Gloooory, glory hallelujah!
My skates are FIIIIIIXED! Other Skate Tech, who is one of the nicest people in the world and didn't charge me for the remount, looked at them, was horrified, and remounted the right blade entirely. After a couple of adjustments, it feels awesome. My power pulls are back! Hell, skating in a straight line is back! This guy is getting all of my sharpening business in the future.
And on the session I skated after he fixed them, I managed an inside counter on one foot! I...was trying for an inside bracket, but let's be optimistic.* I also feel like I'm flying when I just skate forward, because these blades are much better quality and have less resistance, I think. Crossovers are maybe not quite as fast, but I feel much more in control of them. And I have a rocker on which to rock into my waltz jumps, and on which to spin! I even managed a full revolution of a backspin.
I also fell flat on my ass for the first time since...uh...possibly it was late last year. It was a combination of starting a back outside edge on a skate with a different center of gravity I'm not used to and J asking me a question at the same time. It hurt less than I remembered. I'm not sure if it's because I was going slow or because my butt muscles are stronger and better shock absorbers now.
In addition to all that, I attended that rink's adult ballet for skaters class. Not because I'm that into ballet, but because OST (who is also the skating program director) is very keen to have lots of adult-centric classes and opportunities if there's enough interest, so I want to help demonstrate interest. It was just me and J, which was kind of cool, if intimidating. I'd forgotten, in the intervening 15 years, how hard ballet is on the back, and in retrospect, with my current back problems, it may not have been the very best idea. That said, I think it was helpful because it reminded me to stretch/elongate on the session that followed immediately after, and I'm not always the greatest at that. It was also a good warmup for that session.
* An inside bracket is an inside edge to an outside edge on the same circle, i.e., draw a semicircle, put a notch in the middle that looks like, well, a curly bracket { }, and you have your tracing. The notch is where you go from forward to backward. An inside counter, on the other hand, goes from an inside edge on one circle to an inside edge on another circle, kind of like an elongated "S," with the turn from forward to backward being at the hinge of the two semicircles. If you try to do a bracket and fall to the inside, you wind up with a counter.
This entry was originally posted at http://icepixie.dreamwidth.org/961186.html. It has
comments over there.
And on the session I skated after he fixed them, I managed an inside counter on one foot! I...was trying for an inside bracket, but let's be optimistic.* I also feel like I'm flying when I just skate forward, because these blades are much better quality and have less resistance, I think. Crossovers are maybe not quite as fast, but I feel much more in control of them. And I have a rocker on which to rock into my waltz jumps, and on which to spin! I even managed a full revolution of a backspin.
I also fell flat on my ass for the first time since...uh...possibly it was late last year. It was a combination of starting a back outside edge on a skate with a different center of gravity I'm not used to and J asking me a question at the same time. It hurt less than I remembered. I'm not sure if it's because I was going slow or because my butt muscles are stronger and better shock absorbers now.
In addition to all that, I attended that rink's adult ballet for skaters class. Not because I'm that into ballet, but because OST (who is also the skating program director) is very keen to have lots of adult-centric classes and opportunities if there's enough interest, so I want to help demonstrate interest. It was just me and J, which was kind of cool, if intimidating. I'd forgotten, in the intervening 15 years, how hard ballet is on the back, and in retrospect, with my current back problems, it may not have been the very best idea. That said, I think it was helpful because it reminded me to stretch/elongate on the session that followed immediately after, and I'm not always the greatest at that. It was also a good warmup for that session.
* An inside bracket is an inside edge to an outside edge on the same circle, i.e., draw a semicircle, put a notch in the middle that looks like, well, a curly bracket { }, and you have your tracing. The notch is where you go from forward to backward. An inside counter, on the other hand, goes from an inside edge on one circle to an inside edge on another circle, kind of like an elongated "S," with the turn from forward to backward being at the hinge of the two semicircles. If you try to do a bracket and fall to the inside, you wind up with a counter.
This entry was originally posted at http://icepixie.dreamwidth.org/961186.html. It has
comments over there.