Carved up#

Thu, 29 May 2008 13:36:27 +0000

I noticed recently that a whole load of past entries in this blog are out of order. Some day I will sort them out.

My leg appears to be generally on the mend: 32km with no complaint on Tuesday comprising home to Hyde Park, route check and back home (some soreness on Wednesday). Which means I start thinking about technique (it's rubbish) and fitness (it's lost somewhere) again.

Step 1: I am still way lop-sided. [[Cool as cucumbers]], written in 2006, describes "weak left parallel turns, weak right crossovers, early left foot opening, bad left armswing, and weak right carve", and two years later

• left parallel turns and right crossovers are two sides of the same coin, I think, both caused by only having a natural scissor with right foot forwards
• early left foot opening - I haven't noticed recently and can't remember what this was about anyway
• armswing: definitely better than it was. 2006 predates the Armswing Revolution
• the right carve is still as bad as ever. I'm steering the right foot instead of carving it

and being a glutton for beating myself up, I'll add

• high-speed crossovers - it's all very well doing them on gentle turns, but when the centrifugal force becomes a factor that's when they start to feel uncomfortable

New month's resolution, therefore: I will scissor left-foot-forwards whenever I scissor (and whenever I remember). Might try polishing the floor too - in the wrong shoes it's pretty damn slippery already - and see if I can get some impromptu slideboard videoing going, just to see what my body position looks like.

Getting fit again: well, I lost the off-season, so it's a base-miles and long-slow-distance job for the next little while. Lots of route checks, skating-as-transport, long bike rides.

Skating log: Friday was LFNS lead, which worked pretty well - although, it being summer, was on average quite slow. Some good short sprints for the ten or so skaters at the front, though. Sunday was rained off, then Tuesday was skate into town/route check/skate home (as above), Wednesday was rained off. Small amount of adductor twinge yesterday (seems to have passed). Next up is LFNS again, and before tomorrow I need to book train tickets for my trip to the Dales next weekend