The one with ice skating

Usually I refuse to make a resolution for the New Year because really … if I’m only resolving to improve my life one day a year things aren’t going to go so well for me.  However this year is different.  For 2011, I really do want to improve my blogging consistency.  In thinking about the contents of today’s blog I realized that I never wrote about my surfing experience in Costa Rica!  How horrible is that?  I took a trip all the way down to Costa Rica with my best friend to learn how to surf and I never captured the details for posterity.  I guess blog post #2 for 2011 has been identified!

So on to ice skating.  I’ve always loved to watch ice skating competitions.  Watching truly skilled ice skaters twirl and glide and spin and jump has always been so fascinating to me.   The beauty and grace that can be achieved by “placing a knife on the bottom of a shoe” (quote courtesy of John) amazes me.  I am even more amazed each time I put on a pair of ice skates and try to “just” glide.  My glide includes an occasional bobble, a little bit of a lopsided lurching motion and an occasional episode of arm flailing.  But last night, with just a bit of sound instruction, my glide turned into a half-way decent event.  Admittedly, it’s nowhere near perfect but I found myself able to glide with just a bit of grace on one foot.  After picking up just a bit of speed we were told to glide with both feet on the ice and then gently place one foot behind the inner ankle of the opposite leg.  ”OK, this is fun” I thought to myself.  Why not try gliding on the other foot?  Well …. the left side of my body never cooperates as well as the right side so I still have some work to.  I guess some research into ankle strengthening exercises is in order.

During our first one hour class we also learned to swizzle which is just the motion of turning both toes in toward each other and then out, away from each other.  We swizzled our little hearts out in both a forward and backward motion.  A slalom-like movement was next and I believe after that we learned to stop.  For some reason, the snowplow stop created forward momentum for me every time.  I think I finally realized that you have to dig into the ice.  Yes, the words seem obvious now but with my sheepish tendencies, being that aggressive felt foreign and dangerous, to be honest.

I can see how ice skating could be a very freeing experience if you just let go and flow from one thing to the next.  I could hear my life coach saying, “Vanessa, get out of your head!!!”  So I did!  While doing backward swizzles I said to myself, “take a deep breath and just stop thinking” and I did.  This is a great accomplishment for me.  I don’t know if I’m more excited about the skating or the fact that for several minutes I was free of thought and just gliding and having fun.  It took me years to figure out what it means to get out of your head much less do it.  Now, I can almost do it on cue.  It’s still not a natural habit for me nor is it an event that occurs on a daily basis but when I need to I can actually get out of my head.

I’m very excited to go practice once or twice before our next lesson.  In fact, I’ll take a moment to brag about my class.  There are three of us and we all did so well in our first lesson that we already passed Adult Level 1!  In our next lesson we’re going to start working on skills for Adult Level 2.  How’s that for motivation to get out and practice my Level 1 skills?  :)

This entry was posted on Sat, Jan 08 2011 at 10:23 and is filed under Vanessa's Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.