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...

(You can find Part One here .) So we’ve already established that I left the Lake Placid Adult Skating Weekend (LPASW herein) with a renewed love of the sport and a strong sense of community. But what about, y'know… the stuff I actually paid for? The opportunity to skate in such a storied rink was worth the price of admission alone. Getting to roam the labyrinthine behind-the-scenes corridors of an Olympic arena and freely pass through “Athletes Only” doors made me absolutely giddy. Trundling my middling-skater ass across an icy surface that was loaded with reminders of the victories and epic moments and soaring emotions it hosted was humbling in a way that bordered on deferent. And getting to skate more than five hours a day (which is more ice time than I get in some weeks)? Ungh, I could do that every day and it still wouldn’t be enough! Lemme tell you how much it hurt to put Lake Placid in the rearview. Escaping the mundane day-to-day of adult life and just skating my hea...

Let's not be coy: My first Lake Placid Adult Skating Weekend just ended and I'm already counting down 'til next year's. I am absolutely, utterly gobsmacked by how much I enjoyed the entire experience. I'm gonna recap this in two posts: This first one is going to be all about the feels, and the next will be more about the experience itself and the more actionable takeaways I got from it. I came away from the weekend not only feeling like part of an actual community but also having learned so freaking much, which I can't wait to apply to my skating now that it's all had a chance to sink in; both of those are distinct reactions that, to me, merit individual attention. I think part of why I'm so floored by how much I enjoyed going to an adult skating camp is that, honestly, I was expecting to hold myself back from getting the most out of it. I was afraid I wouldn't mesh with anyone or that I'd default to introvert isolation. I worried that I'...