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I survived!
Aug. 7th, 2005 10:34 amYesterday's little foray onto the ice was a success, in that I enjoyed myself and I didn't fall. :-)
I've always been incredibly impressed with the performances of athletic ice skaters, but I have an entirely new appreciation for their skill. At one point, Brian was coaching me to keep my blades vertical, which would reduce stress on my ankles. As soon as I tried to follow his advice, I started losing my control. Later I realized that this was because I hadn't even learned to glide — I had learned how to control my flight while I was pushing off with my toes, but just standing on the blades requires minute adjustments to make sure they're both going in the same direction.
So large portions of my intellectual capacity was tied up with trying to stay on my skates while I tried to break down the skill of ice skating into sub-skills and then practicing those. When I realized that I didn't know how to glide, I spent a few minutes accelerating and gliding, first keeping my eyes on my feet to keep my blades vertical, then trying to keep my eyes up and feel where the blades were in the proper position.
It's very interesting that my instinctive "oh shit" position is a half-crouch with my arms spread out before me. It brings the center of gravity down lower and spreads it out. My brain knows what to do.
As Brian, Kent and Jeff warned, my ankles ached after a short time. I also noticed a tightness in my chest from holding my breath all the time. I tried to relax and control my breathing, but it's natural to hold my breath when I'm concentrating or stressed, for some reason.
Then Jeff skates by and laughingly calls out, "what's the square root of 42?!" As if I can process math while I'm doing all this other stuff!
I also managed to avoid running down any of the little Kristi Yamaguchi clones skating around. I didn't hit any of the other newbies, either. Avoiding them made me kick off from the wall earlier than I would have otherwise, I think.
Afterwards, we stopped at Dairy Queen for ice cream, then the boys dropped me off at home so I could feed the cat and take a nap. The rest of the evening was reading, eating, watching DVDs and self-gratification. :-)
I've always been incredibly impressed with the performances of athletic ice skaters, but I have an entirely new appreciation for their skill. At one point, Brian was coaching me to keep my blades vertical, which would reduce stress on my ankles. As soon as I tried to follow his advice, I started losing my control. Later I realized that this was because I hadn't even learned to glide — I had learned how to control my flight while I was pushing off with my toes, but just standing on the blades requires minute adjustments to make sure they're both going in the same direction.
So large portions of my intellectual capacity was tied up with trying to stay on my skates while I tried to break down the skill of ice skating into sub-skills and then practicing those. When I realized that I didn't know how to glide, I spent a few minutes accelerating and gliding, first keeping my eyes on my feet to keep my blades vertical, then trying to keep my eyes up and feel where the blades were in the proper position.
It's very interesting that my instinctive "oh shit" position is a half-crouch with my arms spread out before me. It brings the center of gravity down lower and spreads it out. My brain knows what to do.
As Brian, Kent and Jeff warned, my ankles ached after a short time. I also noticed a tightness in my chest from holding my breath all the time. I tried to relax and control my breathing, but it's natural to hold my breath when I'm concentrating or stressed, for some reason.
Then Jeff skates by and laughingly calls out, "what's the square root of 42?!" As if I can process math while I'm doing all this other stuff!
I also managed to avoid running down any of the little Kristi Yamaguchi clones skating around. I didn't hit any of the other newbies, either. Avoiding them made me kick off from the wall earlier than I would have otherwise, I think.
Afterwards, we stopped at Dairy Queen for ice cream, then the boys dropped me off at home so I could feed the cat and take a nap. The rest of the evening was reading, eating, watching DVDs and self-gratification. :-)
