Personal Training - short and sweet

Tonight, again had to overcome the shadow of 'active procrastination' before I went skating.  Sun sinking towards horizon at 7pm, I get back home a half hour later, around the time of its setting.  A few light clouds high in the sky, 30C and 60% humidity by the home weather station as I depart.  Didn't take puck'n'stick with me, set out with the intention merely to skate.

Skating down the hill of my street (always a pleasant way to start, a mid paced slalom) faced with my next decision - which way to skate.  As I'd left home I'd thought at one level of taking the long river route, vacillating between that and the short version as I close the gate, realising this session will be more about recreation and conditioning than skills (and not having a problem with this) as I wind my way on the street down the hill.

Reflect on the fact that 'at least if I go down the river I get the gentler route up the hill to home' (depending which way one arrives home, there's a great variation in the energy expenditure at the end of the trip as one either comes up the steepish street, or winds up a (longer) gently ambling route on the smoother streets from the river).  Follow the thought to realise that what I probably needed was to do the hill not the river.

So.  I soon found myself skating around the outside perimeter of the nearby school, checking out the construction site that used to be a playground as I do so.  Decide to nip in through an open gate at the front of the school, wind my way through to the netball court (ensconced away near the construction site).  It is, for the moment at least, no longer a 'cut though' for the neighborhood's foot traffic. 

Hadn't actually decided to go to the school until I, almost on impulse, decided to go through the first open gate I saw.  I say 'almost on impulse' because I had been earlier deliberating over river or school, had already a half formed idea that I could run through some of the skating drills from Vikings Training last night combined with some of my own.  This thought itself based upon the reaffirmation of skating as the prime skill in hockey, and therefore to retain some degree of concentration upon its development.

The above process was perhaps at least as instructive and 'training valued' an activity as the twenty minutes I spent on the court.  Did quite a few of the 'openhipped' turns (alternating directions, varied speeds and 'situations' (eg. between one and five steps before execution)), with three straight 'up and back' trips the length of the court with maybe a total of 20-25 rotations each lap.  The same distance (3 lengths, each way) on the outside edges of alternating skates down a line, making exagerated 180' 'C' cuts with no stride in the middle at similar frequency to the preceding turns.

Then 'figure 8s' facing inwards with the new turns (5 each way) and similar amount of the 'old style' figure 8s with transitions, forwards and backwards each way.   A quick lateral movement drill and then, to finish off, some big sweeping backwards crossover runs across the whole court just for the fun of it.  Nothing too intense, in other words, before the big haul up the hill to home.

Tomorrow, weather and time permitting, some puck'n'stick work would be good.