Life as a Second-Chance Ice Skater

I am, by nature and by compulsion, an introvert. My phone is a repository of unanswered text messages because it is so hard scrabbling for the energy to give them the responses they merit. I simultaneously balk at dropping myself into a group of people and welcome the anonymity of being just one wave in an undulating mass of bodies guided by their own inertia. I get home from work and decompress in quiet seclusion for a while before I can really enjoy the company of either my husband or my dog—both of whom I love dearly, are my two favorite companions in the world, and are among the few who I can truly enjoy being alone with. I will almost always choose my solitude to others’ company. That’s just the way I’m wired, and I stopped feeling either obligated to change or guilty over what naturally recharges me quite some time ago. I’m much happier for it, and it makes the time I spend with the people I love most all the more significant because it means they are the ones who are worth com...

A couple of months ago, I finally decided to start Ask anAdult Skater  in the hopes of helping to answer the questions I wish someone had answered for me (or that I had even thought—or known—to ask in the first place) when I got back on the ice… and, in true Maddie fashion, promptly forgot about it. But when I did first propose the idea, the fine folks in a skating sub-Reddit lobbed a metric fuckton of great ideas at me. I like to think I’m still pretty in touch with what it’s like to start out in this sport; the nature of the questions I received proved to me that I am not. Like, at all. There are things you take for granted as you progress, and there are so many opportunities to be useful that I had lost sight of as I prepare for tests, consider competition, and duke it out with moves that take forever to learn. It was a welcome refresher in what it’s like to be a relative newcomer to this sport. Anyway. I asked for questions from a bunch of strangers, got a lot of great res...

Something about a weekend full of crossing state lines to find weekend skating is apparently good for me because the four hours I got in this past weekend (which is a lot for what I'm used to) reminded me why I keep grinding away at this sport that I lovehateOMFG!loooove. My toe loops felt natural, or as natural as an inherently awkward jump can feel. I had the most consistent salchows ever, and also landed my biggest, springy-est one ever (my coach commented on how that’s the kind of salchow I’ll need for a double, and nothing gets me giddy like coaches who see doubles in my future… even when I don’t even have all my singles yet). I'm feeling good about my five-step mohawk, three-turns-while-moving, and my Bronze MITF test in general (definitely feeling like I can pass it by the end of the year, if not sometime this fall). I'm feeling the best I’ve EVER felt about my forward left power pulls, and the RFs are catching up, too. I am having so much fun working on spins in g...