That Was Fun!

First day of ice for the 2012-13 season today.  Last year I was out of town (at the SLC Masters Camp) on the first day of ice, which is typically a Saturday, so my first day was the following Tuesday. I had this to say about that--and I'm guessing, when the first nighttime skate of the season rolls around next week, that that's exactly how I'll be feeling.  Nighttime skate practice at the John Rose Oval is the quintessential skating event for me, and I start looking forward again to that first glimpse of the rink lights through the trees pretty much as soon as the oval closes for the season in the spring.

Today we had morning ice time, though, which always seems a little weird to me.  Usually, if I'm on oval ice in the daylight I'm racing.  Today was just a "get reacquainted with the ice" day, which turned out to be a good thing.  The weather was less than ideal--50 degrees and drizzling.  Even with the refrigerated ice, it looked like we were in for a damp, slow-ice skate.

Here's the oval, all drizzly and frosted, waiting for a fresh Zamboni-ing and some skaters:

I ended up having a blast, though, even with the questionable weather.  I started by doing one set of my own workout, a slow interval thing, then got to talking with Sprinter Boy (whose name may have to change to AllAround Boy if he continues the distance skating precedent he set in the 5K in Milwaukee last weekend), Broomball Guy, and Cop Guy during my break between sets.  They were doing more of an endurance workout--10, 8, 6, 4, and 2 laps--and invited me to join them.  That sounded like more fun than battling the slow, frosty ice and the wind by myself, so I jumped on the back of their paceline for the 8 lap set.

Unfortunately, the 8 laps were cut short at 5 when Sprinter Boy, who was leading, crashed.  Although I was last of the four skaters in the paceline, I immediately reacted with the catlike reflexes that are my trademark, and promptly crashed as well--although I hadn't actually run into anyone or been interfered with in any way by Sprinter Boy's crash.  I simply saw someone fall and reacted by falling myself.

We both emerged unscathed, though, and restarted the 8 laps for the final three.  However, it seemed that my ability to hang onto their pace had been exhausted by the first five laps, and I was dropped pretty quickly.  I tried a bit more of my interval workout, then a couple more laps trying desperately to get back into the guys' draft for their four lap set, and then decided I'd better call it a day.  I was tired and getting a bit sore already.

Post-skate, complete with bad hair, misted glasses, and a big smile

Except...I had also told the guys that I'd join them in their post-skate dryland workout.  And then Melissa and Inliner Boy came in off the ice and said they'd do the dryland, too, and, well, suddenly I ended up doing 12 minutes of downtime.  (I decided, midway through a set of compression jumps, that I had definitely found a great group to work out with when Inliner Boy suddenly said "man, I'm regretting that PopTart right now.")

So the season is off to a great start.  Due to some unfortunate inappropriate button-pushing, I cleared my stopwatch before I could see my lap times (and how slow they undoubtedly were) and thus am feeling optimistic about how the workout went.  It was a blast skating with the guys, and I hope to do more of that this year--if they don't get sick of me tagging along and don't kill me with their workouts (Sprinter Boy and Broomball Guy are both in their early 30's, so their energy level and speed does not exactly match that of a 49-year-old hypothyroid woman).  So...so far so good!

(By the time the ice time was over, there was so much frost on the ice that the last few skaters--who were short-tracking in the infield--shoveled the track and then had a snowball fight with the resulting pile of snow. If you look closely, you can see Aussie Boy about to fire a snowball at the little kid who is busily gathering his own ammo. Weird weather!)