Eddy Matzger Roadshow Inline Skating Speed Workshop (Rollerblading Clinic) Greensboro, NC, Apr 18-20, 2008

Thanks Mark. As far as attendees, the host really doesn't do much. It can seem like things are confused and unplanned even, but that is just part of what I think is the most important function of a host...to give Eddy a separate place for non-teaching time that nobody visits, away from the students so they can talk with each other or ruminate alone as well, with time and flexibility to recharge and rethink and rework and reconsider and review what he has done and will be doing for each individual there. Every workshop is different because every class of students makes it different.

He doesn't ask for this privacy, but I think time away from the class is the most important for the teacher. I've done maybe 9 or 10 of these workshops so far, probably 5 not as host but in Manhattan or Atlanta. When Eddy does Atlanta after Greensboro I usually go to that one. It's much easier to make progress away from home I think.

Anyway the host's job as much as possible is to not rob energy from Eddy...either be neutral or rejuvenating if possible, but not make it more difficult. So...routine, calm, boring, restful, quiet, groceries, conversation...because the students want to get the most out of their time with him and he wants to give, and some have never met him and in our ultramarathon skate world he is a celebrity to us skate-obsessed freaks.

I try to keep as many things as possible flexible so Eddy can privately make some decisions and sometimes he just says "you decide" but he knows he can do whatever he wants and we'll make it work. That's why we basically know where we'll meet for the social skate and that's the only published certainty, sometimes, even if we basically know a plan from years past. Places change from year to year so you have to keep backups in mind and have several quiet contingencies, but there's no need to focus on backup plans with attendees, because...

Eddy will not let anything stop him from teaching the full promised amount of time no matter how much you slack off or beg him to cheat you! If one person needs a break, it is no problem. Plug in where you need to. But he travels here and you provide him with a skating life and he will not let you down.

Check this out:

• http://a2a.net/results/a2ads00001all.html

Eddy has skated 1,548 miles at an average pace of 18.4 miles per hour in at least 18 attempts.

Now you can say, "Blake, why have you not gotten faster lately after these workshops?" Well, first, I'm not really driven to be fast. If it happens, great. I want to love skating because it will love me back. I'm a much more stable, confident, self-assured skater after the workshops and post-workshop training. But I believe the workshops have definitely helped me skate better within my limits each given year, and this has helped me finish A2A every year since 1999 including the unofficial "outlaw" 2005 and controversial "sidekick" 2005 editions (Boo!)...others did it a third time in 2005 and they would not like me to tell you who. (I'm 20th but would be 26th by speed in the group if the course had not been reconfigured at 87 miles in recent years; my only hope is to stay healthy and fit and durable.) Note that NC skaters Kaplan, Farnsworth, Goode, Lambert, and Hudson have logged a lot of roadskating at Athens to Atlanta, Hudson very nearly winning one year despite a crash. Also note that David could've broken the 100 HOURS at A2A mark had he not switched from his old neon plastic RollerBlades to his Bonts sometime back...he is Number 1 in his hours of devotion to skating the course during the event!

Take a look at my A2A data at a2a.net and you'll see that after the first few workshops I did get faster. I was lighter weight and I was traveling more to skate and mentally obsessed with skating! Healing through creation (of photography, painting, music, dance, skating, other art!) is a wonderful thing. My own analysis is less skating, deterioration of equipment, injury, and a continued love of eating badly! I think were I able to be a vegetarian (what people call a vegan because vegetarian is a poser name in the USA), I'd be pretty darned fast! But so far I haven't wanted to go there.

But I can tell you that every workshop serves as a reminder of what I can and can not do well right now. The last workshop really put the word in on my ankle and the structural problem with my beloved V-Tek Verducci boots. It took awhile but it put the idea in my head that I had better get some stability back for that ankle. With regard to that I am really liking the Powerslide C4 I bought barely used on eBay for under $100 (in spite of my sadness for mia Verducci), and on the flagpole switchback in GCP I can feel (and also not feel) a difference in stability and pain.

Funny. I look forward to doing the drills, as hard as they can be sometimes, to see how this 'shop will go. Note that lifelong rink rats like Tomahawk just kill those drills, since they teach stuff like that on quads or inlines anyway. The first time you attend, the workshop will expose you to things you never dreamed!

Eddy breaks it all down to basic elements, and if you repeat those elements, you will be building what you can later craft into your own several ways of skating, depending on conditions...a way to skate in rain, in wind, when cramped, in packs, on flat smooth stuff, on gator, on gentle hills, on steep hills, in short events, in long events. It's like going to Sears and buying a lot of new tools to throw in your skateylove toolkit. First you just put in the mental manuals, the ideas. In later sessions after your first workshop you start to notice, remember, build through repetition. The next workshop something else might click. Eventually on various days of your life, you sense you just made it to the next level...and it may not be the day of the workshop.

Another reason to be at the workshop is to get to know people who are likewise currently obsessed with skating (even if they actually skate less than some years). It's fellowship and ritual just like any religion!

And of course it'd be worth sitting on the sidelines and paying to watch Eddy skate for eight hours two days in a row. He just doesn't stop, even when he lets you stop, because he is in training the whole time he is teaching you for as much as sixteen hours mostly on skates. You need a breather, OK. He doesn't. He'll go over it again on skates.

I don't meet many people I think are great teachers. I had none in high school, really, except for the guy who taught me leatherwork with hand tools and pottery on the kick wheel. The high school English teachers were too scared to teach Shakespeare and Chaucer in their full pleasure. I had some great ones at uni, three great ones in literature I guess (one in Elizabethan and before; another mostly American playwrights; another Walden and later anything hippie-like; plus decent stuff in existentialism), and some very good ones in physics.

Eddy is one of the great teachers. Doesn't matter that he wins this or that race or even if he doesn't. He's one of the few who

• KNOWS IT,
• KNOWS HOW TO TALK ABOUT IT,
• KNOWS HOW TO SHOW IT,
• KNOWS HOW TO ANALYZE IT IN OTHERS,
• KNOWS HOW TO COMMUNICATE THE SHIFT IN THINKING AND MOVEMENT TO OTHERS, and
• REVELS IN SHARING IT YEAR AFTER YEAR AS HIS LIFE'S WORK.