I Have a Date With an Advil

We had a substitute group coach tonight. She's one of those tall, slender, beautiful, flexible, talented, well spoken, articulate, multi-lingual, thoughtful, kind, encouraging, well organized coaches with tons of skills to teach us.

Actually, not so much 'hate' as
GREEN WITH ENVY!

From the first minute of class, she started us off some simple edge exercises,  that morphed into edge exercises with spread eagles, that further morphed into edge exercises followed by spread eagles followed by toe pickiness. This changed into alternating 3s, followed by 3s into spread eagles, followed by 3's into spread eagles followed by toe pickiness. Followed by back edges in to spread eagle step forwards with toe picking to a back edge followed by one foot hops in there someplace. Followed by scratch spins with arms over head. Followed by back crossovers leaning deep, really deep inside the circle then turning forward in a two rotation twizzle.

Shit, honey, that's figure skating for you

At one point she tried to teach me a toe loop. I'm elderly, carrying an extra 60 pounds, and on Medicare. I said 'no thank you' and pleaded my bursitis. But thanks for believing in me.

When I was leaning on the boards catching my breath, a coach I know looked over from her class and snickered. "She's really putting you guys through the wringer." No kidding. Even the gold skaters threw off their jackets and were gasping for air.

Stop whining honey, this is figure skating.
It goes with the territory

 The only one not affected was our male silver ice dancer who was gliding along, doing the exercises with more sprezzatura than I would have believed possible in a man born after the 18th century.

And of course we all loved it.

When group was over I got out of my boots and ran to the car to get one of those reddish brown lenticular pain destroyers and swallow it down.

Now?