Article By Kevin Van Lancker

A week after Berlin marathon, not fully recovered from the travelling, I headed to Krakow. One of the most beautiful cities in Poland. I wander around Old Town on Thursday. It's great to be here. Beautiful buildings around. I'm joined by local friends a bit later and being shown the Jewish part of the city. Plenty of clubs and pubs around here. One could never get bored here on the weekend. But it's quiet here now. Decided to have some local Polish food. I will save you (and foremost myself) the difficult names they give to the food, but it was very tasty, to my surprise :)

Early sleep on Friday, to be ready in the morning to attend the Polish inline Cup. I woke up and first thing I did was to check the weather through the window and I see a blue sky and sun! Thanks God, I thought to myself. But once heading outside, I quickly understood the weather only looked good from behind the glass windows. It was a cold 8 degrees. Not what I got used to in Krakow the past days.

Anyway, if the skaters, who came from all around Poland and Slovakia to attend this event had to go through this weather to skate 70 kilometers, I could do it too. So, off I went.

The course was very close to the city, although it was quite and peaceful here. The course was put out around a grass field where a sheperd was hanging out with his bunch of sheeps.

I hung out with Paulina Pyzalska, Andrzej Matusiak from Trzymajtempo/Orana Dynamics and Jakub Ciesielski from ZicoRacing. ZicoRacing and Orana Dynamics are sponsors of this event. The sport is growing in Central and Eastern Europe, while we see a slight decline in Western Europe.

A mixed pack at the startline, for a kick off at 12 noon. The wind is cold and strong. I felt sorry for the guys and girls in a lycra skinsuit, probably freezing to death now. But then they went off, all together for 70km. Some choose to race only 21km. I am sure some of them warmed up quite quickly as it was a fast start, and while the first ones could be spotted already on the other side of the course, I could still see the last ones, on the first straight.

Paulina Pyzalska, one of the distributors of Orana Dynamics in Poland had several cup of coffees with me, while every now and then we cheered for the skaters who passed by.

Some of them were on their way to the Unitymarathon rollerskating in Riga, back in August of this year, but ended up in a deadly car crash. None of the skaters got hurt in the crash, and I am glad to see they all here, giving their best for the final of this series of events.

One of those skaters is Sylwia Rogiewicz from Poznan. Every lap she passed, she had a big smile on her face. She loves skating, even if there is a strong and cold headwind here. That doesn't bother her, so to see.

But in the front, it is going hard. Very hard. It is Robert Kustra who is usually in the lead when he passes us here at the finishline. He doesn't have time to smile. He's pushing hard. And in this breakaway, which consisted mainly of men, I find one girl. Her name: Aleksanda Goss. Wow, that's impressive! Between Bartosz Chojnacki, Artur Kisielewski and Robert Kustra.

One lap to go, and Robert accelerates from the pack. He looks quite fresh, after 70km. Honestly speaking, I would be dead!! We are heading to a few meters behind the finish line, to snap some pictures but my hands are totally frozen. Quite hard to take a nice finishphoto. Robert is finish first, soon followed by his opponents. At the time of writing, I did not have the full results at hand. I will try to post them later.

It's been a pleasure to hand out the prizes to the people in the different categories, especially the Polish Cup Winner Jerseys to Robert Kustra and Basia Matczak. Congratulations to them for their efforts troughout the season.

In the evening, I headed to the restaurant with a bunch of skaters from Poznan. Italian restaurant Mamamia, is the place to be. I have been discussing with several of those people over skype or Facebook chats the past months, but it was great to finally sit with them and enjoy a delicious meal. To end this beautiful weekend, we headed to Krakow center with the skaters. Shortly after entering one of the dance-places, we found the ever-happy Sylwia dancing on the stages. She defintely had still a whole lot of energy left.

Headed to bed and went to the airport for a flight to Riga, Latvia. Everything seemed to go well. Checkin, security, but then.. again. Trouble in paradise. Flight cancelled and had to spend another day in Krakow. Well, there are worse places to have to spend your time, but still. 2nd time in 2 weeks to have airplane trouble. I was rebooked on an afternoon flight from Krakow-Kyiv (Ukraine) and Kyiv-Riga. Would arrive there only at midnight, instead of 2pm. But, no point to complain. I had another beautiful weekend amongst skaters and I am looking forward to be here again next year. Hopefully WITH sun.

A special Thank you goes out to Jakub from ZicoRacing, Paulina and Andrzej for their great job in promoting Orana Dynamics, the Polish Inline Federation and the local organizers. Keep it up!

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More photos on our Facebook page!