Shiny+ Rink

I took the long (25 mi) drive up to Vancouver today to skate at the afternoon public session at Mountain View Ice Arena. It's a really nice rink -- the only one around here that has two ice surfaces. The session was not too crowded, actually, and while the session was 3 hours long, they actually resurfaced halfway through! So while I'll still call Sherwood "Shiny Rink" I guess Mountain View will have to be Shiny+ Rink.

I skated for about two hours, and had a pretty good workout. Since I had been off the ice for 2 weeks for reasons ranging from stupid to dumb, I was concerned how I'd do. I guess the good news is that I have been skating long enough now that even after two weeks off my skating legs come back pretty quickly, so.. yay me!

The only real progress to report was that I worked a lot on waltz-8s since a previous skater had thoughtfully left them marked on the ice. I've always had problems with the last 3rd of the lobe and coming back to center, but I found today that if I really concentrate on squeezing my thighs together and tucking my free foot in that I do much, much better. I was pleased with my progress.

Addendum: At work on Friday I was taking an online fitness quiz. It calculated my ideal aerobic exercise heartrate based on my age and my resting heartrate (76 - 80 bpm) as 138 bpm. I checked my heartrate in the middle of the session and it was 134! So... good stuff.