Start of Season

Well it's that time of year, the first full week of September, which means all the new activities begin this week. While I did actually begin skating this summer, today marked my first day of skating in the official new season with me being registered as a real club member at the FS club. We are lucky here to have a national training centre where there is ice all summer long, but with the regular season I have moved to the community arenas.

I am not a morning person but I grudgingly signed up for the 7am freeskate on Friday mornings because my coach told me it would be nearly empty. After having a few encounters with snooty skaters that think they own the ice, this sounded like a good idea. My alarm went off at 5:50am this morning and my excitement helped me resist the urge to roll over and go back to sleep. I had been looking forward to skating all week! I managed to pack my bag and get out the door and cycle to the arena with plenty of time. I had never been to this arena before, but it is quite nice. It has a bicycle rack (something lacking at the 'fancy' national centre) and a heated area with benches overlooking the arena. It has a large washroom but no changeroom or lockers so I had to change in a washroom stall and leave my bag in the lobby.

My coach had not stretched the truth; when I stepped on the ice there was only her and one other student already on the ice. My second surprise was the delightful quality of the ice! At the national centre the ice was full of big holes (probably from elite skaters attempting triple lutzes or something) and had an extremely bumpy texture especially near the Zamboni doors. I think this comes from allowing the ice to be skated on while wet. But this community arena had perfectly smooth, crystal-clear ice.

I couldn't resist the vast open space and clean ice; I had to practice some figures. In the old days, when I used to skate, skaters used to learn edge control and balance by practicing tedious patterns on the ice. The tracings left behind showed all the flaws in technique perfectly. This section of practice was called patch because we each had our own patch of ice. As a child, I found it deathly boring not to mention difficult and frustrating. In fact, a difficult patch test and a 'tough love' coach made me cry and was ultimately the last straw that led me to hang up my skates for 16 years. I never thought I would want to make those damn circles again! But now as a more mature person, I can see the sense in having good edge control, and I admire the discipline and concentration that is required to achieve an acceptable standard in even the lowest-level figure.

I was able to practice my forward inside and outside circle eights, and backward inside and outside. All were of miserable quality, but the back inside eights were the hardest with the awkward pushoff. After ten minutes I moved on to forward serpentines, but as I was about to start my second complete tracing I looked up and saw another skater step onto the ice and start skating right through my tracings! Clearly this child had never practiced patch before. Anyway it was technically a freeskate session so I figured it was time to move on. Having ten minutes with a patch of ice to myself is a real luxury now that there are no more patch sessions! As it turned out nobody else joined us and once the other girl finished her warm up I could have done more figures if I had felt like it.

My coach tried to help me work on my travelling spins. They look more like corkscrews than circles. We didn't make too much progress because I am apparently overanalyzing the situation. She told me that I need to make the approach to the spin more spiral-shaped, but I always get stuck an start spinning before I can really spiral in. Unfortunately we couldn't really figure out to correct it but I think it involves getting my centre of gravity over my left hip. She did fix a couple of things though, she has me switch my arms on the windup to the spin, and to not bring my free leg around in a sit-spin until I've done a full revolution. We also worked a bit on my backspin, which feels highly unnatural and I still need to find the right spot on my blade for spinning. They are easier to centre at least! I did end up with a couple of decently centred spins to show for the morning's effort. Also the other achievement in a morning of mostly crappy skating was that I managed to pull off a couple of loop figures on my left foot, a move I had never done before. They feel awkward! I watched some footage on you-tube of the Olympic level skaters from back in the day doing paragraph loops and change loops, I could never imagine doing such difficult figures. My sister suggested that I hire Brian Orser to teach me, I heard that he is available!