Everything at the rink is back to normal - and better!

Today, I decided to take a slightly longer lunch break to go skating at lunchtime. On the way to the rink, I mentally allocated 5 minutes to get into skating outfit, 5 minutes warm-up, 5 minutes to get skates on, skate for 45 minutes, and resurfacing will be at 1pm.

I got to the rink at noon. Of course changing and getting skates on don't really take 5 minutes each, so I was on the ice about ten past noon. The ice looks absolutely normal today, and felt softer than two days ago, which is nice.

AND, I CAN JUMP!!

I was tentative initially. I'd tried Axels on the ground while warming up and the take-off just felt like it lacked energy! So guess what I started with? Double Sal!

I remember the days when the Axel seemed distant and beyond reach, we were awed by our coach's two daughters, who would step on the ice and start with the double Sal as their "warm-up jump" - and landing them!

Well, so much for being awed those many years ago, and not having skated for the last two weeks... I landed the first double Sal, not clean, as I was really so low my landing foot couldn't take it, and I stepped out. Worked on it a bit, landed a couple more, and moved on to the double toe. Landed a couple of those (and a split jump - double toe) and then moved on to the double loop. The double loop is grossly under-rotated. A friend told me I was still 1/4 rev short. ARGH!!! Then again, I suppose I can't expect an under-rotated jump to become fully rotated after 2 weeks of not working on it!

I finally decided to move on to the Axel. I still don't know why the forward take-off scares me. This is definitely the most consistent of the more-than-one-revolution jumps I have. I landed the first two, then proceeded to work on the Axel-loop-toe loop. YIKES! Later I decided to try Axel out of steps - RBI double 3 into BO-BI choctaws into the step for the Axel. It threw me off at the beginning, and I later managed to land a couple from this! Might just put it in my program ;-)

I'm definitely glad I went in today. I was starting to get paranoid about "losing" everything!! Haha!