Four Days, Four Rinks

I'm back! My doctor released me to get back to skating so I went to the rink the first chance I could get so I could start getting my legs back. With the holidays in full swing, that meant that I had to rink hop in order to find a session to skate on. 

Day One: Sport Stable - I'm never a fan of this rink but I had the whole ice to myself which was a relief considering how shaky I felt on the ice. I only stayed 45 minutes out of the one hour session because I was utterly exhausted but I was able to do most things. The first thing I noticed after being in recovery mode the last six weeks was that my spins were really hard to center. Just traveling everywhere. My jumps were tiny but I attempted all of them. I even worked on some Ice Dances. I wanted to at least run my Free Dance but the rink speakers weren't working so I just ran it without the music. It was rough. I didn't feel ready to attempt the Free Skate so I did some cool down laps and then left. So tired. 

Day Two: The Y - I felt dramatically better! I ran through everything I usually run through (on ice warmup, Gold Moves, Bronze Dances, Free Dance, and Free Skate elements). Again, my spins were difficult to center but they felt a little better. I ran my Free Dance with the music and everything felt good (except the spin). I still didn't feel comfortable running my Free Skate so I skipped it and just worked on the individual elements. Gold Moves felt better too! Backward Circle 8 got around on all of the circles and I did all of my FI and FO Brackets. Yay!

Day Three: The Promenade - Lesson today! I told Christopher that I was struggling with spins so that's what we started with. They were slow, difficult to center, and lacked revs. So we started from scratch and worked on two foot spins, two foot to one foot spins, one foot from back crossovers, and finally scratch and camel. It was messy but I did it. Next up, we ran through all of my jumps. Everything is still on the small side but I was able to do all of them. We spent some time on the Flip and Lutz because those were a disaster even before the surgery. Finally, we looked at the Power Circles since the session thinned out a bit. Oddly, my bad side (CW) is better than my good side. It's so weird. Can't explain why that is. At the end of our lesson, Christopher said "That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." LOL...thanks :) 

Day Four: Apex - Hello Home Rink! It's been a while! Once again, I had the ice to myself and once again, I could not play my music over the speakers so I had to skate through my programs in silence. I finally felt ready to run the Free Skate so I was bummed that I couldn't play my music for it. Ugh. I also spent some time working on Gold Moves. The biggest accomplishment was the fact that I did the Backward Circle 8 very well so I did it again to make sure it wasn't a fluke and it was good that time as well. Yay! 

After four sessions, I feel almost back to 100%. My core is still pretty weak and I have to build back muscle and stamina but I'm getting there. I'll start up with Pilates again in early January and then I think I'll start to see some improvement with my spins. It's good to be back!