Park Ridge Speed Skating Club

I will admit I never knew about speed skating till Bonnie Blair won all those gold medals back in the 90’s. Even then, I envisioned the sport being a distant thing; something that people do in faraway Utah, northern Wisconsin or even Duluth, MN but not anywhere close to Chicago. I was wrong on that one. Being the parent of a rather physical and athletic 5 year old led me to this organization. We discovered them last summer at Taste of Park Ridge. Just weeks before, my 5 year old son had been learning figure skating and enjoyed being on the ice. I asked if he would like to «skate fast.» Of course he agreed…
Now, Park Ridge is one of a number of speed skating clubs in the surrounding area. These clubs hold regular meets and compete together in the area. While the PR Speed Skating Club’s home ice is at Oakton Ice Arena, they are not affiliated with the Park Ridge Park District, so you won’t see them in the quarterly catalog of park programs and lessons. Even living in Park Ridge some 7 years now, it wasn’t until last summer I became aware of their existence.
Speed skating is pretty fascinating to watch. You have people zipping around at top speeds close to 40 mph on long skates with a flat blade. They wear helmets and padded suits, since a fall on the ice can send them sliding towards a sidewall. There’s padding around the track for this very reason. The sound of a group of skaters taking off at the starting line is like a stampede of skates as they all get off to a running start on the ice. Then the gracefulness of the sport becomes evident: the crossover of the skater’s legs lets the skaters move on the ice with incredible speed yet making it look so effortless at the same time. Head down low, hands at their sides or behind their backs, the skaters glide with ease on the sheer ice. A breeze blows by as a group of skaters passes you while you watch. For the fitness-​conscious, speed skating is a sport that uses every muscle in the body in a coordinated movement. Looking at the skaters on the ice, it is quite apparent the most prevalent body type is tall and slender, with very little fat on the arms and thighs. Most of the skaters are in their teens, though there are adults and some grade school kids too. Among the skaters there is even an older doctor, who also recommends skating to his patients for its obvious health benefit of staying fit.
Though we showed interest in the speed skating program, I had to find them since they did not contact me after we inquired for more information at the Taste. A little more self-​promotion and marketing would probably attract more people to the sport. The club offers 3 free sessions to people interested in speed skating. It took only one class for my 5 year old to get hooked on the sport. After spending over an hour on the ice till his feet hurt, he came off the ice and said, «No more skating slow, I want to skate FAST!» It didn’t take long before I signed him up for the season. The speed skating season runs from September till March, with a bigger regional competition at Oakton and other smaller novice competitions at Oakton as well.
The skating practices take place twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursday evenings, about an hour and 15 minutes per session. The ice time for the speed skaters is sandwiched between figure skating lessons and hockey games that happen later. For the cost of a season membership, it is well worth the value compared to the park district’s 30-​minute long, once a week sessions where you might have a lot less individualized attention from the instructors. The Park Ridge Club shares the ice with the Glen Ellyn club, so there’s plenty of skaters and coaches to work with them. And among the notable coaches, PR has Nancy Swider-​Peltz who’s a former Olympian herself. With my son being the smallest skater out there and no other 5 year olds in the program, he’s had a number of sessions where a coach worked with him one on one for the entire class. The progress is immediately obvious and he has developed so much since he began in late September, just a little more than 4 months ago.
The organization is a lot like family. We all hang out on the side opposite the bleacher section and watch the kids skate, kind of like soccer moms, we’re speed skating moms and dads. We set up and put away the padded sidewalls, fill buckets of water to pour on the ice when it gets rough, and we cheer on our future champions as they learn the sport. It’s a good place to start if you like skating and want to get into shape.