Camera Shy

It was a blissfully empty morning on the ice. Two adults in lesson, one responsible teenager and me. I was getting close to the end of my session and I decided to go back to the waltz-backspin axel drill to practice the feeling of take-off and alignment over my right side.

The first one was a mess. I had a good take-off, but I landed on my inside edge and wasn't able to hold it and turn it into a backspin. Suddenly I hear my coach and his adult student exclaim from across the rink, "That was an axel!" I turned and looked at them. "That?!?" What are they smoking? I think. They confirm, "Yes!" and I ask again, because I'm sure what I've just done is a mistake. But they're waiting for me to do it again.

So I line up to do an axel from a stand-still, which I don't do often, but that's how I do the drill. As they watch, I push onto my left leg, push through the toe and lift my free knee through. I came down on the quarter mark on the other side and landed on one foot. Now that was an axel! A cheer came up from my coach and his current student, as well as the teen who had now stopped to watch.
Buoyed by this success, I tried again, the same way. Again, success! A third try was not so succesful.

"Do you want me to video you?" the teen asked. I accepted her offer, since my camera was out of battery and I needed someone to hold my phone to film me. "Of course, they probably won't show up for the camera," I joked. And so it went. The first few were back to my old familiar forward landings. "I'll take as many as you want!" The teen promised, "This is a big deal!" That one statement meant so much to me. She is not a girl who minces words. She won't tell you it was good unless it was, and she's seen me working on axels for a year. I kept going. Eleven videos later, we had a few okay ones, but none as good as the two I did before. I knew then that lightning wasn't about to strike again, so I released my volunteer videographer to her own practice.

Every day, though, that axel is getting closer. I capture that feeling that I know is the right technique and I almost get all the pieces to come together. I feel it getting closer and closer. I continue to think "any day now..." even though I've been thinking that for months. Days of progress like this one keep my hopes up.

So stay tuned for the news and the video because I'm going to land that axel any day now...