Awesomeness--with a side of facepalm

Because I'm a geek, I rate every workout on a 1-10 scale.  After I became hypothyroid but before I was diagnosed, there were a lot of twos and even some ones.  A one is a No Good, Very Bad, Horrible Workout.

Tonight's workout was a nine.

On tap for tonight were 5x2k, at a nice comfortable 50% pace.  I figured I'd work on relaxing, getting more out of my straightaway strokes, and trying to figure out my corner entries.  Somewhere in the second set I was cruising along, working moderately hard but not so hard that I couldn't focus on technique, when it happened.

I felt the skate I was gliding on begin to "carve" at the end of each stroke, as I drove my opposite knee forward.

It took me a couple laps to realize what was happening. I had heard skaters speak of this "carving" before, most recently fellow masters skater Sprinter Boy on the drive down to Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago.  I had responded to his discussion of carving the way I had to many a similar discussion about some of the finer technical points of skating--with a verbal "oh, yeah, uh huh" and a mental "which leg?  Huh?  What? When?  I have no conception of this thing of which you speak."

But today I felt the carving.  And it was cool.   It felt like I was skating (finally!) the way I see other people skate.  People who go a lot faster than I do.

So I had to share the joy.  When I clapped my way into the locker room for my "warming of the feet" mid-workout break, the rest of the masters skaters were already assembled there.

"Hey," I said to Sprinter Boy as I plopped down happily on the bench and started untying my skates, "I'm about to give you a glimpse of what Coach TieGuy had to put up with for the past five years when he'd try to explain things to me.  You know that carving thing you were telling me about?  I had no idea what you were talking about...but I think I just had a..."

"Facepalm moment?"  offered Sprinter Boy.

"Uh, I was gonna say epiphany, but yeah..."  And I explained that I had suddenly gone from "Huh?  What?" to "Oh, yeah...that.  I know exactly what you mean."

So it was good.  Really good.  Much awesomeness, in fact. I felt like tonight's workout was as much of an improvement over the first part of the season, technique-wise, as the first part of this season has been over the previous seasons.  So yeah, a nine.

Maybe even a ten.