Disappointment

After looking forward to skating this morning so much, I was thoroughly disappointed today with a wasted lesson and crappy skating. The whole 20 minute lesson was spent on the step forward into the waltz jump. At first this was ok, then I started getting frustrated because my coach kept offering useless tidbits like "You look awkward". Well, duh. That's not helpful! Then I started analyzing it in my typical fashion and was also getting frustrated that maybe I'm just too old, inflexible, and injured to be any good at this sport. This attitude did not help.

After the lesson I worked dutifully on the waltz jump prep for another ten minutes or so and then tried some spins. I did not even feel like doing other jumps. All my spins were crap except for the back sit, surprisingly. They traveled pitifully and involved much toe-pick scratching and loss of balance.

This is not the first time I have experienced this type of two steps forward, one step back progress. Figure skating is filled with it and I had much frustration in skating as a child. I tried not to let this one incident get me down, after all I have been having many good sessions lately so one bad one is no big deal. But I still have a sense of wasted time and money, and general disgust with myself. What was extra lame about the whole morning was that I did not have fun, which is the whole point of doing this.

The session was not an entire writeoff because I actually made progress with my figures, of all things. I found this great reference on the web that describes many aspects of skating, including figures:

http://www.worldfigureskating.net/index.php

Since I will basically have to teach myself, I read through the instructions for the forward outside eight and even printed them out and brought them with me in case I needed to check them. I practiced about six eights and then checked out my tracings. I measured them and found them woefully asymmetric. On the start of the circle, I go out too far so my circles are more oval-shaped and off-centre. You are not supposed to use markings but I currently need them as a learning tool, so I measured and marked out the proper locations of the quarter-circles. Then I tried to skate the figure again, hitting all the marks. This felt strange, like I was tracing circles with big bites out of them. But the resulting traces looked more round and smooth. Following the instructions from the website immediately helped my edges be more secure and less wobbly. So I feel very good about this progress, even if it is for a skill I cannot test. In a way, I feel like I am keeping alive a dying art.

In order to make better use of my lesson time I am going to make some rules for myself, which I will try to obey.

• No babbling or extensive analysis
• Try to just do what she says and see what happens
  
• No complaining about being too old, inflexible, etc.
• Don't explain why you did it wrong unless it is useful
• Pay 100% attention

After thinking about my lesson for quite a while today I had one realization that part of my frustration probably stems from a sense of 'already knowing this stuff' and wanting to just skate around and do my thing. Unfortunately what I already know is very technically flawed, and it needs a lot of correcting before I can just skate around, let alone have a program, test, and compete. Part of me is thinking 'I was in two competitions! I could do a lutz! I don't want to do waltz jumps'. This thinking is counterproductive because while I want to have fun, I want to be a good skater, not just someone who competes at the lowest level with crappy waltz jumps that never get any better.

I spent some time cruising the web for other adult skating blogs and found them very inspiring. I should figure out how to make links for them on my sidebar. By midday I was anxious to get back on the ice and just keep practicing. Furthermore I cleverly chalked up my overall terrible skating after the lesson to dull blades, which is not entirely impossible. I have skated at least 25 hours on this sharpening and I have heard that sharpening is recommended about every 20 hours. So I contrived to escape work early, and drove like a maniac to the skating store and get them done just before closing :) The blades look much better now and I hope they bring me a more pleasant skate tomorrow. Tomorrow is my 3-hour epic morning and I am looking forward to it now!