Ice Skating - Lesson 2
Trip Start
Nov 04, 2011
1
9
48
Trip End
Jul 27, 2012
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Monday, January 16, 2012
If you arrive early before your lesson they let you skate for free before hand, so we put on our skates and had a practice. Even with our lesson last week, I still felt pretty awkward on the ice to start with! There were also lots of grooves on the ice which kept taking my skates.
They got everyone off the ice before our lesson, and then they sent out a big machine which smoothed out the ice with water or something wet. Then they let us loose back on the ice, and it was much nicer to skate on, very smooth, and maybe even too slippery!
Back into our groups and our first task was to learn how to stop, by sliding one or both skates out to the side. Not as easy as it sounds, and there's a knack to getting the right angle! I’m still trying to master this!
We then had to skate a zig zag course around cones, where we had to stop before the first cone, bend and touch the top of the cone, then skate around it twice, then move onto the next cone. We were all pretty awkward with the circles around the cones, so the next part of the lesson was learning how to turn circles around the cones.
Next part of the lesson was to learn how to skate backwards. She had us pushing off from the side of the rink and trying to get as far back as we could. Next she had us looking back over our shoulders which in turn made your skates move backwards! We then had to master the backwards C movement with our feet.
In our group there are about 10 participants, and we are all girls except for one guy. I have given him the nickname “the menace” as he has really terrible balance and pretty much falls over every time he moves! If you skate near him he would probably take you out, and his constant wobbling puts you off and makes you lose your balance!! I hope that next week the instructor kindly suggests that he move to the beginner group.
We joined together with the advanced group for the last part of the lesson. They split us into 2 teams, and set up an obstacle course that we had to take it in turns completing. Making “bubbles”, weaving through the cones, a stop and touch the cone, then backwards skating back to the beginning to tag the next person. I think our team was losing, however the other team had the guy from our group, and he received a “failure to complete” as he had a pretty big stack and must have decided to call it quits for the day!
We had a couple of free minutes to skate around and practice some of the tips we had received. Then the lesson was over. After we got out of our skates Guddis and I walked home via St Catherine Street and Sports Experts where we looked at a few things we needed for skiing. It was pretty late when I got home and even later when I had finished cooking mince and shells for dinner. I watched once upon a time, shower, then off to bed!
