Danger! Danger!

So yesterday while warming up the Canasta Tango, I hit my toe pick on a crossover (um, bad technique much? Rather than the underpush, I just shoved the foot into the ice...)  What should have been a horrible face plant ended up with me hopping a few steps, sliding onto my thigh, and spinning onto my butt.  The absolute best toe-pick fall ever.  Not even a tiny bit of pain, like sitting down at the bottom of a sit spin you just can't stand up from.  I was thrilled.  Best fall ever!

However, I stood up and found out that my legs did not agree with my brain's assessment of the fall.  I got off the ice and for about 5-minutes my legs were shaking, sewing-machine leg style (rock climbing term), as if I had just had a near death experience.  WTH legs?

However, I managed to get back on the ice and have a decent lesson.  Carson and I have flattened out the end pattern of the Rhythm Blues now, so I am no longer doing the step behinds straight at the wall (he had been doing that to not require me to skate at such a severe angle around the curve) but around the rink.  I only did 2 step behinds the first time we did the pattern, but managed all 3 the second time.  That first one is just a killer.  The second time we did the dance, I don't remember how many I hit, but Carson did them too and it wasn't that different from when he just holds me up while gliding.

Worked a lot on edges, as I prefer to angle a flat the direction I'm going...  Canasta and Dutch seem okay.  Even Rhythm Blues seems promising.  I don't even attempt the end pattern on my own. Thank goodness you don't have to solo tests.


Oh- and this morning I woke up with a quarter sized black spot on my knee. So apparently I DID hit it when I fell, but it didn't hurt- so WTH legs?

Down she goes again...

What the heck? Two bad falls in a week!

But first- Friday exhibition went okay. My jumps weren't fantastic, as a result of the Wed. fall, but I didn't cheat my single toe loop. My backspin reverted to the foot tuck- NOT cool. And my loop was atrocious.That skate would not have passed. I have Iowa Games in 2 weeks, andcomp/test early march.Well then Saturday morning the zamboni had broken after one line, so we hada strip of clear ice through the aftermath of a crowded Friday night public- ick. Still, it was an okay practice. I stayed up late the night before (NOT watching men's short, sadly. We had people over for a fun gamenight). All my jumps were decent except toe loops in combo- still hurts.My backspins spun but were hit and miss on being good or just passable. It had gotten so reliable!So then the zamboni was fixed and we got beautiful ice for LTS. I did my 3warm up alternating F xover laps and was either turning or had just turned to do backwards, and then I was belly flopped on the ice.I have no idea how this fall happened. I didn't toepick, I didn't click.I landed first on the right butt cheek, then slid on my stomach, which makes no sense that I didn't fall left.I don't remember catching myself with my hands, so I think rather than trying to save the fall, my wrist got caught while I slid. I had to be helped up because I couldnt bear weight on the hand, and my legs were shaking, though nothing else hurt. Z., a novice skater waiting for axel plus group, untied my skates for me, while Sergei got me ice. The pain was just getting worse, so I was pretty convinced I broke it. I had Kevin'scar, so a skate Mom drove me home (I can drive my car one handed, but not his). She offered to take me to the ER, but it was not really a time sensitive emergency.Kevin and I went to the ER, and the x-rays did not show any fractures, itis "just a sprain". This is very small consolation, because I still can't move it, and even taking Lortab and Ibprofen, I'm in a ton of pain. At least I ca take the brace off when it gets itchy! Right now I have 5-10degrees of downward bend (with pain) and no upward bend at all. I can move my fingers with less wrist pain than yesterday.I'm trying to find out if Iowa Games will do a medical refund, if not I'll decide the day of if I should skate. This week I will be staying off ice.

January 26, 2012

Down she goes...So yesterday I was composing my blog post during my lesson, but thensomething way more interesting happened. I was hoping that this lesson isthe typical 'horrible lesson before a performance', because while nothorrible, it didn't go well. My backspin seems to have disappeared. Iblame the ice. I'm not used to smooth ice which makes the spin harder toenter. Or something... I can still spin if I put my foot at my ankle, butnot otherwise (and Carson doesn't allow foot at ankle). My scratch spin isWILD. I'm entering it with WAY too much speed, but Carson wants power inthe crossovers. You can't have power and no speed. My sit spin was mostlygood, but I missed it a few times. If my spins are missing, what do I haveleft? A toe loop? (Which is weird- when did that get good?) My loop was,well, my loop. My salchow wasn't behaving. My waltz-toe wasinconsistent. It was a bunch of bad runthroughs. The weirdest thing iswhen Carson had me do the program with my entrance, my legs immediatelystarted shaking in the opening position. So apparently it isn't theaudience that makes me nervous, it is the entrance. I had to stop hockeylines after the program (to make me good and tired before we do my"reskate") because my legs were literally twitching, spasming like a sewingmachine needle when I didn't have two feet on the ice..After Carson left I ran through the trouble spots - sit spin to salchow tobackspin. It did NOT go well. Then waltz-toes, okay a little better.Then I was getting ready to do something, based on where I was on the ice,I assume a waltz-toe, which leads me to believe I was skating backwards,but best I can tell, I was skating forward. Maybe I was turning around?Anyhow, next thing I knew, I could hear myself half-grunting, and thenslamming onto the ice. I think I caught the tail of my right blade, and Ifell HARD onto my butt and back. My head touched the ice, but I think itonly tapped down, I don't remember hitting the ice with my head, so I musthave tucked my chin.The first thing I remember thinking was that I was in too much pain to getup, but I wasn't actually hurt, so I sat up, getting the weight off mybutt. J, a skater, came over to check if I was okay. I was trying not tocry, but assured her I was fine, it was just going to take a second.Apparently, a second is too long, skaters are supposed to bounce right backup, so after maybe 30 seconds Carlos (a coach) came over to check on me, Igave him a thumbs up as he skated over, but he still came over. As soon asCarlos got there, I think Burton realized he should probably make sure Iwas okay. I felt silly. I'm FINE I told them all. Thank you for theconcern. I just need a second. I had probably been sitting on the icefor about a minute, and was able to get up.The pain was in bottom and my back, and weirdly, unlike every other fallI've had, I wasn't shaking. Not even a little bit. I usually get offthe ice after a fall because I shake so badly (like during hockey lines) Iworry that it isn't safe for me to skate. But I didn't have any of that.So I immediately went and did the jump I was going for. The waltz jump wasfine. But twisting to pick in the toe loop was too much- my butt couldn'ttake it. Uh oh! I have an exhibition on Friday. I ran through all myprogram elements. Everything hurts, but I can do everything.However, the more I skated, the more my head started to throb, and I wasgetting nauseated. It was about 15 minutes until the end of the sessionwhen I fell, and I got off about 5 minutes early. I was feeling prettyawful by the time I got off the ice, but not disoriented in anyway. WhenI got home, I half laid down on the couch, and iced my head and bottom. Istayed there for about 45 minutes, then went and layed in bed watching TVfor an hour, then decided I was fine to go to sleep. Laying in bed wasfine, my head prettly much stopped hurting. I woke up this morningfeeling fine (well, my bottom hurts, and the muscles in my back are reallytight- but that isn't exactly a new thing). However, now that I've been atwork for an hour, my head is starting to hurt again. Apparently holding itupright is too hard. I don't feel nauseated, just uncomfortable. It'sjust so weird, because I really do not remember hitting my head, exceptmaybe a teeny bit after I finished falling.Any tips on making the pain go away? If it is still bothering me tomorrow,I'll call the doctor (since otherwise I have to wait to Monday or go to theER), but I really am not exhibiting any concussion signs. Just the back ofmy head is lightly throbbing.TL;DR I fell, badly. It hurt.

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

Time

Event

9:43p

I hurt. My legs are super sore from yesterdays private lesson (lots of spirals and stretching) and my knee hurts from that too (I end my routine in a lunge on my knee). Thankfully it's not the knee pain that's kept me off ice- it's an actual bruise. Synchro was weird today. It wasn't a good practice. I was a mess, the team was a mess- but I left really glad to have been at synchro. I took a dive during a pass through today. Usually I just dip instead of lunge through our lunge/spiral passthrough and this time I decided I was going to go for the lunge. Halfway down into the lunge I realized that the hands of the people I was going under were too low, and I was going to get clotheslined, so I need to dip instead. Well trying to dip while in a lunge turned into catching the front AND back toepicks and diving. As I started falling I realized if I kept falling the way I was I'd knock a spiraller (is that a word) down, so I skinnied (another made up word) my body together so it really did look like I was diving and kind of turned sideways. I fell hard on my side, it really hurt and kind of pulled my neck (which is now sore) got up as fast as I could so I would be back in place for the next pass through. I consider the fall to be a great success. 1) I fell. I hate falling and I didn't die thus falling is okay. 2) I didn't knock anyone down. Very important in synchro. 3) I got back up and got back with the program. Honestly something that I needed to "practice" before the competition. After the music stopped my legs were shaking like mad. Apparently they didn't get my brain's message that I was okay. Just like they didn't get the message at the test that I wasn't nervous. Still it wasn't a great time during the program to fall, and I did okay. And the people who actually saw it said it was a hysterical fall- so I provided some entertainment. Glad to be of service. But really my skating was bad tonight. Thriller was just eh, but in the Latin program I feel lost. In Thriller I don't really have to think about what's next, I just have to do it. In Latin, I spend the whole pinwheel trying to remember where we go after it. see locked entry for rant. (oops sorry blogger folks, I'm not transfering any locked livejournal entries)

August 7, 2007

3:50p
YAY for stronger drugs
After 4 days of pain killers doing nothing, I called the doctor and begged for a muscle relaxant. Today felt like a normal day after a bad fall skating. (meaning it still hurt- but not unbearably)

I was going to tough it out and take my lesson- since I test in 2 weeks- but the new drug (cyclobenzaprine) makes me really dizzy, so it would be unsafe to try to skate. I feel so badly because this week is LTS test week and I have a student I need to test, so the skate director will have to take my place, which is an inconvience for her. That also means the large snowplow class won't have a helper- but drugs or not, I can't pick kids up right now, it would hurt too much.

My coach was okay with me canceling and even asked me if I wanted to postpone the test (which would probably be sensible?) but I said I'm definetly still doing it. It's 12 days away, and I'm bound to be feeling fine by then. I am so bored of PB moves that I don't want to have to wait for another test session to do them! There is only one I'm worried about, and the rest I should pass without a problem. So as long as I get one or two practices before the test, I should be okay.

Back to resting!

August 5, 2007

7:29a
This is why I don't like to fall
The pain in the front half of my body is mostly gone. Occasionally I'll feel a bit of a sharp pain in my rib. However, now that it is gone, the pain in my back is unbearable. I am going to stop taking the naproxen the doctor gave me and send kevin out for some muscle relaxants. As the naproxen helped slightly for the ribcage, but not at all for my back.

I also have bruises all down the front right side of my body- it's funny looking!

August 1, 2007

6:46a
I'm cheating today...
This is what I posted at skatingforums:

Triple (Half) Axel Group class was great today. The "high freestyle" (which is 3/4) coach wasn't there so I was in with "low freestyle" instead. We did waltz jumps, waltz jump-side toe tap-waltz jump, toe loops, toe-loop-toe-loops, and various combos of that. All my jumps felt really good. The coach told me I wasn't toe waltzing- and she showed me how to one foot glide then 3-turn rather than just start from a stand still 3-turn. It was excellent and skating into a toe loop isn't scary at all! (So now I have two jumps I can skate into! Waltz, and toe loop! And half flip, but that's a stupid jump). I got lots of compliments and it was great!

Half Baked Took a beautiful belly flop while trying to transition from a spiral to a catch foot. I don't know how I happened because there wasn't that moment of ice crunching where you know you hit your toepick. I was just gliding, and then I was on the ice. I smacked really hard into my ribs, and cut up both of my arms.


So I slept pretty badly last night- and this morning I am so so so sore. My shoulders, ribs, and thighs (from spirals and sitspins) are killing me. Falling sucks.

September 12, 2006

7:11p well, it was bound to happen.
Today I caught my toepick while working on edges. I think I skidded about 3 feet on the ice. Great fun.

It turns out that Sue will be our permanent instructor. This makes me very very happy. She is great. Today we started with stroking, and man, I'm slow. I do think I'm using the blade correctly though. Then we went to three turns and my inside ones are better than my outside ones. Which is weird. I used to be able to do outside ones. Repeating "forward on the middle of the blade, backward on the front of the blade" greatly increases my chance of actually turning. I think I am scrapping the very front of the toe pick on the ice though, which isn't good.

My backward edges are sort of coming along, which is nice. My backward crossovers need work, A LOT of work going CCW.

My lunge is apparently not horrible, but my shoot the duck is. Which is okay, since STD (heh) is optional. I don't want a STD anyway. Of course when I get to a sit spin (HAHAHA!) maybe I will.

My bunny hops were looking really good until I realized there was a problem. I was jumping with the right foot picking into the ice. Because I spin CW, my left foot needs to go in the ice. Now the bunny hops are really really bad. I knew this would happen. I am very right dominant. I have no idea how I am going to make my left side work. I really wish I could spin CCW, but I really tried to learn to, and it didn't work.

My forward edges were good and my arms more fluid.

We didn't get a chance to work on spins, which was a little disappointing.

I might have to give up my practice time- so I will just have the 30 minute lesson once a week. A great work opportunity presented itself, and I might be working 60+ hour weeks until November. But hopefully it will be worth it, because at least then I can afford ice.

My entire left side (which took the brunt of the fall) hurts. Especially my hip and lower arm.