Less clueless every week

I'm not willing to say I'm getting this, but I am willing to say I'm less clueless. At least this week... It was my birthday - I guess that's my present.

Damnit, work is really putting a crimp in my skating schedule. Blasted early morning conference calls. I decline most of them, but enough get through that I end up missing skating. No wonder so many in my age group are getting fat. Who has time to exercise?

I had another ego-positive lesson this week. I thought I was getting the hang of the backwards crossover "thing" and turns out, I was right. I think Will was pleasantly surprised. I've got more stuff to work on now. He's starting to throw step combinations at me to practice transitions and form. Now it's chasse-swingroll over and over and over and over again... Probably out of sheer malice, he showed me BACKWARDS chasse's this week as well - yet another move that my feet simply refuse to understand. Needless to say, I spend the second half of my lesson wildly flapping my arms while going backwards and trying desperately NOT to fall on my ass.... lord only knows if I was anywhere even CLOSE to that "backwards chasse". I am just happy I didn't break anything.

Blue continues to be the bane of my existence. This week it was chest, and by Friday evening I couldn't carry anything with both hands without screaming at the top of my lungs from the pain. You know, opera training really shows when it comes time to scream. I'm sure I can be heard with perfect clarity in North Dakota. I bet I caused a sheep stampede that even now the ranchers are trying to understand.

515 days to the Gay Games. It's gonna be a race to see whether I'm actually DOING anything by then or not... that, and not in a cast from some technicolor wipeout.

God help my first partner.

Changing to Once-A-Week Posts

Ok - so the slog has definitely begun. At least three days a week, hear the alarm go off WAY earlier than it should, drag my sorry middle-aged ass out of bed and get dressed to skate - drive 20 minutes to the rink, skate for an hour, drive 30 minutes home (traffic has started by then) and try to get my day started....

The only real thing that's wrong right now is that I can't seem to get to the rink more than 3 times a week. Last week it was only once. If it's not an early morning con call at work, then I'm in so much pain from my Thursday torture session with Blue that I can't move, much less pretend to skate... Last week was no exception. Skated Wednesday (had calls Monday and Tuesday, DAMNIT), then had my workout with Blue on Thursday.

The muscle du jour? Shoulders. Suffice it to say that he discovered that my left shoulder is weaker than my right, so he went to town on it. By Friday morning, I literally couldn't lift my arms, and that didn't get any better until Tuesday. I finally got to the rink yesterday morning.... Blue is going to have to back off a little so I can still function after my workouts with him. It's getting so that I spend every weekend with some part of my body in so much pain I can't operate normally... I know this is all having an effect, but DAMN the process is brutal!!!!

Let's see - Last week, my coach and his dance partner went to the Pacific Sectionals in Las Vegas and placed second - so they have once again qualified for Nationals in April. Last year they were the surprise silver medalists and are definitely the couple to watch on the adult competition scene. Will and I had our lesson Wednesday before they left, and I ended up having them BOTH trying to give me coaching on the same backwards move... and they were telling me DIFFERENT THINGS! :) The good news is that I finally "got it", and when I went to the rink yesterday, it all started to "click". I can now credibly skate backwards in that power-pumping style that skaters user to build up momentum for a big jump.

For me, it's a power-pumping, speed generating, wind in your non-existent-hair thrill leading up to a very dramatic......

crash into a wall because I wasn't watching where I was going.... Sigh. I am SO predicable sometimes. Guess what - I actually bounce when I hit something that hard. Who knew.

I'm going to start only posting once a week, probably after my lessons on Friday unless something unusually bad or inexplicably good happens in the interim. My ex managed to run his truck into a telephone pole while I was on vacation (he's OK but banged up bad) so I have almosts no time now - I have to bathe him, dress him, and of course ALL of the household work falls to me.... which is nothing new since he never lifts a friggin' finger anyway (did I say, "ex"?) At any rate, I don't have a lot of time and getting to the rink is a struggle, much less sitting down to write about it afterwards just so I can bore you to tears.

I promise not to leave out anything juicy...

or "bouncy" as the case may be. :)

The best time to work out is when you are in PAIN?!

Had my first Saturday workout with Blue today... To his credit, I didn't get any slack.... I'm just going to have to build up my stamina really REALLY fast. With any luck, at least I will have my legs back in reasonable working order by Monday morning.

Note to self - next time I make a classic mid-life-crisis decision like this, pick something easier. :)

Pain.... on ice!

Damn Blue. God I hurt today, and had to do my lesson on top of that.

So, two hours at the rink - an hour-fifteen by myself, then what turned into a 45 minute lesson. Will decided to spend today doing a breakdown on the fine points of swing rolls and the backwards skating thing. He's an exacting technician, and I guess I'm getting the basics quickly enough that it's time to start nit-picking, which I take as a good sign. I had to keep stopping to stretch my quads, though - they kept cramping up on me, and this evening my abs are starting to scream as well. I have another session with Blue tomorrow, goddess-help-me, and will probably be immobile and on serious painkillers by Sunday afternoon.

I'm beginning to feel more confident on the ice. I think I may be starting to "turn the corner" where my body starts to "get" how this works and I stop fighting it all the time.

One can hope!

Beaten to a pulp

Oh my god.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.

After (hell during) my workout session with Blue today, I literally became physically ill. When I got home, I had to lay down, and then I had a horrible craving for sugar. I really let him take me close to the edge this time. Probably not the smartest thing I've ever done. I can barely walk (that's normal), but being physically ill is another matter altogether.

Note to self - be willing to cry uncle before you die, not after. "After" really wouldn't do you much good now would it, shithead...

The frustrating thing is that, 10 years ago none of this would have really been that hard. A challenge perhaps, but not something that was life threatening. I could kick myself for letting life get in the way of my health.

I am beginning, I think, to understand why more adults don't exercise, and why they don't pick up new physical activities very often. How in the hell do you find the time? I've only been to the rink twice this week, when my goal was 5 days a week. Life just gets in the friggin' way. Between nursing my ex, who wrapped his truck around a telephone pole while I was on vacation (asshole), and the hyper-demanding life at Microsoft (with early morning and late evening meetings with folks in other time zones), there just aren't enough hours in the day to properly take care of yourself. This probably accounts for a lot of growing waistlines, bulging buttocks, and early heart attacks, to be sure.

I can't imagine what people with kids do. When would you have TIME to properly take care of your family? I can't imagine.

When I embarked on this process, I never dreamed what it was really going to demand of me.

Surprise! I guess..... :)

Am I actually getting BETTER????

I don't know, but after this morning I'm starting to believe that I might actually be getting better at this! I spent today on the backwards stuff again, and it's really feeling like it's settling in. Of course, I've thought that before and had Will crush my ego into a bloody paste when he saw it and I really WASN'T getting it after all.... but that being said, it DOES feel better, and I was really looking forward to my Wednesday touchbase lesson today.

Will overslept his alarm or something (poor guy) so no touchbase lesson today - RATS!!! I don't mind though - he's getting ready for a big competition in two weeks, and I'm sure he has a lot on his mind just now. I can totally understand. I am looking forward to showing off for him on Friday though... let's just hope I'm not deluding myself yet again!!!!

Working still on trying to get the Dutch Waltz to take up the whole rink - and still not succeeding.

The "little fucker brigade" is now actually acknowledging my presence and saying "hi" when they see me. That's new. I was beginning to think I was either a) a lot scarier looking than I thought or b) invisible. :)

Oh... and pray for me. My workout with "Satan" is tomorrow night.

Mondays are so hard....

I am SO not a morning person. Getting my sorry ass out of bed at 5am is bad enough, but on Monday's, it's nearly impossible. I struggled this morning, but eventually I did get out of bed and get moving. Once I'm actually out the door, I guess the body just realizes that I'm NOT going back to bed and stops fighting :)

Not a bad workout today. I concentrated on the skating backwards stuff that Will wants me focusing on more. The lesson on Friday was a real eye opener - I really got the hang of where my problems were, and after today I can say (with a straight face) that I'm getting it.

At the end of the practice, I went back over the Dutch Waltz some more. It's supposed to take up the WHOLE length of the ice, and I always come up about 30% short of the end. It's the only time I've ever NOT been able to fill up a space. Back in my dancing days, two jumps and I was already against the far wall of the studio... that was always a problem for me because I'm so tall. On skates, however, I don't seem to have the problem, and am really having to WORK to get the pattern to end up at the other end of the rink, and not way short of it.

More to work on, I suppose.... there's ALWAYS more. :)

Got my first rave!!

It's officially the end of the world.... I got what I can only assume is an actual compliment today during my lesson. As you will recall, most of the time, these are soul-crushing experiences that seem designed specifically to pound me ego into a formless mass of goo. Today was a pleasant and completely unexpected surprise. After working on fundamentals and correcting my form in microscopic detail (which I appreciate, it's just hard), Will had me show him the Dutch Waltz. I can do it, after a fashion, but I know I look like a ruptured duck.

What looks slow and effortless to a spectator is, in reality, an ongoing epic battle with gravity.

I finished doing a pass, and Will immediately started raving about how deep my edges were. Hold it - Will.... raving..... never expected to put those two thoughts together, at least not yet.

Evidently, most beginners don't have the guts to commit to really leaning into the edges, and I guess I'm just too stupid to know just how badly I could get hurt if I lost it. :) It still doesn't look like much, but "depth of edges" is TOTALLY Will's hot button, and for the first time, I felt like I actually might - just MIGHT - be getting this after all.

My backward skating is also improving. We spent some time breaking down why my feet kept getting tangled, and once I got it right, it FELT right. I need to work on stamina, but I have to say that I left the lesson today in a good mood - which was weird, in and of itself. :)

Oh - and after my training session yesterday with "Blue" - yes, I can't lift my arms. :)

Satan isn't Red....

Satan isn't red - he's BLUE...

Damn.

Ok - so this time, "Blue", my personal torturer/trainer, decided it was going to be all about upper body stuff - and I am quite sure tomorrow morning I won't be able to lift my arms. At least I should be able to get through my lesson. Small favors...

The pack of the kiddies that are on the ice with me most mornings evidently have a group workout with him just before my scheduled session - we all crossed paths as they were leaving and I was arriving. The paranoid side of my personality has them thinking "god, won't he just go away!!!". As you will have noted from one of my first posts, the little fuckers intimidate the crap out of me.

Blue told me a cute story today during my workout - evidently he gets "chatty" when inflicting pain on others. Who knew. At any rate, he said he was visiting a friend (former girlfriend) in San Diego and decided to borrow her car and drive to Palm Springs, since it sounded nice (he assumed "palms" and "springs"....). Little did he know, poor little straight-boy... ;)

Picture this, if you will: Tall, blonde, blue-eyed underwear model, driving down the main drag of Palm Springs with his shirt off in a PINK CONVERTABLE. Can you say "feeding frenzy" ladies? He figured out really quickly that a) there weren't any "springs" and b) the place is positively crawling with gay men acting like wolves on the prowl and he was, for all intents and purposes, a wounded deer.

If you are in Palm Springs, you are either really OLD or really GAY.

Needless to say, I nearly dropped a 10 pound dumbbell on my head when he hit the punchline. The image of him thrown into that mess like chum in a sea full of sharks was just too much. Quite frankly, I'm surprised he escaped.

Had a good afternoon skating practice session today as well. I think I've gotten the hang of the mohawks, although I always come out of them going in a tight little circle.... backwards and one foot no less :) Who said I ain't coordinated!

So it's getting less crappy as I get further into learning stuff, I suppose. Still terribly frustrated that I'm not picking this up as effortlessly as my arrogant dancer-brain expected I would, but I've resigned to the process and am settling in.

On balance (not mine)...

On balance, this wasn't a bad practice session today. A few weeks back, I approached Will about adding a second "touchbase" coaching session on Wednesday mornings - sort of a mid-week check-in on what I'm working on, mostly to make sure I've not started a bad habit before I've practiced it too much. Today was the first of those check-ins, and it had the intended effect.

Of course, before working with Will, I spend more time on backwards stuff.... It's kind of there, but not really - and when Will and I went through it again, I saw immediately what I was doing wrong. I can't actually do it correctly yet, but at least I know what NOT to do. :) At any rate, it kept me from practicing things too wrongly for the rest of the week, so I count that as time (and money) well spent.

At the end of the session, Will surprised me again and added a new skill (like I can even do the stuff he's already thrown at me!). To practice skating backwards, I've been turning around the way I've always done it on rollerblades. Not graceful, but it gets the job done in that my ass is now leading instead of my nose.... He decided it was time to start cleaning that up, so today he showed me how to do a proper "mohawk", which is one of the really basic ways of switching from forward to backward. I've seen other skaters doing this, of course, and it looks like one of those things you just do without thinking....

Of course, "not thinking" is pretty much always a bad idea for me, and since this involves going from one foot going FORWARD to the other foot going BACKWARD, this is a prescription for a wipeout. Needless to say, I hugged the wall while trying to figure out how to do it without getting my legs tangled up in the process.

The good news is that I "get it", although I can't really do it yet without a walker, a cane, or better yet a Hoverround....

Will is really starting to pile on the new skills these days. Either I'm getting this better than I think I am, or he's getting collassally bored with me doing the same crap over and over again and is showing me new stuff so that HE doesn't get bored.... :)

Oh, my coach and his partner were featured in a really good story for the local newspaper, with great pictures! Pictures and Story

Do it in TWO directions...

Well, I can now successfully and theatrically fall down while skating either forwards OR backwards! Am I talented or what?

Before I went on vacation last week, Will told me to start spending half of my practice time skating backwards. Today was my first practice after vacation - so this probably wasn't the best time to follow his instructions - but I did.

Trip, flail, crash, sliiiiiiiiiiide. Ow. It hurts either direction.

As happened after my last long layoff, things didn't go well in general, and I spent most of this practice just trying to stay vertical and reasonably in control. Failed on both accounts (I managed to fall down forwards as well. I'm ambeedecstrus!

Sigh. One of these days, I hope I can look back on these months of embarrassment and abject failure fondly from the perspective of a proficient skater. How long should you persevere before you admit failure and take up something safe like lion taming? :)