Sharing the Ice

Tuesday night intermediate adult learn to skate has a half NHL rink to ourselves. I think we were doing backwards crossovers around the perimeter for 20 minutes. We didn’t get our whole free time, which our instructor tells us she “doesn’t call playtime” for adults, I know that. I’m not sure how you normally explain crossovers but if you want to turn left you lean left on your left foot and then put your right foot on the left side of your left foot, next weight on the right foot, and then pick up the left to uncross back to the starting position. And it is easier said than done. 

Anyway, I have backwards crossovers normally after I have warmed up. Today I did zero. First the ice felt sticky and then staying out of everyone’s way took most of my focus. You would think that everyone careening around in a circle would really lend itself to some psychosomatic centripetal force. I am definitely not good enough at backward crossovers to purposely vary my speed and direction so as to overtake other skaters. Practicing on my own I like to do maybe one pump, one glide, two crossovers, then glide or stumble. So I go through a cycle of different speeds that wouldn’t have been reasonable to subject my classmates to. 

Tonight I just did backward pumps, sometimes bringing the working foot to my ankle as a baby step. 

Then we spread out in 4 rows of four to practice our edges. Edges is, if you lean your weight toward your inseam, your path along the ice curves toward yourself, whereas if you lean out, the path you travel curves away from the midline of your body. Which is crazy! 

We had a different spacing problem with edges than with crossovers. In theory I was supposed to describe a perfect semicircle, pause, and describe another. In practice I had a bunch of space to my sides so I could make the arc of my circle really exaggerated and then bring it in when I got close to the shared space of the line. But then I still had to do my second semicircle with my lane mate even closer and skating toward me. So I solved this by doing the smallest little lobe. 

I don’t have full control of the tracing my line makes down to the millimeter, but I can hold all my forward edges. I have perhaps never felt a backwards edge. During Not Playtime I was trying to hold either backward outside edge for any length of time. Once it turned out a semicircle was out of reach I tried just describing any curve. I told myself very girly that it is okay to fall, and I leaned further that I had before. But my fall started too slowly and I stabbed my toe pick in the ground automatically to stop it and I tweaked my knee. Oh. I didn’t know I would do that. Typically when I fall I find out afterward. 

Overall I am getting a lot out of this class. It was amazing to break a real sweat on the ice after passively sweating all day. And all the time to know that outside, the heat was breaking.