Here’s the opening of a poem that I really like. It’s by Pat Schneider, called “The Patience of Ordinary Things“:

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.

Translated into skating terms:

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How my blade holds my foot,
How the ice easily makes its way to water, then turns back to ice
Right underneath me. How perfect circles form
Just by standing still.

I have been been putting a lot of effort into what really should be ordinary aspects of skating. Like making sure I am always on edges, on the right part of my blade, and with the correct muscles engaged. It’s remarkable how much those things matter, and how hard they are to do.

Sometimes I worry whether at some point these things will ever just be there, mundane like the ordinary things that Schneider describes. Someday will I be able to just stop thinking about them? Will they just be there for me, like my chair or the floor?

If and when that happens, will I be grateful? Will I pause to marvel about how good and right everything feels? Or I will just skate?

Skating demands a lot of the body and the brain. But it also demands other things: trust that things will get better, and patience until they do. Fortunately patience in this case is not just a waiting game–it’s a skating game!

My bruise is healing up slowly. Today was the first day I skated without painkillers. Tough day.

Some lesson notes:

New exercises:

• Alternating inside mohawk, change of edge inside-outside. Free foot in after mohawk, then extend out of the outside. Make sure you do the change with your knee and ankle, not by pulling your shoulders over.
• Variation: do this same with a three turn instead of a mohawk.
• 3 turn, back crossover, change edge widestep, step forward other way (make sure you are looking the right way)
• Forward outside, back cross behind: get your new foot in the correct position (angled in), get on back of blade on old foot, don’t pitch forwards
• Inside edge little spread eagle positions, keep turnout in same position and step forward on outside edge, repeat in other direction.

Check placement and positions:

• inside mohawk
• placement of curves on alternating chasses
• swing rolls practice rising and falling on a straight line, watch alignment of standing leg
• three turns, hips need to come around