My Skating Story, Part 1

I can't remember the first time I went skating. To be honest, I can't even really remember learning to skate. I grew up in the American south where skating is not a popular pastime, but my dad grew up in hockey territory, skating on ponds and eventually playing hockey in prep school. He used to take us to the rink once or twice a year. I always loved it, but I never knew it was something I could do more of. It never even occurred to me to ask for lessons. In my family, we danced, and I always (mostly) accepted that.

During the summer, my sister and I roller skated in the garage and driveway. The garage, being flat, was the perfect place to pretend to be ice skaters after seeing some on TV. We both wanted to be Kristi Yamaguchi, but because I was older, I claimed her and made my sister be Michelle Kwan. Those were the only two skater names I knew.

I always wanted to have an ice skating birthday party, but I have a summer birthday. My mom told me I could still have a skating party, but I was convinced that my friends would think it was stupid to skate when it was hot out and I felt begrudgingly fated to pool parties. By the time I turned 22, I'd realized my friends didn't care and I threw myself a skating birthday party. My friends were good sports.

Travelling Europe with some friends in January a few years later, I learned that Paris has a free rink in front of its city hall in the winter months. I was determined that skating would be part of our Paris itinerary. We'd walked all over town that day, but we still trudged out to the rink and rented our skates. I told my friends not to ask me if I was ready to go--I never would be. Whenever they came to a consensus that they were ready to leave, they should just inform me and I would resign myself to turning in my skates.

A few months after I started working at my first long term desk job, I noticed my pants didn't quite fit the way they used to. And I hated being stationary all the time. In the past, I'd done various forms of dance, ultimate frisbee, flatwater kayak racing and they were all things that I really enjoyed doing so that they never felt like exercise. But I didn't feel like going back to any of them. I started looking around for another form of exercise that I would be motivated to do, not because it was exercise, but because I enjoyed the activity itself. You can see from the above stories--and they are just a sample of many--why ice skating occurred to me as an idea.

I looked at the website for the local rink, wondering if I could work it into my schedule to go to a public and skate laps. On the website, I discovered that a session of skating classes was about to begin and that they had classes for adults. I remember being giddy with excitement waiting for my first class. I had no idea what I would learn in a skating class, and skating EVERY week for 8 weeks seemed like such a luxurious arrangement.

And, well, is it any surprise? I got hooked.
(To be continued)

New Toys

The competition's over, and you know what that means? Freedom!!! Well, what I mean is practices and lessons don't have to be focused on my program every single time. I had two really great lessons this week. My primary coach started me on sit-back sit and camel-back camel. "These are your new toys," he said, "I want you to start playing around with them."

And, it's been determined. Moving up to bronze, I'm going to need spins with either a change of position or a change of foot, or even both.

Coach Picky also gave me some new toys:

• Camel-back scratch, which went well. While working on this, she challenged me to push harder into the camel spin. Last time I tried that, I ended up with a giant bruise on my right knee. But my camel spin entrance has gotten stronger since then, so I went for it and she counted out those revs: 5!
• Cannonball spin, or as she called it, a pencil spin. Oh my gosh. So disorienting. Coach Picky said that I hit a good position on my first try, but I just got down there and lost all body awareness! I had no idea if I was falling over or not, so I freaked and bailed before I could get very far. 
• Sit, pancake spin, back sit. - Meh.
• Aaaaaand..... (drumroll) layback! Oh, I'm so excited about this spin. We spent time practicing the position at the boards, and breaking some of my ballet habits which were counter-productive for the spin. I. want. a. layback.

So, new toys, yay! We've also gotten a chance to work on the lutz, which is not great yet, but it seems to definitely be on the mend. I'm really glad to be working on some new things, and I'm even pondering some new music... But for now, the new elements:

Droop and Flop

As someone who came to the sport of skating as an adult, I have a distinct advantage because of my strong dance background. A lot of good things, like posture and carriage, carry over from my many years of ballet. Sometimes I explain my ballet background to others when they ask about how long I've been skating, but sometimes I feel like I have to couch it a little bit and say, yes, I have many years of dance training, but that doesn't mean it all stuck! And it doesn't mean I didn't have bad habits as a ballet student that are still with me! For example, I had notoriously floppy feet, even in dance! 

Some people think that skaters don't need to point their feet (or at least that's what dancers think about skaters) but it's not really true. Skaters do point their feet, but the effect is not quite the same as it would be without skates. And so now, my floppy feet have carried over into skating, except now they look like club feet. I'm embarrassed to admit how many times I've caught my heel in the ice on a sit spin. The other day, it caught me so much by surprise, and I had enough speed that the effect was much like a pole vault. My spin suddenly stopped and I catapulted sideways over my foot and onto the ice.

Coach is always yelling at me to point my toes. A week or so ago, he told me that for the next 6 months, I should work on developing the habit of pointing my toes all the time when I skate. He also wants me to extend my free leg 3-6 inches higher on all my jump landings and spin exits. And he wants me to focus on looking up. I agree that I should do this, because I think it will improve the overall effect of my skating.

And I've added one more self-identified habit I want to break. This one didn't transfer over from ballet, it's new to me in skating. It's hand droop. I think I extend my arms and carry them well through the wrist, but then my hands just kind of hang off the end of them. Well, not both my hands. Primarily my right hand. In case you're wondering what that looks like, here's two examples of my right hand caught in the act of drooping.

Spread Eagle with Right Hand Droop

Solo ChaCha with Right Hand Droop

So, in the months to come, down with droopy hands and floppy feet! Do you have any nasty habits you're trying to kick to the curb?

Competition Video

I've decided to post the video from my competition, though the quality of the video is not great. Two of the jumps are completely out of focus. And then of course, there's the matter of the botched spins. Oh well, here it is. Can't just share the perfect things.

ETA: I'm surprised at how little the stones on my dress show up in the video. You can hardly see them at all!

My Second Competition

A recap of my second competition:

I didn't belong in the pre-bronze category. I had much more difficult elements in my program than the other two skaters in my category. I was 99% certain I'd take first before I even took the ice. I didn't exactly belong in bronze either, but I don't think I would have come in last.

I skated okay. I opened well, with my waltz-toe, and then the spirals were nice and steady. I took a deep steadying breath prepping for my camel spin, but I kind of lost it once I stepped into it. I think I completed two revs in the camel, but I wasn't even able to pull it into a one-foot spin to finish up. I was a little early starting the footwork before the loop. Out of the loop, I stumbled a little on the side toe hop and I'm not sure why. The flip-loop-toe seemed decent, though I muscled through the toe loop, but then, I always muscle through the toe loop because I don't really have enough flow coming out of the loop. The salchow was big and solid, but my legs were a little bent. Then I wound up for my final element, the sit spin. I just did not want to end up on my butt. I fought for it, but I never got my legs close enough together, and was tilting badly towards the inside. I ended up putting my free foot down, pushing up into a short one foot spin, and then ending with time to spare, so I struck a few extra poses on my way to my regular final pose.

Coach looked a bit resigned when I got off the ice. Later, I saw him and said, "I botched both my spins!" He just gave me this sideways glare that said, "We both know you can do better than that."

I placed first. I received all first place ordinals from the judges.

My take-aways from the competition are that it's definitely time for me to move up to bronze and that I am really going to work to get my spins more consistent. And despite how I felt I skated, I had a really, really good time! There will hopefully be many more competitions in my future.

Sick

I left work early on Thursday feeling a little queasy, thinking that after lying down for a spell, I would feel better. I didn't think I would spend the next two and a half days in bed with a stomach bug. I've skipped three days of skating and 2 lessons. I'd normally skate today, too, but I'm planning to go to our skating club's award banquet. According to my coach (and because I got a guest of honor invitation), I'm getting an award. I'm still dragging quite a bit, but I think it'll do me good at this point to get out of the house.

I compete in 6 days. And from my last bout of stomach bug, I know it took me a while to get my legs back under me at the rink. And I'm scheduled for a business trip this week. At least it's only a one day deal, and not on a day I normally skate, but it will require an early morning flight. Getting myself up to competition shape in this amount of time is not going to be easy, or maybe even possible. And this time, I'm actually competing against someone. Two people in fact. Oh well, in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter, and I can withdraw if I have to. I just hope that isn't necessary.

Well, I'm off to see if the banquet was worth venturing from the house for. Wish me luck (and a stable digestive system).

Ice Dance Weekend

Over the weekend, I went to an Ice Dance Weekend hosted by my home skating club. Around 40 participants came from far and wide to enjoy many hours of social ice dance and some instructional clinics. I've never participated in something quite like this before, but I throughly enjoyed it and *highly* recommend it if you do any ice dance at all.

So why should you do an ice dance weekend?

1. Meet new people
   Who doesn't like to meet others who enjoy the same activity as you do? You'll meet people of all different stripes, at all different levels and ages. One girl was a synchro coach who skated international level dances with amazing skill. One woman who skated her heart out this weekend was in her 80s!
2. The opportunity to dance with many partners
   This was hard at first. The first night, I had a hard time skating with a partner. I felt like I was going to run some partners over and like I was tugging away from others. I shied away from dancing with others and skating the dances by myself. But as the weekend went on, it was less of an issue (and kind people kept asking me to partner with them!). I was able to see for myself the importance of some of the partnering tips that my coach has given me because I could see how things went wrong with partners who aren't as good as my coach.
3. Learn new dances, tips, techniques
   I got to learn the steps to the bronze dances and even try out the willow waltz and hickory hoedown with some brave gentlemen. In the workshops, I learned a small part of the Killian and we worked on quick crossrolls from the paso doble. I'm nowhere near being able to do those dances, but I can add working on those steps to my practice repertoire, even at my level.
4. Improve the dances you're working on and review old ones
   After many more run-throughs than I'd normally practice in a single weekend, I feel much more confident about the pre-bronze dances that I'm hoping to test soon. We skated the lower level dances a lot because lots of people know them and it gave me the chance to work on pointing my toes, swinging my leg through close on swing rolls, proper pushing on progressives and adding more expression with my arms and head.
5. Practice with music (a lot)
   If your area is anything like mine, there's not a lot of ice dance. You practice on freestyle and the tweens monopolize the CD player. Once, a coach turned off my compulsory dance music in the middle of a dance and was surprised to find out that somebody was practicing to it. As if anyone would listen to compulsory dance music for fun! But ice dancing to music is waaaaay more interesting than just counting it out in your head and at this weekend, we had lots of modern music at the right tempo for various dances. Though I have to admit, it was a little strange to do the Fiesta Tango to "Gettin' Jiggy with It". 
6. Get inspired by other dancers
   Seeing some of the other skaters was a reminder of how much I have to learn about ice dance. There were some seriously amazing ice dancers there. I learned that I really do want to continue ice dancing because the higher dances look so cool and I want to be able to participate in more dances next year!

When I got home on Sunday, after almost as many hours on the ice as hours I'd slept over the weekend, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck, but I was jazzed. I couldn't fall asleep because my brain seemed to be afraid that I'd forget the steps to the Willow Waltz and kept playing them over and over again. I can't wait to have the opportunity to ice dance socially again. I may wait until I'm more advanced to travel out of my city for an ice dance weekend, but you better believe I'll go to more ice dance weekends in the future!