Skating Fridays

A Clean Jump!

April 23, 2019. 8:13 am. This date and time will remain etched in my memory for a long time.

I skated freestyle that morning and stayed 15 minutes longer than normal. That meant that all the kids had gone to school. Luckily for me, I had the entire rink all to myself.

So I set up my camera on the boards and hit record. I tried a few double salchows and watched the video. Nothing new to see. As I was nearing the end of my practice, I tried two more. Thankfully I had recorded these attempts because after I reviewed them, I realized that one of them appeared clean!

I watched it frame-by-frame to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. But sure enough, my blade touched down less than 1/4 turn short of rotation. Yes, I know that the landing here isn’t pretty. But, I did send this video to my technical coach (who really knows his stuff, so he’s legit). I asked him if my jump was clean, and here is what he said:

I was speechless. After working on this element for a year and a half with him, I finally landed a fully clean one. I’ve been landing them pretty consistently 1/4 turn short, but I could never achieve that final little bit of rotation. Until now.

It’s so incredible and exciting to know that this jump is possible at my age. Now the harder work begins – making this jump CONSISTENTLY clean!

Whoo hoo!!! I did it! I finally did it!!

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