Spares

Normally, when I rocker and bend a spare pair of blades, even if I don't do them myself, it's not often that I take the time to try them out before I absolutely need to. By "need" I mean when I can no longer skate on the pair I've got on. Sometimes, during a competition I'll get kicked so hard by another skater that it'll shatter my blade or warp it so much that I won't be able to turn properly.

My coach, and others, probably think this is crazy... I'm not entirely sure why, but I've always done it that way (maybe I'm just lazy). I don't like to fiddle with my equipment, unless I absolutely have to! It drives me insane, literally. For a little while I tried to be more compulsive about it. But it eats you up, I've learned to trust the work done on the blades. Seeing the numbers on the gauge is good enough for me. I hope that mentality will stick with me through the next few weeks. Luckily, I'll have two great coaches to take care of it for me if things should go wrong! Haha.

Haha, did I really just write that?

There is the occasion kick and fall that take out bend from my blades, but that's no biggy - just hop up on the side mats and Jon or Al will pound some bend back in for me.

Today was the exception, I thought it might be a good idea to actually try my spares for once. I was hesitant at first but seeing as this is Olympic Trials, I just wanted to be sure. Turns out they were awesome, I could barely tell the difference from my actual pair! Erm, or so I thought.

The only adjustment that Jon recommended I make was to take some blade off of the front. He mentioned I had been kicking myself more than normal. Haha, funny eh?! Truthfully, I didn't even notice. So we (cough, Jon) shaved part of the front off... Potential problem adverted. It was probably a good thing I checked them out I guess!