Better, Just Slightly

So after two days of light skating over the weekend, my body was finally ready to work hard at practice...or so I thought. We skated over lots of gravel yesterday at Hamilton Beaches and I was visibly uncomfortable with the terrain. Well, I was uncomfortable enough to revert back to my old habit of serious pronation on my right skate. Those 15km was enough to give me a little bump on my right outside ankle which is now sore to the touch. Suffice to say it was painful to skate at practice today.

I did not skate as much as I would have like though I tried hard to skate well. For the warm up drill, we had to make our way from the back of the pack to the front on the outside before skating one lap each of neutral, offense, and defense. Coach AA gave us a few pointers to think about. For the neutral lap, stay relax. For the offensive lap, check on the left as we exit the corner to see how far the pack is behind and only begin to power out the corner when the pack is sufficiently jammed up. For the defensive lap, check on the right to pay attention for the skater passing up from the outside. While we were doing the drill, AA remained on the second spot in the pack and gave instant feedback to the skater in front. It was immensely helpful. I had some trouble with relaxing in the neutral lap. I typically would get really worked up so that I could get to the front. So once I got to the front, switching immediately to a more relaxed attitude was difficult. However, I got some really positive feedback ("textbook perfect"--weee!) from AA for my offensive laps so that was encouraging. As for my defensive laps, I think I glided too much and lost too much speed. In a race, people could easily pass me from the outside. There are so many things to pay attention to in this drill.

I skated two sets of the 10-lap passing drill. In the first set, due to some confusion in the pack, I ended up getting to the front without setting up any passes. I kept on expecting people to pass me but when that did not happen, I got confused. I skated more or less neutral until the last two laps when AA told me to make a run for it. Well, I really didn't "make a run for it" as I was starting to get tired. When I found myself crossing the line first, all I can say is I was perplexed more than anything else. In the second set, my ankle was really bothering me so it wasn't long before I dropped out of the pack.

I think I will skip practice this Wednesday to give my ankle some time to heal. It is now time to hop back on the bike to ease back to my regular training workload. As I was getting ready to leave practice, I spotted this poster advertising their Valentine's Day session skate and I thought it was rather amusing. "Roll your Valentine off her feet!" makes me think of sneaking up to the girl before some serious bodychecking. Wouldn't you agree?