Four-Skaters Pile-Up!

The improvements that I made last night regarding cornering were not a fluke. I felt more secure in the corners with slighly more power and my strides felt snappy as I did my warm up. It was gonna be a great practice today!

Well, that's what I thought anyway.

We did some corner technique drills including my specialty of exaggerating the right skate stepping OVER motion. ShH rolled over to me before that drill and whispered "ha! I'll stay right behind you since you're the expert." I've been spending lots of time to STOP stepping over with my right skate so I thought it was kind of ironic that I was doing a drill to reinforce that habit. It was a weird sight...all these skaters around me crossing over in that awkward fashion which I usually only see in my own skating videos. We did corner accel from the apex towards the end of the technique hour and it was a complete disaster for me as usual. I'm starting to think that perhaps I'm having so much trouble because I have too little speed before I begin the accel. In a realistic skating situation, I don't accel from (almost) a complete dead stop. I would either carry enough speed from my skating or I would have just finished running from a standing start. In both cases, I would be rolling much faster than what I have been doing during drills.

We played number game which coach AH assigned a number to every skater in the pack. He would call out two numbers with the first being the skater initiating an attack and the second the skater reacting to the attack. My turn came pretty quickly at the beginning of the drill. I was skating near the front of the pack but DD was skating beside me the whole time. With only one lap to make my move, it did not leave me much choices to keep my attack inconspicuous. I was originally hoping to let a gap open in front of me for a bit so I can give myself some room to accel before stepping out of the pack. That plan certainly could not work because of where DD placed himself. Argh. I had no choice but to step out of the pack, got in front of DD, and then began my acceleration. To make things even more, hmm, interesting, Mr. P exclaimed loudly in exuberance "Hey look at Candy go!"...alright, I think that's plenty of warning for whoever was suppose to react to my attack! Haahaaa. GN had been skating way out in the front and he started picking up his speed before I even came anywhere near him. The chaser became the chased and as he is faster than me, it was quickly apparent that I would not catch him. It was an attack that failed on so many different levels....on the bright side, my accel was decent.

The number game continued on and I just sat in the pack near the front with CC, JaS, and JaP in front of me. Since the pack was going at a very relaxed pace, JeP did some passing drills working his way from back of the pack to the front. None of us knew what actually happened but at the apex of the corner, JaP had his skate stepped on and went down. What followed was a four-skaters pile-up with JaS, CC, and me all falling on top of each other. The guys had it the worst with road rashes here and there all over. CC and me only had some minor scratches. We all got concerned when JaS did not get up for a long time, with a confused look on his face. Apparently his helmet took a hit from...something (perhaps skates or limbs or the ground) and he was a little shaken up by the pain in his shoulder. All of us kept WB busy at the first-aid station for quite some time.

Practice wrapped up with two 5K pieces but I wasn't really into them. I landed on the top of my left hip bone and I couldn't really tell if it was the joint that was hurting or just the road rash. I finished them nonetheless in my pack.

Time to heal.