Breaking in

I've been watching Youtube videos of different skating techniques.  Most of them have been rewatched several times. It's not a substitute for actual practice, but I think it is helping.

The family took a trip to the rink today, and I got to get out on the ice for the first time in my brand new skates.

I had a lot of trouble getting my foot into them, and then when I got out on the ice, I felt like my foot was breaking in half before I'd even made it an entire lap around (public skate got the entire length of the Olympic size ice, which was fun).

I skated off and realized that maybe going through and methodically tightening the laces a few nights ago was probably a poor idea and I should have left the laces roughly where the salesman had.  I loosened the laces significantly and got my foot back into them much easier.  There was still some pain as I skated, but it was noticeably less.  Roughly equal to what I felt in rental skates.   It was also less when I used proper technique, balancing on the right part of my foot for whatever I was trying to do.

I'm *hoping* that just means they need to be broken in more.  I'll try wearing them around the house in guards a little bit each day until the next time I can go out.  I'm hoping it doesn't mean that I'm in a half-size too small.

The actual skating? It wasn't half bad.  I was out there for an hour and I once again managed to not fall.  I worked on:

1) Keeping myself off my edges when gliding. This was especially problematic on my left foot, which is my off side as I'm right-handed.

2) Balancing on each foot while gliding, shifting the weight from one side to the other. Again, I was better with my right foot than my left, but by the end of the session I was doing better on my left foot too.

3) Doing a proper accelerating push-off while staying low in a hockey stance. Same old story: Way better on my right foot getting the skate turned and pushing back with an edge.

4) Stopping. I tried the one-footed stop we learned in class and the two-footed snowplow stop I saw in a video (feet turn in and slowly spread the legs).  Both worked perfectly about half the time and not at all the other half.