Back to the Rink

As I told Valerie last week, I must start moving my butt more than my mouth. So last night I took my butt down to the ice-skating rink for my weekly lesson. I initially took up ice skating when I was five years old. At the time, we conveniently lived only three blocks away from an ice rink. I happily spent nearly every Saturday for the next six years at the ice rink. I wasn’t a truly competitive skater by any means, but I did pretty well for a recreational skater and mastered many different jumps and spins. In my pre-teen years, however, I started to value sleeping in on Saturdays more than skating and eventually quit taking lessons altogether.

Fast forward ten years to my first year of law school. I desperately needed an outlet for the stress that was building up inside of me. Instead of taking the easy way out by choosing sex, drugs or booze like many of my classmates had done, I decided to take up ice-skating again. Yeah, I’m kind of a dork at times :-). I signed up for lessons at a rink near my law school and have been taking lessons on a fairly regular basis since then. I definitely don’t skate as often as I used to while I lived in NorCal though. When I think back to when I was in my best shape ever, I was skating 3-4 times per week. Nowadays I skate at least once a week, but I really should add at least a second weekly session. To that end, my coach and I set some definite goals for the upcoming year: the Adult Silver Moves in the Field test, the ISI Freestyle 4 test and the Adult Silver Freestyle test.

Last night we worked on Silver Moves. I had been off the ice for three weeks due to a yucky cold. After such a long break, it was a killer of a lesson. My coach, Erica, started off by having me push her around the rink as she resisted. I’m 5’4” and squashy. Erica is 5’9” of lean muscle. Can you see where this is headed? I tried to do a full lap around the rink but had to give up at the ¾ mark. Then Erica tried to push me around the rink, which was effortless for her even though I tried to hold my ground as much as I could. After that she had me do drills on all of the Silver Moves except for the eight step mohawk sequence. I was surprised to realize that I finally mastered forward cross stokes. yay! Two test elements mastered, only six more to go. (hey, I’m trying to focus on the positive) My “homework” for the next week is to work on the forward-inside-3 to back-outside-3 sequence. Cross your fingers for me that I don’t topple over. We closed out yesterday’s lesson with edge spirals, which I love. Spirals always give me that quintessential skating feeling --- as if I’m floating through air.