event before and I did actually try to tr...

John Gilmour

Way to go Howard! Good promo for our sport.

John Gilmour

This video clip format is a great way to get people involved with the sport. It givbes a little taste of racing and the 10-20 second clips are enough time to demonstrate a technique or offer critque on a course.

http://qube2.lcp.linst.ac.uk/skate/video/

John Gilmour

I think what is interesting is that Jani stacks all of his weight over his center of mass (Navel) with his arm movement. Ideally this should maximize traction- and he also has lots of travel which is good for acelleration. If he were to slide his body would remain centered over the board rather than...

John Gilmour

I think the Jam session approach is interesting as it gives many different strategies to approaching a race. Also entrants can get in many runs if there are not too many entrants. We did try something different on the last July 4th race in Boston. I believe the format was like this. We wanted to cre...

John Gilmour

Very interesting to note that Ludek Vasa, Peter Kiss and Claus Grabke were mentioned in there. To Alpine snowboarders you may recognize the Vasa name )High tech carving alpine snowboards made in CZECH) Peter Kiss was a top rider as also is Grabke. All from The Czech article in slalom issue #1. Also ...

John Gilmour

I'v found that if you are rounding a cone slowly on a snappy deck - the board will pop up before the turn is finished and you will experience a loss of traction. However round the same cone at a greater speed and the deck- course match seems to work. So of course the funny thing is that some great d...

John Gilmour

How about going to any convention and stocking up on those giveaway mouse pads?

John Gilmour

In deference to the recent WV race which I did not attend - I'll assume that it was safer than most surfaces when wet as there were no injuries. However whether or not someone gets hurt is more a statisical probability than a certainty at any event. Rain we can safely assume does not help the safety...

John Gilmour

BAM! I'm buying one. You know...if you have a slalom spot where you go all the time, you can just bury that cable 1-2 inches under the ground and Bam! you can set up super fast and Bam! the system gets even more lightweight as you don't have to carry the cable around. So SR. TWay......ow much for ze...

John Gilmour

You can run sicko offsets on a tight course without losing much traction. Your front foot is the steering foot and the rear foot becomes the power foot.

Also with a raised heel you don't have to worry about your rear heel clipping a cone.

John Gilmour

The Red Bull Urbanwaves event was a lot of fun. Years ago I was a subcontractor for Blizzard- the ski company where I named a few snowboard lines (Lizzard, Bond, Empire)and did a few of the graphics. I think the companies have since been spun off. But I did meet Regis Jeffries there who now works fo...

John Gilmour

GBJ is completely right in that what we do is skateboarding and slalom skateboarding will continue to be a discipline of skateboarding. We all know the sport mutated to a point of unrecognizablity from its surf roots. I do wonder what are the benefits of attaching ourselves to the sport we were abor...

John Gilmour

Sounds like a blast- I'll go!

John Gilmour

Unfortunately I had problems getting ticket online so I am out for this one. But I will make hte next one. Good luck to everyone going. At least it can't get too windy or rained out.

John Gilmour

I just thought it would have been impossible to get a 36" board through a European special slalom As it was I had a very difficult time taking my short wheelbase Full nose through their special slalom courses- really...just barely making each cone- struggling not to blow out (I also ran the widest t...

John Gilmour

I think that the thing to "push" is that this is not skateboarding....it is racing. Racing in teh same vein as Formula One where you have to biuld the car- learn to drive it- know the course- know your opponents- and forma strategy to win- and let's not forget practice and dedication. Which brings m...

John Gilmour

I think Jani has a good idea of what Special Slalom is but unfortunately he hasn't seen that much USA Hybrid. Hybrid by the Special slalom definition in ISSA's rules would fit- but the Special slalom courses I ran were more like Technical TS (you wouldn't see a 36 inch board make it through a Europe...

John Gilmour

hmmm... do you know if there is any prize money at this event?

John Gilmour

The current 32 man Duals system takes so much time that it greatly reduces the number of events that can be held in a single day. It results in more skating time for some and less for others. I hope to see more contests organized with perhaps 2 single track events and one dual with a 8 man qualifyin...

John Gilmour

I never skated the Summer Finale course of 2001 but I have seen photos and have a general idea as to the layout of the course. It looked like a lot of fun. I Did skate the hill on two occassions and have a good idea of how that course would run. The course did seem to bring together various ability ...

Join the ISSA 25 cone series. One cyber race every second month!

Regular sessions allow newbies to join our community and discover slalom racing.

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