And Now, Back To Our Regular Programming

We received the updated overall standing for the Roller Sports Ontario Indoor Points Series today. After three stages, apparently by the power of participation, I am now ranked first in the Senior Women category and 6th place overall! Hahaaa, I got a huge kick out of this so I have to post about it. I suspect this will not happen again for a very very long time.

Indoor practice was coached by AA today so it was back to a more intense pace. Warm up was a combination of simple dropbacks, three laps acceleration, and the echelon tower. I wasn't skating particularly well but I somehow completed the echelon drill so I could only imagine that the speed was seriously kept down.

We did a bunch of 10-lap races and I was not happy at all with myself. Sure I was finally getting warmed up. I noticed that my pushes and crossovers were getting better by the lap. However, I skated like a pushover and that totally defeats the purpose of the drill (movement within the pack). I had this irrational fear that as soon as people passed me, I would click skates with them when we skate side-by-side. So instead of looking for a place in the pack to jump right back in, I slowed down enough to get out of everyone's way to avoid any kicking limbs. I am quite embarrassed honestly.

Relay was intense and exhausting. Although I skated in the "kindergarten" teams, I made sure to skate 85% every time I went out to skate my two laps. It was a very hard workout though I was pleased with my skating. There was good lean in the corners, power in my underpush, and I played around with increasing my cadence coming out of the corners. I'll see if any of these translates to outdoor when we have outdoor practice tomorrow.