Wednesday Skate

It is the second week of mid year school holidays.  And so, it is also the second week of mid year public sessions on the big ice on Wednesday nights.  That's because the A grade competition goes into a mid season break over the school holidays.  Conveniently, my skate buddy, B, goes to school so he is on holidays at the moment and can be out late.  Even more fortuitously, being holidays, the Vikings also suspend their Wednesday night training program.  So, nothing else to do except gather B and head down to the Ice Arena.

Good night tonight.  Several familiar faces, quite a lot of beginners, nice and open ice compared to a weekend though.  I stepped it back even more than I had last week, because I'm on the ice not so often at the moment I need to concentrate on just keeping my ice legs rather than developing new skills.

Same as last week, I went over within a few minutes of getting on the ice.  Same maneuver as last time also (transit from backwards to forwards) and again I landed on the side of my bum.  Several hours later, I can still feel exactly where I landed.  I went over a few other times (always from backwards position) but they didn't hurt so much as that first one.  At least it wasn't exactly the same spot (contusion on contusion is never good).

The music was pretty groovy (as usual, thanks Steve!) and it was good to see the way it affected the skaters, rhythmically and emotionally.  I wasn't too expressive, generally try to move in some sort of synch with the music in any event and was happy to leave it at that.  I did manage a few times to keep my foot rhythm in time with the beat (quite tricky if changing direction as dodging through or past other skaters).  Good fun.

A bit more stopping practice, interspersed with T Stops to concentrate on the outside edge of the stop and, in the full drill, concentrating on swiveling the head/arms towards the direction to be taken after the stop (ie the direction I had come from) as I entered into it so as to be better able to be already commencing the push under/cross over motion to begin the acceleration away from the stop as I stop (reducing the actual stopping point to as small a point in time as possible).  I did it at slow to medium pace, and felt a moderate improvement (still can't do an outside edge stop yet).

Most of what I did was at slow to medium pace, actually, not just the stops.  Lots of mohawk/heel to heel left and right transitions, pivots in the corners while I did tight figure eights, lots of gliding turns with the rotational impetus being provided from the swivel of shoulders and head towards the inside of the curve.  Towards the end I did burn a bit of energy in repeated sprints between the lines and tip toe walks.  Only right at the end did I go for it at about 80% for about four laps.  Nuono kept with me for three but dropped off at that point.  He looked surprised when he'd commented to me that I was faster than I looked and I replied that I'd been a bit out of synch tonight.  He'd probably be more surprised if I'd been at full speed for the five to ten laps I was doing over summer!

Also near the end of the session, I went into the centre circle for about ten minutes (after the figure skaters finally abandoned it) and had a few goes at my nemesis, three turns.  I actually started stringing a few together for the first time! Most of the time I was still pretty clumsily hesitant, but a couple of times I did it without thinking about it and felt that I'd somehow pulled it off.  A first!  Had a couple people ask me what I was doing, as though I knew!

Trick now, convert that high top end speed which others seem to comment on into quick acceleration.  Combine that with effective stopping maneuvers and tight turning ability (both at speed) and I'll be more productive for my team.  As we're in the count down towards the summer season, I need to start focusing on this a bit on the ice.

For a pleasant change, it was a fifteen minutes on the small ice after the big rink closed.  That was really nice to wind down.  I spent most of it playing around with my version of the backwards 'grapevine'.  Don't know what it looks like, but it sure feels graceful!

A good evening.  Tomorrow, step up the physical off ice training.  Jess gave me a few more exercises to do (getting towards whole body development, which is sensible if done properly) and a lot of good advice.  I'll start expanding my routine set by set.  She seems to have high hopes.