Today I took my little girl out for a ride in the stroller...with my skates on. I thought this might be a great way for me to get comfortable with some speed and work on my stance and stride without the fear of falling and my shakiness holding me back (since I would have something to hold onto).
It was a great idea in theory but not as great as I would have hoped in reality.
The walking path that I chose was one that I remembered as being well paved and wide enough to keep me from careening into other pedestrians while on my way. It turns out that it was certainly wide enough but the smooth roll I had hoped for wasn't there for over 50% of the journey. There was a lot of general detritus on the path such as twigs, rocks, and tons of goose poop. There were also a lot of areas where the pavement was really rough beneath my wheels or cracked and pushing up.
Not that any of that was too terrible on it's own. But I am a novice on my wheels and my stroller, while awesome for cruising the mall, is completely wrong for such an undertaking. So all in all it took a lot of concentration on my part to keep from toppling the both of us over onto our sides. But I suppose that was somewhat of a good thing as one of my goals is to build up my ankle strength and I definately gave them a workout today.
We went a little over a mile and a half before I decided that I had had enough. Mostly the decision was based on the fact that I had really scared the piss out of myself by managing to slip my foot up beneath the back wheel of the stroller and narrowly avoided dumping my poor baby over onto her side stroller and all(!). But one thing that I do have going for myself is that even though I may loose it after everything is said and done I am very cool and collected in crisis mode. I very quickly thought to aim us off the path and into the grass where we came to an ugly, but safe, stop so I could dislodge my skate and get us rolling properly again. But, like I said, I decided at that point that it was time to let Laura play on the swings a bit and end our stroll for the day.
I did manage to get a little more skate related fitness in at home afterwards too. I did a short pilates routine aimed at strengthening my quads along with some wall sitting and even strapped on my skates to crouch in to the derby stance some to get my body used to that...my legs aren't strong enough to hold that pose for more than a minute at a time yet but I will keep plugging away at it. I also worked on some of my lateral moves with my skates on as well. One of my goals is to get my legs strong enough that I can do my pilates routine with my skates on...soon, Lonestar, soon.
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