For the first time in 7 years, New York experienced an inline marathon in storied Central Park. The date was August 11th, and 8 members of our club had gone down the day before: Rod Willmot, Bernard Doth, Mau Pan Lau, Martine Charbonneau, Dany Lévesque, Charles Beaudoin, and Annie Pazzi. As well, Steve Robillard had gone down separately with his girlfriend. I have to tell you, the course was fabulous. Especially at 5 in the morning! With the start-time set for 6 a.m., we got ourselves to the park early enough to do a warmup lap. We'd also done a lap the evening before, just to see. The course made a complete loop around the park, some 10 km, making a 4-lap marathon of 40K or so rather than the standard 42. No matter -- what a course! Beautiful old trees, the asphalt pretty smooth except for a brief rough section, a few nice serpentine climbs, and excellent downhills without a trace of danger. And all around, a certain sense of magic -- for haven't we seen innumerable scenes in the movies set in this park, is it possible to be there without sensing the thousands of stories people have lived beneath its trees? So it's 5 a.m. and we're taking an easy warmup lap, the air's neither warm nor cool, not a breath of wind, a strange feeling of silence despite the enormous city all around and its noise of unceasing life. The whole vast park belonged to us -- a few skaters! Half-way around we caught up to a pair I didn't know, and one of us struck up a conversation. After a few minutes the guy and I realized we knew each other! It was Mark Farnsworth and Kendra, from North Carolina -- we'd read each other's posts on the InlineNC list maintained by a mutual friend. Mark expressed interest in skating the Défi de Montréal, and later on, during the race, he skated a lot with Pan. Meeting new friends and renewing old friendships -- to me this is the heart of a really great race. I was especially happy to see Blossom Chu, who did the Défi in 2000, and then Ed Leibnitz who did it too and whom I'd seen later at Lake Morey, Vermont. Ed found me as we were waiting at the start line, and we decided to team up with Gavin Thulien from Ottawa and Bernard Doth. Among the four of us, with Frank Larue from Ottawa and various others who hung on to our train as best they could, we maintained a good fast pace to finish in 1:26:40. From the very first lap we did a lot of passing, because even skaters who were about as strong as us, if they were skating solo or in 2s or 3s, could never develop the kind of speed we reached -- a train of 6-8-10 -- whenever we had a downhill. I can't tell you a whole lot about what our other skaters experienced. Martine Charbonneau finished 6th in the Pro women, while Steve Robillard pulled off a terrific 4th in the Pro men. Pan had an amazing race, while Dany ran into trouble I think, though he went on alone and bravely. My group caught up to him (his category had started before us), and for the last lap or more, time after time he'd pass us only to be passed at high speed on a downhill. Near the end he missed an ambiguous turn, while we benefited from our personal guide -- Ed, a New Yorker! -- whose friends (practically all the volunteers) gave a wave whenever we passed. To check out the complete results, go to the Empire Speed site. As I write these lines they're not online yet. Meanwhile, read Toronto skater Peter Doucet's report, and to see all the photos he took, click here. I borrowed a few for our pages, and soon you'll find more in our own Photo section. Rod Willmot