9/5/20
I’ve grown fond of our latest Saturday morning routine. Nia gets up around 6:30 for her half-marathon training. As she gets ready, I walk and feed Maggie.
She heads out to run and I head to the skate park.
I had it all to myself this morning, except for that one guy I’ve seen before who kinda loiters. Either way, I was the only one skating.
It was a great session, essentially boiling down to 3 parts:
- Rolling ollie practice
- 50-50 coping stalls
- Bowl shredding
Ollie Practice
I got a total of 50 in today. I started up at the top of the park, there’s a decent flat spot there that’s nice and open. The loitering man meandered over towards where my stuff was down near the bowl. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but still felt uncomfortable… He’s black.
There’s a lot of race discussion going on in the US right now, and I personally am examining my role in this giant experiment we call a country.
I didn’t want to pull an Amy Cooper, but at the same time I must admit I was uncomfortable. I continued working on my ollies, my focus split though. One eye on always on my stuff.
Of course, he just walked by and didn’t take anything, and we both went on doing our thing.
It took me a minute to warm up my ollie muscle memory. Once I did, though, I was feeling pretty good. Keeping the focus on timing, not height, is something I need to constantly remind myself of. Although I did snap a few with solid height.
It’s cool to think that I was able to just do a bunch of ollies today. I was so busy focusing on form and improvement, that I forgot to appreciate that a few months ago, I couldn’t even do one. That’s pretty sick.
50-50s?
I did not want to ONLY do ollies today. While worth the practice and effort, it is pretty mundane to go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, ollie-ing each way.
I’ve been getting up to the coping in the bowl lately, so I decided I want to practice what to actually do once I get up there. I went over to the mini-quarter pipe to practice some 50-50 stalls, the thought being that the motion would carry over to a 50-50 slide in the bowl.
I had done a couple a month or so back, but it took me a while to remember. After a number of attempts, I was getting my trucks locked onto the coping, but couldn’t make the drop back down the ramp.
I did some kick turns to work on that, but linking the two together still eluded me. I think I only got it once. Oh well, time to go try it in the big old bowl!
The Bowl
I love skating this thing. Even more than I thought I would back when I was considering getting back into skating.
Yesterday I felt some improvement on my pump timing in the pockets and I built on that some more today. I immediately got the camera rolling and started going for 50-50s. Aggressive.
I didn’t make any, but maybe felt a teeeeeny weeenie bit closer? Idk.
The real fun started after I shut the camera off. Before leaving the park, I did a few loops. I focused on really nailing the timing of my pumps, and it paid off.
My new favorite form of cardio, and I can’t wait to hop on a snowboard to see if this leg conditioning pays off.
September Rolling Ollies: 120
MikeFundaro.com 