This is a long list.
And it has a lot of “be careful”, “watch out for” type tips. I think this is because I’m getting old and the world looks more like one big dangerous trap than the adventure playground it used to when I was younger.
So.. given my skittishness… I feel there’s a chance anyone who reads through this whole list is just going to think, “oh my god, look how scary skating to work is” – but I’m afraid you’re just temporarily suffering from my paranoid perspective.
Skating to work is awesome. It’s a brilliant way to turn the grey, slog of a commute into an entertaining workout. And if you keep it up for any length of time you’re going to get slim. If you’re not already that is. You’re going to shed the pounds and feel bloody awesome by the time you get in.
It could transform your mood through your entire workday. So provided you’re being safe and relatively sensible, I recommend skating to work.
1. Plan Out Your Skate Route Ahead Of Time
Obviously you don’t want to get lost on your way to work – no one likes getting to work stressed and late from your commute taking twice as long as it should. However, you also want to check everything about your route is suitable for skating before you go – have a good idea of obstacles, traffic, difficult sections – by reconnoitring (great word, hey!) you may also work out the smoothest possible route. That’s going to make your skate a pleasure and will help encourage you to keep it up.
A good idea is to travel the route on a weekend or day off – it will be a good way to understand how long it actually takes you, versus how long you hope it takes you, and you will know if you can manage it easily enough and what to look out for.
2. Find Out What Time The Traffic Is
A few of these tips follow on from planning your route out ahead of time but bear delving into.
Knowing what time traffic is going to be heavy is important – both pedestrians, cyclists, and cars, etc. This is basically what you have to watch out for most when skating to work. It’s not your own skate skills (though of course the more you have of these the better – with tempered arrogance please), it’s actually other people. They’re the ones who aren’t expecting you, who aren’t looking out for a skater coming by at faster than walking pace. Who aren’t expecting to see a skater on the road. Who might be tired, half asleep and not paying proper attention.
Traffic in London for example gets really busy from about 8 in the morning all the way through to 10, and well, basically stays busy in some parts of the city all day during the week. In fact, some places have such bad traffic there’s just no point going that way. And this is what you have to work out. You don’t really want to turn up and find yourself either stuck in traffic, or desperately trying not to get run over.
This will be important pretty much no matter where you live.
3. Wake Up Earlier (Or Much Later) Than You Normally Do
All about the traffic – go before the traffic or after the traffic, if you can.
Commuting to work early is one of the best decisions I’ve made about work, I get there a couple of hours before most other people do, and I get to leave early as well, and both ways I am going when almost no one else is.
It’s almost like I’ve escaped the rat race by setting my alarm early. Now, this only works if you have flexi-time at work which thankfully a lot of people do and if you don’t, see if you can ask for it. if you don’t ask, you don’t get, and if you make it clear it’s important and you can do better and more effective work by getting in earlier (or staying later) then you’d hope they’d consider it.
Aside: The one piece of information that changed how early I was able to get up was this: when you sleep your brain completes multiple cycles of rest, it goes through slow wave and REM sleep, and in order to feel rested, to actually feel like the sleep has been good, you have to complete a whole cycle. It’s no good if you don’t complete the cycle. A cycle lasts around an hour and a half on average. And if you don’t complete a cycle, you don’t feel any more rested. So you could sleep 1 hour and 15 minutes and if you don’t complete that cycle that entire time was wasted. Now, when I wake up and I only have an hour until I actually have to get up, I wake up and get out of bed almost immediately. I have no desire to sleep in, because I know it will just leave me more tired and miserable overall. Now this was a long rant, but honestly that changed the way I approach each day.
4. Avoid Crowds Like The Plague
Even if you’ve got all the skills in the world some random cyclist can come from nowhere and knock into you, injuring your or even themselves. Being responsible for injuring someone else is a possibility as well.
When I used to cycle to work I was knocked off by a jogger who appeared from out of traffic directly into the cycle lane knocking me over. My foot was connected to the pedal, my leg twisted and my ankle snapped in three places in a spiral fracture and I couldn’t walk properly again for about 6 months. You could cause an accident in a crowd just as much as suffer from one. There’s just too many things going on at once from all directions, so avoid them, or if you have to be in them go extremely slow.
5. Remember You Could Become The Smelly Colleague
If you don’t sweat when you skate on your way to work I’m going to say you’re just not going fast enough. Okay, it is possible you’ve got a short, slow joyous commute and you won’t sweat at all. But generally speaking skating is exercise and you don’t want your colleagues and friends at work to suffer you smelling from sweat.
Your clothes might soak with a thin layer of sweat and you become “smelly sarah”, this isn’t going to do anyone any good.
You might need new socks and underwear as well… not just your shirt and whatever you normally wear on your legs.
Which raises the question: is everything going to be horribly crumpled and look a disaster when you put it on? There are ways you can fold your clothes that reduce the chance of this being awful, or you might consider storing some clothes at work if you can.
As part of this “remember you’re going to sweat” advice, if you can, have a shower when you get to work.
6. Don’t Skate In The Rain
Don’t go in the rain.
I feel like the more advice I put in this section the more it reduces how strongly this advice should be taken. Simply don’t go in the rain.
And this isn’t because it will ruin your skates and your bearings meaning they’ll stop working. Though this will definitely happen (though there are specialist wet weather bearings you can buy, at risk of undermining this point).
It’s because of how dangerous and hard it is to brake and stop in the rain.
Your risk of slipping on one of the many dodgy surfaces goes from “totally fine” in the dry to “absolute murderous death trap” in the wet. From the white lines on cycle paths, to hidden debris that’s washed up by the rain, it won’t really matter that much about your skill when your feet literally are pulled from you like someone grabbed your skate and yanked it.
But back to the real danger: stopping. You just can’t stop how you’re used to. You can’t stop if you suddenly see a car turning. You can’t stop if someone runs out in front of you. You can’t stop if you’re racing downhill.
If it’s light rain, it might get worse. Skate on nice days. It’s more pleasant anyway.
7. Remember Your Shoes
I do struggle to think of situations where your skates would literally break (they should be pretty hardy things) but you never know what’s going to happen – it could start pouring down from an unannounced thunder storm. In any case it’s good to have a pair of shoes. If for no reason other than you need to wear some at work. Unless you work in a roller disco.
8. Have An Easy Way To Carry Your Blades
So, perhaps linked to the take your shoes with you, is the have a way to carry your skates. Now, out of all the advice here perhaps remembering your shoes is something you could ignore. You could leave your shoes at work if you wanted. And in that spirit, you could ignore this advice as well, but it’s still pretty good idea to know what you would do if you took off your blades.
But if you follow this piece of advice to have a way to carry your blades, then through circular logic you must follow the advice to have shoes…
9. Look After Your Wheels
Getting the miles beneath you is going to take its toll on your soft polyurethane wheels. If you have a durometer rating less than 80A, this is going to be especially true as the hard surfaces of the real world rub against them, scrapping away nanometer after nanometer.
When you skate you typically put more pressure (and so more friction) on the inner part of the wheel, which means the inside part of the wheel rubs down more quickly and soon your wheels are not going to be symmetrical in wear. One side will be bevelled.
Just like the tires on your car or bicycle this constant use and wear is going to make the wheels less effective. It’s going to give you less grip, going to make skating slightly more difficult, and so you need to do something about it if you regularly skate to work. If you regularly skate long distances full stop actually.
You look after your wheels by rotating them around your skate so that you change their positions – swap the two middle wheels of the left skate with the front and back wheels of the right skate (without flipping them round, so you put them in the same way), and vice versa.
Do this after a while, no need to do it every week.
10. If You’re Old, Stretch Before You Skate (For Your Back)
Maybe even if you’re not old. What’s old? Well, age is just a number. But if you’re in your 30s, do this. Honestly, your older self will thank you. Your older self will hug you and kiss you and might even go further…
Just stretch before you skate. Stretch out your back and your hamstrings.
Stand upright and try to touch your toes gently at first, stretching slowly to reach them, hold that position. Get down on your knees and spread them apart and stretch forwards (child’s pose – look it up). Google back stretches and do them.
The problem with stretching is it’s boring and no one wants to do it until they start getting old and injured and realise they should have been doing it all the time.
A good way to look at it is, anything that works out your muscles is tightening them, shortening the fibres (no idea if that makes physiological sense), and the more you do that the tighter and tighter everything becomes. You need the ying to the yang, in order to allow yourself to also have that other rarely mentioned component of fitness: freedom of movement and flexibility.
The no1 point of doing exercise is not to get fit, it’s to avoid injury. Whether that’s from a heart attack (realise that’s not quite an injury, but allow me some artistic license) or from a sprain. To do exercise of any type properly, you need this ying component.
Every single person, no matter how cool you are, will get injured if you don’t allow your body to also be flexible when you’re exercising. This is especially pertinent for skating long distances because of the pressure it puts on your back.
And, the attached piece of advice here: stretch after you finish as well.
I would really advise you take up yoga. Pretty much everyone should take up yoga. But it’s going to help if you start skating a lot.
11. Don’t Put Pressure On Your Back With A Heavy Backpack
Your back is bent over in a not perfect position for much of skating, and speed skaters have been known to suffer from lower back pain. Haivng a heavy backpack on top of this pressure that skating already causes is doubly bad. You’ll probably need some sort of backpack in order to carry your clothes, but try not to shove in a hair dryer, huge laptop, and your jar of homemade marmalade, if you can help it.
Find ways to take the stuff you need to work the day before or other workarounds that avoid you carrying a holiday worth of equipment with you.
Your back will thank you – if it was a separate sentient part of your body able to speak, that is.
12. Avoid Big Hills
Hopefully if you’ve properly reconnoitred the route, you’ll know if there’s any mountains between you and your office. But big hills are best avoided in case it rains or just generally because of the traffic that might be on them and the difficulty in stopping suddenly.
Of course, you could just love going down the hill and feel confident doing so. In which case, well, maybe just have fun without the hill…? There is also the question of getting up the hill, either on the way back or in the first place. That might be enough to dissuade you.
It’s only when you type it out, that you really know how great a word “dissuade” is.
So please let me “dissuade” you from getting ahead of yourself and bombing it down a hill in the morning when other people are on their way to work.
13. Know How To Stop Really Really Well
Because other people exist (annoying, I know, tell me about it) you actually need to be able to stop on a pair of skates. And sometimes really really quickly. Before you start skating to work where you’re going to encounter these other people, practice going really fast somewhere and seeing how quickly you can stop (wear protective gear please).
Being able to stop on a dime is especially important in a commuting situation where there’s a lot of unpredictable movement going on around you. Also, knowing how to stop really quickly isn’t really enough, having situational awareness of what’s going around you is. Because if you suddenly do a really cool powerslide it’s no good if a bike ploughs into you from behind because you’ve just shown you can stop quicker than they can.
So you need to be able to stop and have awareness of everything around you. Are you good enough at skating to do both?
I may be laying it on thick here, commuting should be fine in the majority of cases, but just don’t put on a pair of skates for the first time and skate to work…
14. Avoid Rough Road Surfaces
Something no one should really have to be told more than once. It’s just bloody uncomfortable and hard to skate far on bumpy, rough surfaces. This will come from you planning out your route. Every skater knows the feeling of being on flat, smooth asphalt that slides easily, and being on paving stones…
Avoid big piles of leaves as well while we’re at it, you don’t know what’s hiding underneath them and they’re super slippery just by themselves.
15. Skate On Empty Roads – Try To Avoid The Sidewalk If You Can
I’ve got long legs and when I skate they go out a couple of feet to the left and right. Especially if I’m trying to get up any sort of speed, and skating slow can be frustrating if I have a long way to go… Therefore I find myself more comfortable on the road because of the room I have, and also it feels appropriate because I’m going a lot faster than anyone else on the pavement.
It could be just where I live, where my sidewalks aren’t wide enough to let me skate at speed without constantly running into people, but I think in general skaters can take to the road.
That being said, if the road in question is a motorway then suddenly I’ve given incredibly bad advice and you might end up on the evening news. “Crazy skater holds up traffic for five miles”
Find quiet, empty roads to take you to work.
Quiet empty sidewalks are just as good of course, if they are empty…
16. Skate WITH The Direction Of Traffic
If you are on the road go in the direction of traffic. It may be unnerving because you can’t see what’s behind you, but they can see you – and that’s key. Despite how much you may wish it, cars generally go faster than skaters. They have a magical contraption called a combustion engine which human legs struggle to better. They own the road and you are just borrowing a small part of it.
If you skate against the direction of traffic those cars are not expecting to see you. They’re not really looking for oncoming skaters and they’re a bit confused what to do. Skate on the road a bit like you’re a cyclist, but you’re a cyclist who can get out the way with some reasonable judgment. Don’t hog the road if you can avoid it. You will just create a traffic jam of angry people and it’s no good for anyone if a hundred people go to work with high blood pressure. Who knows what effect the butterfly wing flap of one hundred stressed people could cause…
With all this in mind, be visible to drivers on the road, which brings me neatly to my next tip for skating to work:
17. Avoid The Moon And The Stars
Don’t skate in the dark. Unless you adorn yourself with all manner of lights, then just avoid the dark.
Skating in the dark can be quiet fun, but it’s also treacherous.
The number one rule of using the road (other than just generally being safe) is to be seen. If it’s dark it’s a lot harder to see you. In the dark it might not also be clear that you can only go so fast… that you’re not a motorbike or a crazy person running across the street. Vehicles are hogging all that night time road all the time and they never see a skater on it, so they’re not expecting you.
This is pertinent to travelling when the sun goes down early or doesn’t rise until late where you live. Know ahead of time when it rises and sets so you can plan travelling before it does so. You don’t want to get stuck in the dark with no lights.
There are lights you can buy to skate at night, just like cyclists wear, so if you’re insistent, it’s a really really good idea to get some lights.
Reflective clothing is also not a bad idea either, but I’d go with lights first. Reflective clothing only works when a light is pointed directly at it. And by that point it might be too late.
18. Be Conscious And Conscientious – Give Us All A Good Name
For the good of skaters everywhere, give us a good name. Don’t let some jacked up idiot petition the local government to outlaw skating on the road, we don’t want that to happen.
You need to give skating a good name, if that’s possible to do.
In fact, everyone who skates is representing the sport and the community around it. If we want skating to grow in popularity, then we all have to play a part.
This is especially true of commuting because skating doesn’t really belong there in the same way that, well, walking or taking a bus or even cycling does – at least not in the mind of all the miserable commuters who aren’t skating. So you have to be seen to be a good force.
Furthermore, conscientiousness, rather than recklessness, is going to protect you and those around you from injury.
Look 10 – 15 metres ahead when you’re skating, at least. Be aware of everything that’s coming up. Slow down when you pass people. Et cetera, et cetera.
19. Use Big Wheels – Freestyle Skates Are Good (Not Cheap Recreational Or Aggressive)
Don’t try to skate to work wearing aggressive skates. Or, do… and find out why it’s not a good idea.
The thing is, if you’ve never skated on larger wheels you’re not going to know the difference. The bigger the wheels the easier it is to go faster.
A good set of 90mm wheels are going to carry you along at a lovely pace.
And because this can be considered “serious” skating – then you’ll want a seriously good pair of skates. See what I did there with the word “serious”…? I should be a comedian.
Either get a really good pair of fitness skates, or go in for the freestyle types.
If you’re a speed skater already, I must apologise for this article – you probably already know all of this. I hope I’ve dumped enough random thoughts on this post to at least give you one thing you hadn’t have thought of yet. It could be coming right up…
20. Become An Expert On Crowds And Moving Objects
These are the following things that could hurt you, or by some unspecified person’s action, be harmed by you:
- cyclists
- runners
- drivers
- motorcyclists
- crazy people
- children (who are just little crazy people, and will run into your path)
- busses
- dogs
- cats
- foxes
- wolves (?)
- birds
- rats
- skateboarders
- other skaters
- annoyed businessmen
- stoners
- families
- mothers
- prams
- suddenly opening doors
- suddenly turning cars
- errant drones
- suddenly appearing bushes
- unseen ropes
- cones
- open holes
- suddenly appearing grass verges
- mischievous rocks
- truck drivers or their trucks
- flying newspapers if you’re in a Sega Mega Drive game
21. Use A Pair Of Insoles For Comfort
Provided you’ve bought a pair of comfortable skates, everything should be fine.
However, if you find your feet hurting after skating to work a few times then you need to look at what you can do.
You have the option to change the inner liner of your boot. You might consider buying a thicker liner which will give you more comfort.
Alternatively you can look at getting a pair of insoles (if they didn’t already come with your skates and you haven’t already thrown them away). You put insoles in to raise your heels a little and this can help with comfort.
22. Wear Long Socks
Don’t wear those cool invisible socks. Basically the rule is: the socks should be above the cuff.
If the cuff is higher than the sock, it will be rubbing against your leg, and can make that part of your leg sore.
The colour doesn’t matter, but if you’re skating new cuffs, and on newer skates they’re going to end up losing the colour onto your socks, so white socks might not last as long as darker socks looking in a good condition.
You can go for the super long variety. Tube socks maybe.
In terms of thickness, something between really thick (too sweaty) and really thin (not enough protection from rubbing).
23. Give Yourself Some Time Off For Rest In The Early Days
If you’re not used to skating a lot it might be a good idea not to skate to and from work every day.
It might take a single skate to work for you to work this out by yourself. But delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS – your new favourite word) can sometimes take two days to actually hit.
When you start to use muscles you haven’t used in a while – and skating is full of unnatural motions you don’t use when you’re doing basically everything else – then this can happen. It’s nice to give yourself chance for your muscles to recover.
You also want to be eating the right types of food for to help regenerate, which brings us to:
24. Eat Bananas And Porridge
Have a banana or some porridge or something else with slow burning carbs before you head out. Ideally not immediately before you do, perhaps 45 minutes before you do. If you’ve got especially far to go then this is a good idea.
Doing long distance cardio without the proper food is perfectly possible, it’s just a little miserable. Your willpower is not just in your head, it’s also based on the right types of energy at the right points.
You also don’t want to fill yourself up with loads of food. Whenever I’m going to skate far I have half a banana, not a whole one. And I’m over six foot tall. That’s six foot of heavy mass I’ve got to lug around with that energy and that’s more than enough.
I find bananas are basically the best food to eat to give myself slow burning energy, if I have something with too much sugar it might help for a few minutes but then I feel like I’ve expended it and I’m desperate for energy again.
You’ll also be building muscles you don’t often use, so interspersed at some point during the day it’ll be good to have some protein to help build those muscles in the down time.
25. Avoid Compression Fracture Of The Wrist – Wear Wrist Guards
Number 1 most common injury on skates is to the wrists. Aside from the helmet you should basically always wear, wear wrist guards.
I recommend some wrist guards in my recommended gear section if you’re ready to follow this piece of advice…
26. Get Ready To Lose A Lot Of Weight
Not so much a tip, as a counterbalance to all the “I’m old, therefore I’m scared of everything” type advice I’ve just been dishing out by the plateful.
If you skate to work even a few times a week – and it’s not simply two doors down the street – then you are going to start shredding the pounds. Congratulations. You’ve just found a way to keep fit and lose weight without adding much time to your day. You’ve fit in a fun exercise around your schedule which is a key so many people trying to lose weight don’t manage to get – if you’re going to get into good shape you need something that fits like a jigsaw piece into your existing routine. Or you need to create a new routine that is sustainable, something that’s easy to do.
Well done for doing that.
27. Hot Foot Bath
Let’s end on a relaxing note. I feel like after all this theoretical skating to work we’ve just done together we need to celebrate. In itself, this is a tip – celebrate your achievement skating to work. Psychological research shows we’re more likely to stick to rewarded behaviour, but more than just that, even a stupid sounding self-reward like raising your arms up in the air, pumping them and congratulating yourself can work. Yes, simply saying “well done me” can help instil a positive habit, help you repeat that behaviour.
A hot foot bath could be something you look forward to after your skate.
A hot foot bath is also something that might help your aching feet as well. iIf we’re going down that route, I should mention that a lot of athletes rely on ice baths to help recover. So I guess technically you could have an ice cold foot bath if you wanted to try that version out.
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Now, hopefully you have enough tips to head out. Some of them are more important than others. plan your trip, be safe, watch out for others, and start shredding those pounds.
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