Everyone that skates is familiar with the fickle skating Gods. You can do a kick ass camel one day and then fall over your toe rake the next for no good reason. Some days the Gods find favor with you and other days not so much. This is particularly true of adult skaters; stunts randomly come and go. For me this past month has been spent in Hades. I have had two colds, two lung infections and an ear infection. I haven't been able to spin since Christmas and it is now January 20th. At one point I couldn't even do more than one three turn in a row or I would get nauseous and the rink would start slowly spinning around with no help from me. After yet another bad skating day last Saturday I was starting to get depressed. By yesterday, skating withdrawal had set in in the worst way. I was craving being on the ice again. I was even looking forward to jumping again. Me! Looking forward to jumping! When did that ever happen before? I was getting desperate!
Today my penance must have been completed. The Gods finally smiled down upon me and restored my ability to spin. Really spin. At full speed, centered, for so many revolutions that I lost count. Yippee!! So I spent most of the hour doing scratch spins, camel spins and sit spins. I even pulled off an under-rotated camel sit with good form. I had a blast. I also did lots of spirals: forwards, backwards and change edge. My spread eagles have gotten rusty so those got several run throughs until I could do them perfectly again.
Don't get me wrong, I did spend a significant amount of time at the boards catching my breath. You can't spend a month off the ice and out of the gym without severe consequences but I am so happy that I can skate at full tilt again. I was on the ice for the full session instead of collapsing in the hockey box after 30 minutes. I'm still not up for a double session yet but I am on my way again. Back to the gym tomorrow. I'm meeting my trainer and we'll have to jigger my routine to make up for the lost month. Plyometrics are going to have to wait a bit longer. I have to get back into shape first before I start those. But the Gods like me again. I have returned from Hades. Now to get in enough practice to kick some butt at the Worcester Open.
No comments:
Post a Comment