Yesterday I went down to the Arena with my skate Buddy, B (9). He had been very understanding of my requests to go and play in the Shinnys down at Noarlunga over the previous fortnight so I thought that the least I could do to make it up to him was go for our usual weekly skate this week. The guys in the Shinny group had been equally understanding when I had told them that I was unlikely to turn up this week. Without even knowing them, B has a bunch of allies there who empathised with his need to skate!
B was his usual charming self, patiently waiting in the queue for us to get in, having eaten breakfast and drunk some water before we left, and two hours after we started skating he even called me off the ice five minutes before we had to (!) so we didn't get caught up in the crush to get out of there ('just one more lap, B!').
For the first time he had a go at tightening and tying his own skates unassisted and made a not bad job of it (gives him good incentive to work on is lace tying skills lol). More imporantly, he told me about an hour into the session that he thought his laces needed retightening - I'd said I'd be happy to do it if/when he thought it needed doing. He was working in small segments of time on the various skills he has either been taught at his skating lessons (eg. forwards and backwards skating, turns, crossovers, one foot glides) or that he has taught himself (hockey stops). In between, he just cruised around and seemed as always to be well in tune with himself and his fellow skaters. I am quite proud of him!
For me, I stayed on the ice for one lap longer than B, which means that I didn't get to stop except to tighten laces for two hours. I was a bit sore from the Wheeler's game the night before, so took a while to warm up. Over the two hour session I did maybe ten sets of 5 each way back and forth stops with three accelerating steps between (aiming at getting the acceleration occuring as the change in direction reaches its point of transition by crossing over as I finish the stop and pushing under on the outside edge as the first impetus). A couple of times I felt it 'flow', so it won't be too long and this skill will become operational.
I had breakthrough sessions in two other base skills I've been pursuing for months now; balancing/skating on the toe tips (maybe doing ten or so blue to blue tottering runs on my toe tips - where once for a few strides I felt the 'click' as posture and skate handling and momentum combined to move me quicker than my running motion alone could do), and repeat jumping in sets of ten while skating across the rink on the red line with landings occuring on alternating sides of the line as did so. With the jumps, I lifted my legs high for the first time and it probably looked either weird or spectacular. I was doing the jumps in a bounding motion - probably not the safest. I did maybe five of these drills. So, for skill acquisition, it was pretty valuable session.
For the rest of the time, I just enjoyed cavorting around and basically playing around with the various techniqes I know to have fun.
Excellent day!
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