Fitness * Beginner * Artistic *

From State Highway 99, take the Pinedale/Herndon Avenue exit and head east on Herndon. Seven and a half miles out, just before you reach the intersection with State Highway 41 (you can see it a block away), take a left on Blackstone Avenue. One mile north, Blackstone curves right to pass under Highway 41; at that point it becomes Friant Road. Proceed about 2.5 miles on Friant to the Woodward Lake housing development on the right, which is marked by big entrance gates. Turn in onto Lakewood Drive, and follow it one block to cross Westshore Drive and park in the Yacht Club parking lot and dock.

Here's a great workout loop that lets even beginners stretch their muscles. The Woodward Lake loop road (Westlake Drive on the west side of the lake and Eastlake on the east side) circles within a relatively new housing development, offering a choice between a marked bike path on the shoulder of the road, or one of two wide concrete sidewalks. If your curb skills are good enough, choose the inside sidewalk. (You'll want to avoid the bike path, because it's split down the middle to allow a gutter next to the curb, leaving you with only two feet of asphalt for curbside stroking.) The outside sidewalk is interrupted with heavily textured iron manhole covers that are too large to jump. Overall, this could be a much better skating location, good for touring as well as fitness, if you weren't skating between high solid walls for most of the loop and could see the lake itself. As it is, only in four very brief sections--three of them enclosed in the iron bars of a10-foot-high fence--can you glimpse the water and some property along the shore. If you feel you need more than 2.2 miles to get your workout, slip into a few of the streets whose names end with "Circle" as you go along. Each of these small loops-within-the-loop adds another third of a mile to your distance. There are at least three gated (and closed up tight) communities inside the main loop, and you can be sure most of those homes have waterfront access; you can see their wide sundecks and private docks through those stretches of iron fence. After you've burned enough calories for the day, take a rest on the dock at the end of the Yacht Club parking lot and watch the mallards rush over, expecting to be fed. They put on quite a show if you reach into a bag as though for food. Sit there long enough, and they're likely to jump up on the dock to preen and ruffle their feathers like a hungry troupe of street performers.