Guinea Pigs

Well, that was weird! I got to the rink, they took my waiver and temperature, then sent me down to locker room Blue 2 where Christopher's students were to put on their skates and wait to be called out. The other skaters went to their respective locker rooms. Before getting out on the ice, the director of figure skating came in and talked to us a bit about the rules. We were the guinea pigs, essentially (she said "pilot group" but guinea pigs sounds more appropriate). The first skaters to get on that ice since March. She said if all went well today, they will expand skating opportunities to several sessions a day utilizing all three rinks. She then led us out to one of the side doors where we waited six feet apart to get on the ice. She encouraged us to wear our masks but if we are having a hard time breathing, we were allowed to pull them down or take them off completely as long as we put them back on when talking to our coaches. There were 3 coaches and each coach had 3 students. Christopher split the hour 3 ways so we each got a 20 minute lesson and a 40 minute practice. I'm glad I wasn't the first one up because it took a while to get my feet under me again.

Lessonz - I was the second student to get a lesson during the hour so I had a good 20 minutes to warm up and I needed it! My legs felt like jelly and turns were hard to manage. Also, I remembered that I had gotten my blades sharpened the day the rinks shut down so when I got on the ice, my blades were really sticky and it was hard to stop. Christopher asked how things felt and I told him my edges felt fine but everything else was garbage. We started by looking at cross strokes. They were fine. I was surprised that these were still okay. We moved on to power pulls. Forward pulls are still garbage but they were garbage before the plague. Backward was easier. Next, I mentioned that my backward 3 turns had disappeared so we worked on those using one of the hockey circles. I was sad to discover that I lost a lot of progress on these. After working on Silver Moves for a bit, we transitioned to spins. I started with a two foot to one foot spin, some scratch spins, and a decent back spin (without the leg cross). Pleased, we ended with some jumps! Since I've been off the ice a while, he wanted me to do some bunny hops as a warm up. I warned him that it had been 12 years since my last bunny hop (once I was in my car I recalculated and realized it has actually been 14 years!). He showed me how to do one and on my first and only attempt I fell. Hard! Like one of those really bad backward falls. I hit my head on the ice but luckily my bun took the brunt of the impact (yay for smooshy bun forms!). I got up and told him NO MORE BUNNY HOPS! EVER! So I did some waltz jumps, salchows, and toe loops.

I did some loop jumps on my own later since we ran out of time with our lesson and he had to move on to the final girl in our group. My loops feel awful. I'm not sure if it was the sharp blades or the time away from the ice but....ew. I worked some more on backward 3 turns, spins, and jumps to round out the hour. I think I only did one camel spin and it was actually a good one! So much so that when I skated by Christopher while he was teaching one of the other girls he said "that was a nice camel." Yay! I did something right!

It was great to be on the ice but I'm not sure when I can go back. Right now, you can only be on the ice if you are working with a coach so it's not like I can go back and practice when I want. In fact, I'm not even sure if I'll get a lesson next week either. Regardless, I'm lucky that Christopher gave me one of his slots and I was able to get on the ice today. Super grateful for that! That did so much for my mental health!