Three Hours of Practice

Yesterday I felt so virtuous, so morally superior, so Church-Lady strutting because I put in nearly three hours of practice. I skated for an hour in the morning. In the afternoon, I did patch, another freestyle, and power skating.

Except for Moves, the morning was a bit of a waste but in the afternoon, I had a terrific skate. I managed a great big Loop jump, lots of decent spins (making lots of progress on a true scratch spin—fast to blur), including a couple of competent change foot spins.

I worked on “enlarging” my salchow.  Coachie is making me really push off with the skating foot. During my lesson earlier this week, I took in her instructions, went for it and landed with both feet on the ice. She was at the boards and I sheepishly skated over to her expecting thee usual corrections. Instead she laughed at me and said, “I said a SINGLE salchow, not a double!!” Ha ha—I had really overrated the thing., rotating 1 and ¾ times.  No wonder I didn’t land it.

I kept busy, practicing parts of my program, dance moves, and flip jumps. A senior skater actually told she noticed how much better my Loops and Flips had gotten.

Oh man, I was flushed and full of myself. Oh, yeah!!! I rocked the house. Check me out! Three hours!!

By 7:00 pm I couldn’t move. I needed a walker, or so I whined to my husband. My body completely broke down. My bones, joints, and muscles screeched, popped, and rattled in pain. Husband admonished me for over-doing it. “But, I’m …a figure skater,” I mewed.

Lesson of the day: Need to buy a walker, or at least a quad cane, in order to continue to ambulate after a healthy round of figure skating.