Cascade Speedskates hits the road and travels to the USA Roller Sports inline speedskating regional qualifier competition held at Oaks Park in Portland, Oregon.

This blog post is intended to be a basic guide on how to sharpen speedskates. In order to maintain your skates, you will need to invest in some equipment for sharpening. The basics include a jig, sharpening stones, and a burr stone. This is one of the most debated topics in all of Speedskating, we intend to give you the basics and from there you can develop your own routine. Once you create your own routine stick with it, the goal of sharpening is to produce a consistent reliable edge time after time.

What are your blades made out of; aluminum, steel, or some strange cutting edge aerospace material? What does HRC stand for and what the heck is powder metal (PM)? These are questions some of us know the answer to and others have never thought about. Well, I intend on breaking it down for you, and I even sliced one of my own blades in half to help tell the story.

This post helps to explain what blade radius (rocker) and bend are, what tools are available to check them, and how to reliably use those tools in a repeatable way to help improve your skating.

Whether you are looking for a break from the ice after a long season or you don’t have summer ice it is always a good time of the year for training.