STANLEY BUNN : ‘Every Time . . . I Try to Go Faster and Faster’

When Stanley Bunn hits the streets in his in-line skates, suddenly the problems that have been plaguing him that day disappear.

“You don’t really have time to think about if your dog got out of the yard or something like that,” he says. “It’s a stress reliever. When I put my skates on and go on my usual route, I’m like, ‘All right, this is great.’ ”

Bunn, a 33-year-old in-line speed skater from San Diego, placed eighth overall in ESPN’s Extreme Games (“I crashed in the semi-finals.”).

He was a competitive bicycle road racer before carpal tunnel syndrome sidelined him. While recuperating from hand surgery, a friend turned him on to in-line speed skating, and after that he never looked back.

“It was the grace,” he says, recalling why he fell head-over-skates in love with the sport. “I kind of felt like a ballerina--a macho ballerina. It’s a graceful sport, and on top of that it’s 10 times as challenging as the bike ever was to me. It’s taken me 3 1/2 years to master the technique, where with the bike you just jump on. . . . I liked the challenge, I liked how close I was to the road, the feeling of pushing the skates out, I liked the way it looked.”

The transition from bicycle racer to novice skater wasn’t exactly smooth; Bunn recalls, “I was such a respected cyclist in the community . . . and then I went to being a flounder on skates. It’s really hard on your ego to go out and be beat up by people that you know couldn’t beat you on a bike ever. But I was determined to master it.”

He did, eventually winning major races and landing a sponsor.

Bunn fits in practice time around his job (he works for a local alarm installation business) and family (he is married with two young daughters).

But this will probably be his last year to compete in skating.

“I’ve reached my potential as far as how good I can be. I want to try to be the best in the country, but I can’t do that because there’s other young guys who can beat me. As far as pushing the envelope, I never really stop. I have this one downhill that I do [in practice] where I get up to 60 m.p.h. and then I have a 90-degree turn. Every time I do it I try to go faster and faster. When I make the turn I just feel like, wow, and I get a little chill up my spine. You just keep pushing at it.”