by Karla Hernandez

Created on: July 13, 2009   Last Updated: July 14, 2009

Skating is a great workout. I've been skating since I was pretty much old enough to walk. I started skating on the old "quads", or the four wheels back in the 70s. When I was 24, I started ice skating and did it nearly every day for two years. In the past two years I've taken up inline skating and I never get bored with it. I love skating.

When I'm out on the trail skating I rarely see other rollerbladers and I always wonder why that is. Rollerblading is an incredibly fun sport. But I admit it's not that easy. It takes time and effort to get the skill perfected. Maybe that's one reason why I never see anyone else skating. I know of people who have tried skating but they don't do so well at first and they give up without wanting to try again. Maybe most folks just don't want to take the time to learn how to skate and find out just how much fun it is.

I completed my first inline skating marathon in November 2008. I am also a runner with two half marathons and countless 5k, 10k and 15k races and one biathlon under my belt and I can say that skating is so much easier than running. It's easier on the joints for one thing. You can also add some artistic flair to skating, which might be a bit more difficult to do when running. And skating is one of the best things to do to keep your booty lookin' good. It definitely keeps your legs in great shape.

Whether it's ice skating or inline skating, I just can't get enough.

As far as crossing training goes, inline skating helped me tremendously with running. I run a local 15k race every year and each year I have a better personal time. The last time I ran the 15k race, I had skated a lot more and ran a lot less. I thought my finish time would reflect my lack of (running) training. Even my husband predicted a slower finish.

I pretty much blew myself away with my time and I was surprised. I was four minutes down from my previous time. I attributed the four minute slide to the inline skating cross training. As for running, I had not trained nearly as much for that race as I had in previous years and my time was the best ever. Obviously, the inline skating is a tremendous benefit to running. In previous years I cross trained with cycling but I didn't have the same results compared to the skating.

Cross training with inline skating proved to give me the best results for running better races and achieving better times. And for me, it's so much more fun.

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