This week in ice sports

I had another busy week, just the way I like it!

• Saturday: Figure skating practice, including skills lesson. I had a decent skate and my bracket turns might be getting a teensy bit better. They are seriously hard. And I haven't even learned the backward ones yet! Otherwise my test routines have not really improved all that much. Why? Uhm, lack of practice. You bet.
• Saturday: Hockey game! We played a team with a lot of beginners so I tried to focus on taking my time to make a smart decision with the puck instead of panicking and throwing it away.
• Sunday: Another hockey game, usually I don't play 2 days in a row but they moved one of our games that would have overlapped with the Stanley Cup (how nice!). This time we played a much better team and as usual we were short-handed so this game was a little more ugly. One good moment for me was when I got a half-decent backhand shot on goal from the high slot. Another one was when I did a cool stop-and-turn-around move to lose a check and got away a nice pass.
• Monday: More hockey! Usually I figure skate on Mondays but there was no ice this week, and my team is always shorthanded so I played for the 3rd time in a little over 2 days. These 3 games were like a 'Goldilocks Series'. The first opponent was 'too easy'. The second opponent was 'too hard'. But the third opponent on Monday was 'just right'. We lost 1-0 because I screened my own goalie. Oops!
• Tuesday: Personal training. Sweat was rolling down my nose. Also, my husband has a sudden interest in hockey so we went to public skating and looked in on some games to see if there is a beginner's division for men. I wore my hockey skates and tried to do some backspins. On the first one I fell on my butt because I apparently rely on my toepicks waaay too much. After that I tried to balance more on the ball of my foot the whole time, but the best I could manage was to not fall down. On the bright side, I have pretty decent twizzles in my hockey skates, which I attribute to the lack of toepick. Then I tried a forward spin and fell again. Crap! Kurt Browning can do an Axel in hockey skates.
• Thursday: I found a store that was open late today and ran out there after work to pick up a couple of street hockey pucks. I bought the 'Green Biscuit' puck and the 'Proshot' puck. I also grabbed another stick for home use only. I wanted to try them outside on the road but it started pouring rain as soon as I got home (!). I found a piece of cardboard and put it down on the carpet in the spare room and practiced a little stickhandling, probably for 30 or 40 minutes. I definitely need a bigger piece of something slippery to practice on indoors. My forearms are already sore and that was just a couple of hours ago!
  

Shockingly good public ice

I don't have any freestyle ice until Saturday, but it's spring break this week and there are extra public skate times on at one of the private rinks all week. I dropped in after work today and for only $2 I skated for almost an hour with only about 20-30 other people on the ice. It was pretty roomy! I did do some spinning but 'figure skating' isn't technically allowed so I didn't spend the whole time spinning in case someone complained. What I did do was practice my bracket turns a LOT. I just learned them a little over a week ago. The inside ones are not so bad but the outside ones are pretty tricky. Last Monday I fell pretty hard on a left outside bracket and I am a little spooked on those ones now. The inside ones are actually decent and I worked up the nerve to do them with a little speed. They're almost fun! But not nearly as effortless as 3-turns. Anyway I checked the tracings and some of them really look bracket-shaped. I'm amazed! I never learned these before and figured that it was a distinct possibility that they would just be too hard to learn.

I also practiced back outside pivots because they are also in the Sr. Bronze Skills patterns. The RBO pivot is not too bad probably because of more familiarity with the RBO edge because of jumps. The LBO pivot is much harder but I found that deeper knee bend and patience were very helpful. I have learned some bits and piece of the Sr. Bronze patterns and worked on what I could remember. I should be learning the patterns in full soon especially once I get the hang of the brackets and the pivots.

No skating until Saturday - which is probably good for my knees.

Bonus Ice

I had the day off today for the Remembrance Day holiday and took advantage of it by hitting the rink! I looked up the schedule for the national training centre and found an open session that I could go to (no accreditation required). They were also offering public skating on another surface so I used that to get warmed up. It was actually not too terribly busy but still too crowded to practice anything much more than stroking exercises and some turns. Also this facility has recently prohibited figure skating at public sessions so I didn't even try spins >:( So I used the public ice for about 40 minutes and then went and paid for the open session. What a difference! At its peak there were probably only about 10 skaters on the ice, most of them just little kids so not too intimidating. Of course they were all much more skilled than me but only a couple of taller girls working on doubles skated fast enough to bother me. One girl showed some alarming confidence as she whizzed past me as I was clearly winding up for a spin. What she might not have bargained for is that I was winding up for a camel spin and she nearly got smacked by my blade! It would have been really cool if it had been one of my better camels, but alas I sort of fell out of that particular one. Oh well.
Mostly I worked on spins, especially camels and combination spins starting with camels. My consistency with the camel is improving a bit but still not what it used to be. But I did have a couple of fast, centred ones. I even had one half-decent layback, of all things. I wish I had it on video so I could see if it was as good as it felt! I had some fun with sit-spin variations, so far the broken leg one is not too shabby but any other type of positional change throws my balance way off. They make them look so easy on TV grrr!!
I did practice all my jumps and found some new confidence in the waltz and loop jumps. In the waltz I am working on what my coach recently suggested which is to bend the takeoff knee more before jumping. I am taking that to mean that I should bend it LESS on the initial step forward, then increase the bend. For some reason I was kind of stepping into a very bent knee to begin with. This way, I feel something about it feeling more smooth - kind of a snapping action as the free leg swings though. I like it, I hope it is correct :P I did scrimp a bit on the toe loop, was feeling kind of self-conscious or something as I tried to carve out a bit of ice to practice them amid the axels and double lutzes, meh. For a jump that is supposed to be one of the easiest I sure struggle with it! On the flip side (pun intended) I find the flip a very easy fun jump and had a good time practicing them with a bit of speed.

I wish I could make it to ice like this every day >:|

"Soon I'll be thirty; I don't want to be thirty"

Yup, that's a line from the Moxy Fruvous song, "Stuck in the '90's again". The fact that I know it probably gives away my age as well! I turned thirty years old today and while I had some moments of sadness/regret I have generally been making the most of it. The best thing about a birthday is how you can drag it out into a week-long affair :D

So far I've done 2 things out of the ordinary:

• Monday: normally I skate on Mondays but my husband insisted that I had to skip it for some unknown event that we would be attending downtown. I asked somewhat dubiously if it would be better than skating, and he was sure that it would be. Well in fact he was right! He took me to a Vancouver Canucks game :) the first NHL game I have ever been to in fact. When we started walking down the steps to our seat I looked at my ticket and it said ROW: 1 on the bottom but I didn't realize we were really sitting in the front row until we got there! We were sitting in the corner right at the front which made for excellent viewing of some battles and collisions. My observations?

1. NHL players are HUGE!
2. You can see their FACES.
3. They skate really fast
4. Their edges are so deep they spray up snow
5. Their pants are dirty
6. They shoot the puck faster than the speed of light
7. When it hits the glass, it runs around the corner and sounds like a train
8. It also scared the shit out of me!

Anyway we had a great time and the Canucks even won, 3-0. Really fun! Can't wait to go to another one. But I have to sit in the front row from now on.

• Today (Thursday): My husband took me to public skate after my aerobics class at the new rink. I looked forward to it all day! Unfortunately the ice was not too great and I actually fell down several times just doing regular things but I somehow managed to pull off my BEST camel-sit-change-sit combination spin in 16 years >:D And my husband saw it too. When he got tired I didn't mind leaving early because of the ice anyway. Besides, it was just to have some fun right?! On the way home we picked up some birthday cake. AND he had some flowers sent to me at work. Who could ask for anything more?

On Saturday we are going out to a friend's place for an unrelated party but I'm using the birthday as an excuse to sub out my Sunday morning aerobics class and really live it up!

"Excellent"

I wanted to name this post "More dreaded jump exercises" or something but decided to take a more positive tone. One of my salchows elicited an "Excellent" from my coach today! So I suppose it is not really my ugly duckling jump, that title squarely belongs to my loop.

I had been sort of avoiding doing jump work with my coach so I bit the bullet today and asked to work on them. Of course I got more of the hated slow-mo walkthroughs; you know, the ones that require patience, edge control, perfect body position from head to toe, blah blah blah. I admitted that I have not been doing them as much as I should, so I will make a better effort to do them now. We worked on all four of the jumps that we have been studying. I was a bit disappointed that the loops I did for my coach were sad little hops, when I had pulled off some more inspiring versions earlier in the hour. The main bit of advice on that one is to stand up taller and not bend forward.

I am not particularly enjoying working on jumps. The preparation going into the jump requires concentration and edge control. The jump itself happens so fast that it's hard to tell exactly what all your body parts are doing. There are so many little bits to remember, it's overwhelming. Jumping wasn't taught to me in this way when I was a kid, so it's rather jarring to spend so much time nitpicking them now. Of course I want to have nice jumps so I have to suffer through it. I think the key will just be not to overdo it, to make sure my lessons over the course of the week are balanced across all types of elements. Otherwise it's just too frustrating.

I spent the rest of the freeskate practicing all my elements. My camel spin was not as effortless as it was yesterday, but it was still not too bad, I don't fall out of it as much anymore. I tried some more back camels and still get about one revolution. I had some decent backspins too. Yesterday I probably did some thirty or forty camels; it can really take time to warm them up. So with only about ten minutes to practice them today, I was not really expecting them to be at the same place. I practiced my layback too and while it is probably all wrong, I am having some success with feeling less dizzy when looking up at the ceiling.

I practiced spirals on both legs, both edges. My right foot spirals feel extremely awkward. I need to make a point of practicing about ten times as many of these than left foot spirals. My left footers get plenty of practice doing camel spins. In the group lesson they made us try those awful forward spirals (aka "leg pulls"). I surprised myself by managing to pull off a sloppy, bent-knee, but not so bad version on each side. My coaches seemed surprised too! I had been griping about these things on Saturday and swore up and down I couldn't do them. They also noted that I had held them for as long as they had instructed, when hardly anyone else did. Still, I don't think I will ever put them in a program if I can avoid them. Let's just say they are a bit, um, suggestive.

After that there was public skating, so I decided to stay but after about 20 minutes it was just too crowded to do much of anything really. I managed to do some laps of two-foot and one-foot slalom/skiing, and a two-foot turn exercise that has been baffling me. I think I made some progress in combining the turn with the required change of edge and smoothness. I did some opposite direction spinning while helping a little girl practice her spins and turns. I stuck it out to the 40-minute mark when there was a Zamboni break, then I called it a night. I couldn't even practice three-turns in this environment.

Good news, the ice conditions were much better today. I wonder if it is because of the drier weather, or because of the complaint I made last week?

Wow!

I almost didn't go to public skating tonight, but I'm sure glad I did. When I arrived there was only ONE other person on the ice. I couldn't believe it! Usually Sunday night is well attended. Some more people did eventually show up but it was never more than ten of us or so on the ice at once. Under such conditions it was so terrific I stayed for the second session, even though they turn the lights out and put on disco lights which make skating a bit more disorienting. I think the ice is in better condition too, it was much smoother than usual.

I practiced just about everything I could think of and had trouble of thinking of stuff to work on sometimes because I had already tried everything. I was having a fabulous day for camels! I could get used to this. I practiced my camel-layback-change-sit combination with some success. I even tried camel-change-camel and managed about one revolution of the back camel. I did about a thousand backspins and my problem with them currently is that I am leaning so much into my outside edge that my blade scrapes deeply and I lose my balance. This was difficult to correct however. Sometimes I manage a decent back spin but I can't exit them properly, this will take some work.

All in all, it was about 2 hours of skating, really fun. I hope my camel stays with me when I get on the ice tomorrow.

After the skating I noticed some ladies filing into the changeroom and suspected they might be with the synchro club. I asked them and indeed, they were synchro skaters. I talked to a couple of them for a while, they are really nice ladies and I love the idea of skating with other women my age. Unfortunately they usually practice at another arena on another night when I am busy >:( There just aren't enough hours in the week to do all the activities I want to do!

Yawn

I have been very busy! To summarize, I accumulated about four more hours of skating in the last two days. I am skating well and having fun!

Friday

Morning skate:

• Figures: FO8. This time I got the first quarter of the circles to be in the right spot, when going without markings. But, the left circle is too large and the right circle is too small. Also after inspecting the tracings, the second half of the circles are being traced mostly on a flat instead of an edge >:( I never checked this before.
• Skating skills: Learned the new 'Watzing Mohawks' pattern with my coach and practiced both it and the three-turns pattern. She thinks they are almost testable; I want them to be breathtaking to watch.
• Freeskate elements: A bit of a blur now, but I mostly concentrated on spins I think. Also spirals, I practiced forward spirals on each foot, on flat, inside, and outside edges. Discovered that change-edge spirals are not as easy as regular change-edge glides.

Physiotherapy Appointment:

• I finally decided to go see a physio about my chronic knee and back problems. He says I have too much of an anterior pelvic tilt (i.e. I stick my butt and tummy out); this was not news to me. But I actually learned a lot at the appointment, he did a very thorough assessment of the flexibility in my legs and hips.
  
• Punchline: stretch quadriceps and psoas muscles, strengthen left gluteus medius, improve posture.

Evening skate:

• With my husband out of town and me being an ice-aholic, I went to public skate at the rink where I already have a pass. For about half an hour I had a wonderful time spinning and it was not too crowded to boot. I practiced backspins in upright and sit positions and found it helpful to keep the skating knee bent. I also practiced forward upright spins trying to reduce travel and found that keeping a deep knee bend helped some of the time. I experimented with attitudes and camels with some success.
• After that they announced over the PA that figure skating was not allowed! I threw my hands in the air and muttered 'Since when?' I have been skating at this rink's public sessions for over two months and always there is a collection of us figure skating in the centre of the rink. We don't cause trouble. And yet when I went a couple of weeks ago there were two boys kicking a puck around and teenagers pushing eachother around while sitting on those useless plastic contraptions for beginners, but I didn't hear any announcements about that. I had to speak to these kids myself. Who's more of a danger?
• After the ridiculous ban on figure skating I decided to buck up and practice my basic skating skills like stroking, power pulls, two-foot slaloms, two-foot slalom turns, FO and FI three-turns, Mohawks, swing rolls, cross rolls, etc. It's tough to practice crossovers in that environment except forwards CCW going around the ends. I wish they would have us at least change directions at this rink. I had originally planned to stay for the second hour but with freestyle banned I just wasn't into it, and anyway my knees were sore.

Saturday

• Skills lesson: we ran through the last pattern on the first skills test, which essentially consist of doing several crossovers then holding an edge for 12 counts going around a hockey circle. There are variants for each of the eight edges of course. My coach watched me do each of them and said these are a piece of cake for me because I did figures. After the backward outside edge, she said "Do you know how long it takes me to teach my students how to get into that gliding position that you just did?!" She seemed relieved! The only one I had to do-over was my LBI edge. Not a strong edge for me. Coach thinks I could test these next week. Whee! After that I asked her to look at my crossovers and we got through 3/4 types before running out of time. She did not have a lot of corrections except to keep the free outside leg straight when bringing it around on forward crossovers.
• Group lesson: we practiced some fun new moves like a change-edge with three-turn tacked on, and two backward cross-steps with three toe-steps (not sure of proper names for these moves). I was surprised that the coach running the lesson (not my private coach) put me at the front of one of the lines. There were more advanced skaters there that should have been at the front of the line. I suppose it was some kind of vote of confidence :)
• Spin group lesson: we started with camels and I was having a good camel day. I even pulled off one of my best ones with everyone watching! I almost cheered! Then we practiced backspins and I had less success >:( I hate those things. Coach wanted us to practice Biellmans next and I just laughed, so she said I could just watch. I was dreading getting to the extreme flexibility stuff, but they can't make me do it. None of that Gumby stuff is technically required, and falls more into the sport of gymnastics in my opinion.
• Freeskate: I dutifully practiced everything including all my jumps that I have been working on. Even my loop is a bit less embryonic. They all feel more solid but my coach hasn't watched them in a while, so I'm not sure how they are looking. Guess I should stop putting off another jump lesson. My favourite jump is the flip, but my coach hasn't worked on that one with me yet; I'm sure she will pick it apart when it's time. I noodled around with fun spin combinations like camel-layback-backsit, of course they're all very much in the developmental stages. But I had fun and even managed to look up at the ceiling in one of my proto-laybacks and didn't fall over! It left me pretty dizzy though. I had a fabulous day for camels. Then I had a blast making up footwork building on he stuff we did in group lesson. One of the moves just begged to have a spin tacked onto the end so I had fun doing that and also throwing in some split jumps and split jump followed by a toe loop. I used to be very bad at making up footwork, I am pleased to be improving in that area as well.
• I checked with a staff member if freestyle is allowed at this rink's imminent public skate, and she assured me that it is not, not even backwards skating. I gave her a bit of a hard time about it and she acknowledged that I must know how to control myself on the ice and not cause trouble, but freestyle is not allowed for anyone nonetheless. I left it at that. All the better for it, I saved my money and was tired and ready for lunch anyway.
  
• Stretching: It was a beautiful day today (weird for October) so I took my yoga mat outside and did some stretches, including the stuff from physio. I had some good progress with my left foot forward splits, my front calf is almost grazing my mat. Splits in the other direction still have a long way to go.
  

Bonus Ice

I was feeling bummed out about three days off the ice (horrors!) so I spent a bit of time doing what I could.

1. I made soakers for my blades by following these instructions from Ice Mom. They were so easy, and now I don't have to worry about my blades getting damaged by the other things in my bag, and vice-versa. Thanks Ice Mom!
   
2. Scoured the web for more ice time. I found early morning ice with the club in the next town over, but the bus doesn't start running early enough to get me there :O Also found early ice at another rink but just wasn't jazzed about the logistics of how I was going to make it to this rink, then to work, then to yoga class, not to mention being out of the house for 16 hours (I draw the line at about 13 generally). However I did discover that I can spend almost the entire weekend skating since all the public skates seem to be packed into the weekend, but that is just a bit much for my bad knees and back.

In my search I did stumble across a good session though, an Adult Skate on Thursday nights at a rink that is not that far from the gym where I teach aerobics on Thursday night. It even starts just after my class ends, and this week I have the car so there was nothing stopping me from going. I spent all day yesterday and today looking forward to it! The arena is brand new and I had never been to it before, it's quite beautiful. The ice was in good condition and no fog :) The only thing that was lame was that there was a group lesson going on in the far end, so they coned off approximately half of the area from the blue line onward. This was reasonable, but after a while they moved the cones to the blue line, which sort of crunched the rest of us in a bit more. The silly thing was that the lessons weren't really occupying the new space. I saw a couple talking to the ice monitors shortly after the cones were moved, I wonder if they were giving them an earful about it. But the cones stayed at the blue line nonetheless.

I had never been to an adult skate before but it was really cool. No kids darting around, no hordes of teenagers, and not even crowded. If we had had the whole surface it would have been dreamy.

What did I work on? I tried to practice my new skills patterns but there were still too many people in the way and with so much of the ice coned off anyway it was not really worth it. I can practice them tomorrow morning and first thing on Saturday. I spent a lot of time just noodling around with three-turns and mohawks, not really trying to do anything specific. I tried some brackets and loops too. I practiced my stroking and crossovers, and they are sloppy. Too much toe-pushing and toe scratching, yuck. I did power pulls (i.e. one-foot slaloms) and they are also sloppy so I practiced them for longer than I expected that I would.

I did a lot of spinning. Scratch, proto-layback (aka, attitude?) sit, back scratch, back sit, and even a bit of camel. I am tacking a back sit onto most of my forward spins just for the extra practice. One thing I realized after thinking about recently is that on my camel entrance I tend to step out too far. This puts my centre of mass behind my skating foot, which spells disaster because I can never get it back over my skating foot, especially once I get into the camel position, forget it. This time I tried to get my weight over my skate from the very beginning and it seemed to help. Now I don't fall out of the camel that often, it is just slow. Whee! Slow camel is better than always-falling-over camel. My backspins still suck. 'Nuff said. My forward sit-spin and upright spin still travel and I can feel that I don't have my weight over my skate. I'll need to get my coach to help me fix that.

I experimented with a bit of opposite-direction spinning just for fun. It feels so wrong. But it would be cool to have just one clockwise spin in my repertoire, you don't see skaters that can spin both ways every day.

Oh, my double-agency is out of the bag - one of my hockey team girls was there tonight! She seemed surprised to learn that I also figure skate! I am curious if the team will razz me about it a bit, heh. Hockey players tend to notice the artistic, dance-type features of skating more than they notice the hard falls, strength and control that it takes to excel at it. Not that I am actually doing any of those things :S

Camel Progress and Group Lesson

Today I had my second figure skating session of the new season. This was at the same wonderful arena as Friday. Unfortunately they were having some kind of problem with the environmental controls in the rink and there was a mild fog hovering over the ice. To make matters worse, the condensation was reaching the rafters and subsequently dripping off them, creating stalactite-like lumps of yellow gunk on the ice. It was such a contrast to the pristine ice conditions on Friday! I hope they get the problem fixed soon.

I spent some time working on some three-turn drills my coach taught me and built up some confidence in my jumps. I should be able to create big, strong, technically good single jumps one day, but first I need a bit more confidence. Today the level of the skaters was mostly not as high as the group I had been skating with in the summer, so I didn't hang around the boards and watch, I practiced all my jumps except for the Lutz (I am still afraid of it). Probably my technique is crap, but I am working on getting comfortable with landings and making my jumps less curly. The rest I will leave up to my coach to deal with in due time.

My lesson went very well today, much better than Friday. We spent some time on my camel spin and established that I can reach a good position just standing around at the boards, but my free foot does not lift high enough in the actual spin, plus I am not folded forwards enough. These will come with practice as I build muscle memory, especially by practicing spirals. Coach taught me to lean slightly to the left so that my centre of gravity comes more over the pivot point. After that tip I was able to pull one amazing camel spin out of nowhere! It was probably 5 revolutions and I could have held it longer but I had a perverse sense of not wanting to waste my coach's time. Of course I tried three more after that and they all sucked, but there is so much to think about at once, I just need to keep practicing. Coach claims that she sees potential in my camel and that it could be spectacular one day. That was exciting!

After the camel we did some obligatory waltz jump work which was not too exciting but I suppose that waltz jumps are a foundation of sorts for the other jumps so I see the value in the exercises. I am building a bit of edge control now and she thinks I can move on to the second phase which involves straightening the free leg in front on the landing rather than bending it in my phase 1 drill. Again there are so many things to remember at once, but it will just take time. I teach group fitness and I am always shouting out technical details that I don't even have to think about anymore, so the same can happen with my skating if I practice enough.

After my private lesson, there was a group lesson with 2 other coaches I hadn't met before. Apparently I was the new person in the group so they asked me to introduce myself and made me feel welcome. We practiced some drills skating around in crossovers at one end of the ice and then doing some kind of fancy move to the other end of the ice, then more crossovers. Each move was done forwards, then backwards. I got to try doing forward and backward cross rolls, backward changes of edge, and apparently some choctaws. They didn't really look like what I thought choctaws were, and the drill was a bit unclear and we ran out of time so I am looking forward to practice them again. The backward crossrolls were awkward at first but I got better at them and are actually kind of fun. I would like to have really good skating skills so learning moves like this is just what I want out of a lesson.

After this, there was public skating for a dollar (!) which I couldn't pass up and my sister joined me to get some practice on her hockey skates. At this rink there was not even one other low freestlye skater so I got some cheers from two little girls that worshipped my sad one-foot spin that travelled embarassingly across the ice. I tried to teach them how to do a two-foot spin and they told me I should be a skating teacher, LOL! Even practicing my back cross rolls seemed to catch people's attention and it was a little amusing to go from the worst of a bunch of figure skaters to the star of public skating!