Face Off#

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:00:00 +0000

The novelty of landing face first seems to decrease as rapidly as the frequency with which I do it increases: on Sunday I was not even skating hard - I just slipped on some wet leaves (cosmic irony: I was putting my wristguards on and not paying full attention), ripped the scab off my elbow - it had until them been healing nicely - and gave myself a bit of a smack on the face (graze on chin, bump on cheekbone, mild headache). Yay helmets for not doing very much of use at all.

So, it is Time to do something about this.

What I have been doing, though I don't know if it'll solve anything but I know I really should do it anyway, is learning to turn left. There is something very lopsided about my balance such that I can parallel turn right and crossover left, and not vice versa, so all my skating time in the last few days has been on noddy drills like two-footed slalom down hills, or turning 180° on a left foot outside edge (other foot trailing on toe wheel) - which demonstrates again that my weight is often too far forward. And, more recently, two foot slalom on the level (with a push on each side). It seems to be evening out a bit (at least I now actually can push both sides, which is an improvement on yesterday), but I'm really feeling it in the left shin. I think I'm still lopsided and using too much brute force to push on that leg when my body's in the wrong place - I daren't look down too often, but it doesn't seem that I'm getting much of an edge as far as I can tell, or perhaps it's also an indication that my left shin is unused to the stress of doing it properly.

I feel like such a gumbie. Oh wait, I am. That'd explain it, then. Still, it's progress of a kind.