Friday, June 19, 2009

I Like To Orbit Orbit

Mondays at Orbit are open skate, not organized practice; and after a while, going around in circles can feel like, you know, going around in circles. So Noto asked me for an individual program that she could run on her own, and alla can say is this is how I do:

...oh and, I have a fairly serious sportwatch that has eight different functions and just one function for me, and that is it counts DOWN whereas most stopwatches count up. Which is fine if you're timing a race. For drills I want to not be thinking about or looking at the time, I just want to beep when my time's up. I stick the watch into my bra, and my bra beeps at intervals. If you were wondering what that sound was. In hindsight, I could have just gotten an egg timer. Though the watch is waterproof.

Five-minute warmup.
Just skate around, talk to people. A little rule of thumb: if you're working hard, talking should be difficult. And you want to work hard, don't you? So talk now!

Twenty-minute endurance skate.
Skate for twenty minutes without stopping. I focus on form over speed, particularly on proper stroking on both sides: pushing down into the floor, and following through at about 5:00 on the right and 7:00 on the left.

Five-minute cooldown.
Skate around, shake it out. Don't come to a dead stop, cool down...

BREAK
But then, stop and drink some water.

Ten-minute skating low intervals
Two minutes low, two minutes up, two minutes low, two minutes up, two minutes low.
I take it easy on skating low during the twenty; so for this I push myself to get ridiculously low, and still with proper stroking.

Ten-minute sprinting intervals
Two minutes sprint, two minutes skate it out, two minutes sprint, two minutes skate it out, two minutes sprint.

Ten-minute falling intervals
Two minutes one-knee falls, two minutes skate it out, two minutes one-knee falls, two minutes skate it out, two minutes one-knee falls.

BREAK
Drink some water, don't forget!

That's about as much as I have organized now, but other things that I might work on:

  • swizzles and swizzle pushes around the turn
  • look-back slaloms
  • fast slaloms (moguls)
  • one-foot slaloms
  • long crossovers
  • quick crossovers

...five minutes each, say. That leaves a half-hour to do tricks, I'm not allowed to do tricks until nine-thirty: shoot-the-ducks, mohawks, spreadeagles, backwards. Weee.

Orbit Skate Center, 615 S Consumers Avenue, Palatine IL. Open derby skates Monday 8-10 PM for the rest of the summer. $6 admission, skates are available for rental. Skates and gear are also available for purchase in the pro shop.