Skate Reanimate

I stopped by SoJo on my way home today and made a number of runs in the bowl, working on little bs smith grinds on the shallow and and bs slash grinds on the deep. There were several other kids skating the bowl tonight, riding pretty hard and fast, so that motivated me to keep trying for more speed and control.

I spent way too much time trying to get rock to fakies on the shallow, but kept hanging up on the pool coping or else pulling back too far and not coming down in time. I ended up rolling my ankle as it got caught under the board. Lots of pain, but an ice bath and epson salt bath later and I’m feeling much better.

It’s the tenth anniversary of 9-11. No reason for me to say that except to point out that we do remember. Some of my friends and colleagues prefer to be cynical about patriotism and hypercritical of the effects of 9-11 on our country; I think these people are focusing on the wrong things, for the wrong reasons. We can affect change internally, and improve the ways we respond to crises and terrorism, but how about a little respect for what actually happened? How about directing your attention to where it belongs: the mind set and world view of the bad guys who carried it out–and continue to plot.

But that’s enough of that.

Anyway, I skated with Chad from OMA at my home park here in Springville. Starting to get close to fs 50-50s.

But, other than some fun runs on the mini ramp, I took a slam to a bare knee, and overworked the ankle, so I’m not inclined to get back on board any time soon. Need to force myself to rest it up.

David and I made the hour drive to Heber to skate the big bowls. It was a blast, and I’m starting to finally feel out the pool, with it’s beautiful little tile strip:

Unfortunately, while playing around on the spine bowl I lost my footing on re-entry from a 50-50 and tore/pulled some calf muscles, so I’ll likely be out of commission for a couple weeks.

Fractured my elbow at the Payson park on Thursday. No cast, as expected, but here’s what it looked like yesterday:

And what it looks like today:

I skipped skating on Monday and Tuesday to let my legs rest from a tiring round of physical therapy. The purpose of the therapy is to build the muscles in my left leg to support my bad knee so I can continue skating. Though I’ve been exercising the leg diligently over the past week the routine takes its toll on my strength and energy, and often leaves my muscles sore and less useful for skating–not exactly what I bargained for.

But I’m hopeful I will acclimate to the routine, and end up with stronger muscles and more endurance in the the end–both of which I expect can only improve my skating.

I abandoned my last orthopedist because (1) each time I came in he acted like I was a new patient (2) he rarely had more than 5 minutes to talk, and (3) he had given me highly contradictory diagnoses, including “worn-out ACL has to be replaced” vs “everything looks healthy”. He also liked to chide me for skateboarding and suggested I take up bicycling instead.

I got a 2nd opinion today, and was glad of it. My new orthopedist is laid back, friendly, and interested in solving my problems. He’s also supportive of a long-term commitment to skating, and believes with proper training I can keep at it for another decade at least.

So the short of his diagnosis is: arthritis, some calcification, some looseness, but for what it’s been through, it looks good. He sent me home with a new knee brace and 8 appointments with a physical therapist. No surgery in the immediate future. The bad news is that the one skiing accident (now 20 years past) has caused significant long-term damage that is essentially irreversible.

“Your knee’s going to wear out sooner or later no matter what you do,” he said, “But I don’t see any reason to stop skateboarding…”

I overdid it Labor Day weekend, strained some muscles in my groin, strained one ankle, twisted one knee, a 2-month-old sprained wrist, and several bangs on shins that just won’t heal.

Grumble.

At least my ribs feel better.

On a related note, I discovered some extensive ankle exercises, which I’m going to try to incorporate into a morning routine.

I have been experiencing a lot of pain and discomfort with my “bad knee” — a knee I broke about 20 years ago before I switched skiing for snowboarding. It’s been inhibiting my ability and desire to skate this spring, and wanting to prevent any future surgeries I went to the orthopedic surgeon, expecting him to give me a battery of strengthening exercises that I could use to ward off trouble.

His prognosis was a torn meniscus and probably a deteriorated ligament. When I told him I skate he made multiple grim and cynical jokes about how I will have to “trade in my skateboard for a jeep” or “take up rollerblading instead”.

I’m scheduled for an orthoscopic surgery on the 27th, and really hope it all goes well. If it does, I may be able to resume skating this summer. If not, I’ll be scheduled for more surgery, with a longer recovery time.

It’s hard to communicate how depressing this is for me; I’ve just begun to adopt skating as an important part of my life. I’m doing a good job filling up the intellectual gaps with my educational technology blog and creative writing, but I need a physical outlet too.

I’d been having problem with my right ankle while skating. I kept spraining it in–usually pretty minor injuries, but the fact that I kept using it and kept doing it didn’t help.

So one of my co-workers, who does a lot of martial arts, suggested I get a little ankle brace.

I picked one up at Target for $12, and it fits like a glove. It does make my shoe fit a little tighter, but what’s most important is that it has significantly reduced my ankle strain.

I highly recommend ankle braces for your pushing foot to all skaters over 30.

Back in the heyday of freestyle most skaters wore shin guards, as jumping about while a rapidly flipping board is spinning a foot above the ground beneath you is a recipe for some bruises and scrapes. I too wore shin guards for long practice sessions, simply because it helped me avoid pain and let me keep on practicing after a few failed tricks. I stopped wearing shin guards when I decided I didn’t need them, and I came back into skating this week assuming that they were unnecessary. I am starting to change my mind.

I’ve been skating each night for the last week for about 45 minutes each session, and though I’ve smacked my shins a few times on several occasions its only been the last couple of nights that I’ve really begun to suffer.

Last night I was practicing shoveits and trying to figure out kick-flips again. That should be enough to tell you that I went home with some bruises. (Though at least I have 180 shoveits and pop-shoveits OK, and believe that 360s are not too far away).

This afternoon I spent half an hour at the local public skate park just watching the kids tear it up. I’m planning on trying the park soon myself, but I refuse to let myself go until I have all my basics back under control. From watching the kids today I recognized that I would really want to take advantage of slides and grinds at the park–in fact thats all the most of the kids were trying today.

So tonight I went back to my favorite parking lots and in addition to working on kick-flips some more (…I don’t remember this trick being so hard…) I spent some time on some 8″ painted curbs. Didn’t take me long to feel out backside 50-50s and tailslides, though I by no means mastered them on the backside at least I was doing alright, though when I switched to frontside I failed miserably. After exasperating myself trying to get these down, I finally just went back to backside to end the evening. Well I was getting some nice smacks and short slides on tailslides and was having fun when all of a sudden, bam–I ollie too high and smack the tail down really hard to compensate and not miss the curb. But my front foots already too high itself, and the board strikes the curb, pops back up (and somehow towards my body), thrashing a lovely scrape all the way up my right shin. Curses. Time to lay on the grass and look at the clouds.

5 minutes later I’m thinking shin guards, at least for the time being, might be a good idea again. The pain had brought me to the grass, sure, but I’m pretty tolerant of pain and its typical for me to get back on the horse as fast as I can (if only to get my mind off the pain at hand).

But I also learned something in martial arts some years back that I’ve found to be true: even if you can take the pain, your body can become unconsciously wired to fear repetition of that pain, so much so that your body might resist your will when told to do something that might risk another instance of the same pain. When practicing and trying new stuff, its always better to go in padded and keep your body open to the new moves it needs to learn, rather than to fight the pain over and over and risk letting your body dictate what it will and won’t do.