Eulogy for a Pair of Skates

After a two month process of ordering and exchanging new boots and blades, I have finally begun to break in a new pair of skates. Around the time I ordered the new skates, I bought some colored laces for my current skates. After all, these skates have seen me through a lot and I figured I'd send them out with a bang.

They weren't technically my first skates, but they were pretty close to it.

I broke my ankle in these skates. And I returned to the ice in these skates.

I passed my first test in these skates. In fact, I've passed 11 tests in these skates.

I did my first competitions in these skates. I brought home 7 medals in these skates.

I learned to spin in these skates. 

I landed my first loop, flip and lutz in these skates. 

I attempted my first axel in these skates. (update: landed underrotated axels in them?)

I attended my first dance weekend in these skates. 

I've gone through 6 coaches in these skates, 3 of whom I take from now.

I've skated at ten rinks in seven states in these skates. 

Thank you, dear skates, for all you have seen me through. Happy retirement :)

Axels and Brackets

So much skating, and yet so little time.

The further you progress with skating, the more time it takes to maintain your current skills while adding new ones. I want to test gold moves and bronze dances by next summer. I'm planning to go to Adult Nationals in April and I'm working on landing an axel and suddenly all the many hours I spend skating a week just don't seem like enough. Especially with that axel.

I started full on working on my axel about two months ago and it has consumed a lot of skating time. In fact, all my lessons with one of my freestyle coaches have been dedicated to the jump. I'm starting to get it to a point now where I don't need the harness so axel can be part of the lesson instead of consuming the full lesson time with her. I haven't given any of my coaches a blog name yet, but let's call this one Maxine.

Maxine happened to enter the rink on our lesson day while I was running through back double threes and that ended up dictating that we would have a moves lesson. As dedicated as I am to the axel, it was nice to have a change. She was happy with my second run-through of the back double threes and she also thought my back 8 has gotten better. Then we started on brackets, which I'd only touched on briefly once with a previous coach.

Oh my. I want to like brackets, I really do. But they are scary. Maxine says brackets are like a clock. There's something for your hands, head and free foot to do at every hour marking on the lobe. Now keep in mind that between forward, backward, inside and outside brackets and 5 or so "hour markings" on each lobe that depend on which turn you're doing, there are A LOT of positions to remember. I didn't get them all right away. I took a good fall on a back outside bracket and after my lesson, another coach I chit-chat with asked me if I thought I was going to die on the brackets. I laughed knowing that my back outside bracket terror was written all over my face.

But there's hope. I tried them again today and they seemed somewhat improved already. I may be able to like brackets after all.

And since I mentioned my axel is making progress, here's a video of some of my latest attempts. It's still not fully rotated, but I have hope that it will get there some day if I can ever learn to hold a good air position.