A visit to the Flyers Skate Zone

Your diarist played ice tourist back on the Sunday after St. Valentine's Day.  We were at the Jersey shore and my home ice at Bowie was off limits due to a hockey tournament.  As is the case of most busy Sunday afternoon publics, this session was fully loaded with the usual cast of players:  hockey boyz skating fast, against the grain of traffic, and well beyond their skill levels; parents carrying (!) small children while attempting to skate with their running mates careening about unsteadily taking pix with a cell phone; teens alternating between skating arm in arm, 6 abreast or standing 6 abreast stopped in traffic; peeps insistent on cutting through the center circle just as you are winding up for a jump; and finally, other teens pretending to be ice monitors with about the same disdain that Claude Rains musters in Casablanca .  Diaristdaughter and I took that all in stride and got in two hours of mostly forward skating without killing anyone.  For me the part I disliked the most was that after the mites hockey game, which preceded the public session, the rink management shut down two of the three banks of lighting, leaving just the center string on.  This created odd shadows and dark areas through out the rink.  Kinda reminded me of pond skating at dusk but without the rustic charm.  But beggars can't be choosers and even at $8.00 (roughly double the price of a similar public at home) it was better than not skating at all.  Why so costly you might ask?  Basically because they can get away with it.  Since the Skate Zone opened back in 2000, several older nearby rinks in Ventnor City, Vineland, etc. have closed leaving the Skate Zone as the only game in town.  No doubt they have frequent skater options and quieter mid-week public sessions that would reduce both the cost and the roar of the crowd but one wonders if they turn off even more lights when the skating population is just a handful.  Perhaps I'll answer that question this summer when I'm on vacation back in this area.  My next bit of ice tourism takes place towards the end of this month when I go down to St. Pete, Florida for a boat race.  My motel is only a few blocks from Clearwater Ice Arena and although they've done away with the 6am free style session that I dropped in on last year, they do have a Friday night public session that agrees with my timetable.  How can I resist?

Notes from my St. Valentine's Day lesson

Do you take notes after a lesson?  I've started.  I went to Office Depot and bought a little spiral bound note book to jot down nuggets of coach wisdom.  Tonight's lesson focused on my poor wandering Waltz jump.  As I recall, coach Mike emphasized the following points:

1. I need more follow through with the free leg during the take off stage.

2. Upon landing I need to be mindful of keeping my left shoulder and arm forward.

3. Upon landing I need to point my free leg toe more to keep things tidy.

Beyond that, he showed me a refined way to set up for the jump:  enter via a LFO3 then into a couple back XOs, then step around and jump.  Yes, yes, I know.  All this is fairly cut and dried for the aviators in the audience but for a geezer skater it's worth revisiting all this and freshly re-ploughing this particular furrow.  I wonder how much practice I'll need to actually have an elegant Waltz jump in the tool box rather than the one that looks like a drunk jumping out a saloon window two steps ahead of the law?

After I had enough of that we next looked at my inside pivot and two foot spin.  The main focus was for me to make a conscious effort to keep my weight on the heel of my right skate for the push part of the inside pivot.  Beyond that it's all a blur.  Although I go out on boats frequently, I can only do a couple of spins before things get a bit swarmy and I need to do something else--so note taking was a bit lax on this element. 

So, that's tonight's report.  For the up coming three day weekend I'll be over on the Jersey shore.  I'll take my skates and hopefully get to be an ice tourist at the Flyer's Skate Zone in Atlantic City.  Until then, don't eat too much Valentine's Day chocolate--it kills those jump take offs...

--Ta

Wiggle room and misc.reports from the ice.

When I last checked in, I was moaning about how my laces go slack after 30 minutes or less of ice time.  At that point I tried waxing the laces to see if they'd hold better.  The short answer is "No", at least the way I did it--dragging the laces around the stump of a Christmas candle several times.  That didn't do diddly squat.  Additionally I've tried replacing the stock Jackson insoles with yellow Super Feet brand insoles; I've swapped out the stock Jackson laces for Riedell laces; I've tried different socks and combinations of socks; I've had the boots remolded; tried different lacing techniques; tried skating with and without the silipos gel tubes I usually wear to prevent ankle chaff.  I may have done other stuff but with so many variables I've probably forgotten some.  The bottom line is that I still have to come off the ice after skating briefly and adjust the tension of the laces.

Super Feet insoles.  Did they make a difference?  Maybe a small improvement, or maybe it's just wishful thinking after spending money.  At any rate Super Feet didn't entirely fix the problem.

Now, while I was trying different socks and combinations of single vs double socks I realized how limited the choices are for male skaters in a sport which is top heavy with female participation.  Women figure skaters have a number of options from which to choose--tights, trouser socks, knee socks, short socks etc. of varying thickness, materials and texture.  Men on the other hand do not have that range of foot coverings to pick from.  Even thin dress socks are too thick and squishy and also tend to roll up the malleolar ankle sleeves which I put on before socks.  While sorting through my alternatives during the loose lace trouble-shooting period I noticed my wife's thin trouser socks and stole a pair.  They worked so well going over the silipos malleolar ankle sleeves that I had diaristwoman go and buy me several pairs of my own.  I've since been told that many male skaters raid their wives hosiery department to obtain skate appropriate sockage!  When getting my boots remolded I wore a pair of these without the maleolar sleeves to get the tightest fit possible.

I wonder what all the other manly men are wearing this season?  Diaristwoman says she's good with this as long as my adoption of women's underwear begins and ends with trouser socks.

So where does this leave me?  I've become resigned to my fate and I simply need to be disciplined to show up at the rink early enough to put on the skates, do squats and stomp around in them for 15 minutes and then untie/retie the laces once more before stepping out on the ice.  I suspect that my feet warm up the boots which causes them to expand and in turn that stretches the laces to the point where I'm aware of a sloppy fit and reduced "blade feel". After the second session of tugging on the laces I always have more lace to deal with after tying the bow knots so I know it's not my imagination. 

Final thought:  I think when I go to buy the next pair of boots I'm going to insist that the boots are sized to my left (smaller) foot, with the notion that if that size pinches my right foot then I can have the right boot stretched.  It's probably easier to stretch a tight boot than it is to get a loose one to behave.

To Wax or Not To Wax, That is the Question.

Left skate, lace, candle; A still life Haiku question; Will it stay tightened?

I'm talking about skate laces not my hair.  Try as I might, my left skate in particular gets loose after about 30 minutes of skating.  This is most annoying as the 30 minute mark is just about the time that ancient leg muscles get warmed up.  I talked with the owner of our rink's Pro Shop about this (he's a hockey player) and he recommended waxing the laces with a little candle wax.  I've done a little google search snooping and there's a fair bit of posting both pro and con about waxing skate laces to keep them tight, but only in reference to hockey skates.  Is this a bad idea for figure skates?  It seems there's only one way to find out.  So your ever faithful diarist shall, for better or worse, test this idea to see if it's sound advice or a brain fart.  It seems counter-intuitive but who am I to question the council of professionals--at least until I've tried it?  Stay tuned.

Hey Nonny Nonny and a Hot Cha-Cha!

There was a young skater named Hannah
Who slipped and fell on her fannah
     As she lay on her side
     More stars she espied
Than there are on the Star Spangled Bannah.

The above doggerel is apropos of nothing--just had to get it out of my system...

Today's Power Stroking session was an instructive one for your old Diarist. The first 10 minutes leaves one gasping for air but somehow life goes on.  I learned today that once I grasped the basic pattern of the drills that I wasn't the slowest skater on the ice--at least during the forward skating portion of the programme--I actually passed some of the youngsters, much to their chagrin.  The back skating drills were better than last time but there's still much room for improvement.  But unlike the afore mentioned Hannah, I didn't land on my fannah and in fact lived to fight another day...

At the end of the session Madam Director handed out entry forms for a Holiday Contest--the "Ugly Holday Sweater Day".  The skater that is deemed to have the ugliest holiday sweater will win a "great" prize.  This takes place on the 22nd of December (which just happens to be my BD).  Diaristwoman swears she doesn't have an appropriate sweater for this contest but I'll bet she knows peeps that do--I told her I don't want merely ugly.  I want truly hideous--extra points if the sweater has flashing mini lites.  I mean, it's my BD--I gotta win this!

Investment Step Time.

My skill level has gotten to a point where any further progress will require what I'll call an investment step: a period of time working on a lot of uninspiring stuff that serves as the foundation for more obvious improvement.  Sort of like the activation energy required for an thermodynamically unfavorable chemical reaction to take place.  Makes me wish that there was a figure skating "enzyme" that would magically lower the amount of energy required to push an aging skater up that activation hill.  Unfortunately, there's not.  Just mind numbing practice of uninspiring stuff.  Stuff like back edges, back crossovers, back power pulls, etc. 

Although technically I'm supposed to be working on jumps and spins during my Thursday free style lessons, I've parked those for the time being so that I can concentrate on refining the back skating skills that feature prominently in my Saturday Power Stroking class.  Working on them during a 30 minute lesson is one thing, finding suitable conditions to practice them is another thing altogether.   As most of you know, practicing back skating skills is v. difficult during a busy Public but today I was able to get away from the lab early enough to take advantage of a relatively quiet mid-day session with only a half dozen or so skaters at any given time.  For the first half hour it was just me and two pre-teenage girls who are part of the Bowie ISI skating team.  Since they are good skaters doing fairly predictable things I was able to literally turn my back on them and devote a large part of the two hours to practicing uninspiring backwards stuff.  I also saw and quizzed Madam Director about that peanut pattern she's fond of for Saturday's Power Stroke class to make sure I understood it.  Once I had that clear in my head I practiced rounding the red dots, both while skating forwards and backwards, in preparation for tomorrow's session. 

The upshot of today's practice is that (a) I now know the pattern used for most of the drills in the Power Stroke session, (b) my back alternating crossovers are much smoother and less scratchy, and (c) I managed to get a tentative back power pull going on my right foot by starting off with back wiggles and then lifting my left foot off the ice.  I can only hold it for a few pulls before having to put the foot down to regain balance and speed by resuming back wiggles but it's a start.  Hopefully with a little more experimentation the left foot will also report for duty and eventually I might even be able to gain rather than lose speed while doings these!  I also briefly experimented with back swing rolls but those need much more work before being used in anger.  On Thursday Coach Mike demonstrated back cross rolls but those will have to wait until I'm more confident about stepping behind with the free foot and putting that new back outside edge down on the ice.  I'm just happy to have a few tiny improvements before tomorrow's session with the hot young kids.

Power Stroke Class

Encouraged (perhaps "egged on" puts things more succinctly) by several of the rink instructors, your old diarist dropped in on the rink's Saturday morning Power Stroking Class this past weekend.  This 45 minute class is designed to help figure skaters gain power and speed through skating drills which focus on footwork in both directions at a pace designed to crank up the heart rate.  The skaters who make up the two dozen or so at our Power Stroking sessions are typically young (teens to early 30 somethings) and good (most are mid to upper level free-stylers; skaters lower than gamma level need not apply).  The week before, I came over and watched and after wards the rink director invited me to drop in to see if I'd like it.  And, so I did.  I showed up bright and early and told the kids to be kind to me, an old, brittle recreational skater.  They just laughed.  One 30-ish woman who had, until I arrived, been the tail end Charlie was delighted to learn that she'd no longer be, to momentarily borrow from cycling parlance,  the group's "lantern rouge".

The first take-home from this outing is that your diarist indeed was the oldest--and slowest skater out there.  The second take-home was that although my forward swing rolls, cross rolls, cross overs, inside and outside edges, power pulls, etc. are good enough to hang with the young dogs, my back edges and cross overs plus (perhaps more importantly) the body-box/arm movements/muscle memory/brain processing speed required for fast alternating changes from one foot to the other--all while skating backwards in fast traffic need serious work.  Don't even talk to me about back cross rolls or back power pulls--those tools simply aren't in my tool kit at present.

Part of my hesitancy was being unfamiliar with the patterns used for some of the drills.  Going forward was OK since I could see the skaters ahead of me and could more or less follow the leader.  Skating backwards at speed, on the other hand, is spooky enough without having to keep in mind where you are in a "peanut" pattern that weaves around the red dots on the rink, all while being passed closely (on both sides!) by faster, more powerful skaters.  While I didn't crash and burn and didn't tangle with other skaters, I was slooow-o and had to "two foot" the back power pull and back cross roll drills.  The other drill which gave me big trouble was the one requiring alternating forward three turns immediately followed by back cross overs.

So where does this baptism by fire leave the aging skater?  Well, I figured since Madam Director didn't throw me off the ice at the end of the class that I may as well sign up for the next flight of Power Stroking sessions which kick off next Saturday.  Two months from now some things won't change--I'll probably still be the oldest (and slowest) in the group; but other things will change--I will be one hell of a lot better in at least some of the back skating skills; either that or I'll be dead.  I now better understand why the good free-stylers and coaches who occasionally drop in on a crowded Public Session are so fearless backwards in traffic--they've got right stuff in their tool kits.