How much can you blame the ice conditions?

[Query]

I love the translation!

I think Lance Armstrong said that it's the hills that separate the best bicyclists. Bad ice is like that. Since I don't compete, I only skate where and when ice is nice.

[kiwiskater]

It's funny how you get used to the ice at your home rink though, and how other surfaces feel different in some indefinable way. That's when I start blaming the ice conditions - the ice doesn't feel right at the 'other' rink.

I don't know about others but try my home rink on a different day or even later the same day and you get a different result. There seems to be variations within the days too like 'amazing Sunday ice' (my regular lesson day), normal Sunday ice, trashy Sunday ice and just downright scary ice.

We skate fresh after hockey practice so usually the zamboni does an imperfect job of fixing it up after them, we deal with - nice ice is a pleasant surprise, but scary ice is just awful. I skated a Sunday morning & afternoon the other week (lesson & a practice) - and it felt like the time they were melting the ice for putting down the new ice floor - you would swear you were going to cut through the ice and ruin your blades on the floor below, now sensibly I know its sand but I always have this weird fear that it is concrete below...

[chowskates]

My spins travel because the ice is slanted.

[Isk8NYC]

I don't know what's going on at our rink, but I feel weird everytime I step on the ice.  I finally figured out that it's off-level and the ice is higher than the door jamb at the entrance, but there's a steep slope down towards the wall on each side.  To get on the ice, you have to skate uphill.  Very strange. 

I think the guy who usually does the behind-the-scenes maintenance (like cross-cutting and edging) isn't at the rink anymore, so I guess they're just making do with the zamboni operators but it's not really good ice.  At least that's what I hope because a frost heave would be really bad...maybe they were just building it up for the holiday rush.

[Bunny Hop]

Have done both the post-hockey ice and the sloped ice.

At our previous rink there was a club session after ice hockey practice on a Sunday night. They did a resurface, but the ice was still always awesomely bad afterwards. And then there was the Saturday afternoon session once where the ice was so bad my coach actually told me to look down to make sure I didn't trip (as I always look down anyway, this wasn't a problem...).

One of the London rinks, which shall remain nameless, had an ice surface that sloped downwards away from the centre. Doing swing rolls was fun there - you had to push really hard towards the centre, and than careered out of control towards the barrier going the other way.

[fsk8r]

One of the London rinks, which shall remain nameless, had an ice surface that sloped downwards away from the centre. Doing swing rolls was fun there - you had to push really hard towards the centre, and than careered out of control towards the barrier going the other way.

I did figures at that rink and it was quite amusing, you had to push off as normal and not freak as you picked up speed going towards the barrier and then just hope you hadn't slowed yourself too much as otherwise there wasn't enough to get back around to finish the 8!

Apparently they've fixed the subsidence there, so it's now all flat. Now where's the fun in that?!

[Bunny Hop]

Apparently they've fixed the subsidence there, so it's now all flat. Now where's the fun in that?!

Aw - now what will people complain about?

[turnip]

The best kids at my rink complain if the ice is bad (or as one of them said after a bad skate at a competition "the ice was slippery!"). But they still go out and skate their best. I think total beginners probably don't really notice too much (i used to prefer messed up ice because newly resurfaced ice was too slippy though lol!) and high level skaters probably notice but can skate on anything, its those of us in the middle who really get thrown off our game by different ice.

Worst ice i ever had was just before my rink closed for its annual ice maintainence, the concrete was coming through and even my coach kept tripping in the bits where there just wasn't ice, only concrete!

[kck]

For fun, I used google translate to put it into Spanish, then back into English.

Signature? Sure why not.

[Skittl1321]

Signature? Sure why not.

At your first competition, good or bad, I expect you to pronounce the ice cake

[turnip]

I'm considering visiting a rink over xmas where I plan to compete at Easter (it's closeish to where my mum lives), and I am so going to tell my coach "the ice was cake!"

[karne]

My Dad once complained for me because our Aussie Skate group went right after the ice resurface. There was a huge chunk of ice sitting on the surface (like, a block), right where I came out of my last waltz 3 in my program. I was the only skater with that much ice coverage. Anyway, I looked at it in the warmup, and just decided not to think about it. When I came off after my program, Dad made jokes about me "sweeping the stage" (rallying parlance = first car on the road in a rally tends to be referred to as "sweeping the stage" because they tend to sweep the gravel off the racing line).

It wasn't until I watched the video of my program that I realised I came within 10cm of this block of ice, and actually sent it skidding away.

[Rachelsk8s]

I found when I first got back into skating I would tend to blame the ice A LOT lol!!  Now I try to take it "as is", well this is considering how bad it is:)  I skate at a lot of different rinks, and each has different ice; one has amazingly soft ice, while another tends to be cut up because the freestyle sessions are unfortunately right after hockey. I guess I am fortunate to skate at rinks that seem to maintain their ice to a degree. 

[AgnesNitt]

I hate it when 90% of the ice is okay, except for one patch near the resurfacer door where's it's all lizard skin. It's like the ice has a sneaky part just waiting to grab my toepick and pull me down.

[Robin]

Ice conditions do affect skating, but unless the conditions are abysmal (like after the second hour of a crowded public session and no one should have to skate on that crud), you should be able to skate on anything. But whether it's hard or soft or pliable or brittle should be something you can work with. You can't "blame" the ice, though.