Just started working full-time. And after a move, haven't settled down enough to start skating yet. Haven't skated for a few days, already missing it. Just wonder how other people manage to continue skating with a full-time job.

A LOT of people skate before they go to work in the morning or in the evenings and weekends.

I no longer work full-time but when I did I would:

1) find a way to skate at lunch (worked very close to the rink although I didn't plan it that way - it just so happened that this great rink was 5 minutes from my work and they had a noontime dance session. It took some begging sometimes to make it work ).
2) go before work
3) skate on my weekday off
4) skate on weekends - our rink has dance and freestyle sessions on weekend mornings and believe it or not sometimes afternoon publics are not that crowded.

I basically have worked my career so that I can still make money and still skate - but it has taken years to do so. The problem being that you have to work to make the money so that you CAN skate - it's an interesting tradeoff.

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Is Portland the only city with it's own ice-dance website? http://www.pdxicedance.net/

I'm interested to know too, considering I'll be working in a few years time(I'm 18). I sometimes see adult skaters at the rink early in the morning. Sometimes in the evening. Isn't it tiring? Do you lug your skates to work or store it there?

Sorry, curiosity...

It is tiring, but I think that if you really love and want it, you'll do it. Skating for many adults is a way to "escape" and relieve stress. The rink I skate at recently added sessions in the evenings, which is so convenient for me, and I also try to skate on the weekends. I've found that skating helps me a lot in the "real world." I try to forget about everything else during that session and just focus on skating. Afterward I feel better and can deal with things better too. So that alone is enough for me to drag myself to the rink!

I am not a morning person at all, but unfortunately, it's the 6:30am freestyle session or nothing for me, since I work from 9:00am to 6:00pm. I tell myself everyone on the east coast is already at the office, so it can't be *that* early, LOL! As for the logistics, I get up at 5:00am, have a hot shower and make my coffee, then head to the rink. Before my office moved closer to my home, I used to bring a change of clothes and change at the rink after skating, then go straight to the office. Now I can stop by home on the way to work and change there.

On weekends, I do a freestyle session at a much more reasonable time and enjoy it thoroughly!

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

I am lucky in the fact my rink is completely adult friendly and has adult only sessions three times a week, two hours Mondays and Wednesdays at night and on Saturday. Before I was with this club, I skated on the weekends and before that, did mornings before work. You have to find a rink and schedule that works for you around your work schedule and make it happen.

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"Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?"

I skate on Friday evenings, on club ice, at around 6:30pm - depends on traffic. When that rink closes for the spring, I switch to Tuesday mornings at 7am. For those Tues mornings, I drive an hour in the wrong direction, skate, then drive in a completely different direction for an hour to get to work. When I get to work, I do the "baby wipe" method of showering.

I also skate on Sunday mornings.

Skating while working full time day jobs is hard, because there's not a lot of evening ice. There is early morning ice, but as you can see, it's not near where I live or work, so that makes for a lot of driving and some very early wake-up times.

I do schlep my skates to work. On a moderate weather day, I leave them in my car. But if it's hot or cold, they come inside with me. And everybody asks why I have so much stuff. They think I'm going on a trip.

But I think the hardest thing about skating as a full time working adult is that I need to steal time from my family in order to be able to find time to skate, and it's not a tiny bit of time - it's an hour to get to the rink, an hour to skate, plus time to put skates on and off, then an hour drive back - that's three hours, minimum, for each day I skate. If I skate after work, I don't get to put my daughter to bed. If I skate early in the morning, it impacts her as well.

I work full-time and go to law school at night.

When I don't have classes (summer, holiday break), I skate as much as I can, and it varies depending on the rink schedule. Right now I do 2 mornings/week before work (7-8am is our ealiest session in summer), one evening after work at 6:10pm, and an hour or two on Saturdays.

When school starts again in the fall and I have class every night, I only manage to skate an hour and a half (sometimes 2 hrs if I get my butt moving) Friday mornings before work, and 2 hours on Saturdays. I sometimes would pick up an ice dance session on Sundays.

Work is pretty flexible as long as I'm in no later than 9am and out no earlier than 4:30. So if I skate before work, I go in to the office from 9am-6pm. If I skate after work or have class, I work 7:30am-4:30pm.

And I always pick up extra ice during the day if I can when I take a day off of work. When school is on breaks or classes get cancelled, I'll do extra mornings or evenings depending on rink schedules and my coach's schedule if I want an extra lesson.

I do roller derby now, too....obviously I do not have any kids and a supportive significant other (who spends his time golfing and playing cards).

I bring my skates to work. If I skate before work, I always bring them in so they can air/dry out under my desk, particularly when the weather is hot. (Wet skates in hot dark trunk...I don't want to think of what will grow in or on them, and it's not good for them). If I'm skating after work and it's not hot out, I leave them in the car. Between figure skating and going to roller derby or just roller skating for exercise after work, in the summer I almost always have a pair of skates under my desk all day. (Don't want to leave those in the car in the heat either.)

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2010-2011 goals:
Pass Junior MIF test
Don't break anything

I skate every morning before work, since I have to be very flexible and can't count on getting off work in time to skate afterwards.

Also, skating before work relaxes me. The rare days I don't skate before work, my co-workers always know and call me Grumpy .

For some of us, it's near impossible to actually manage to skate. Some people are lucky enough to live in areas where there are a number of rinks to choose from, or rinks near their home or work, or they don't have to work business hours etc etc. For the rest of us, we just don't expect to make much progress in skating.

I can only manage to skate once a week, as circumstance don't allow anything else. I officially work 9:30-5:30, and the nature of my work means I have to be in the office on certain days and during office hours, so I can't, for example, come in later and work late to make up for it (impossible anyway, as the building is locked at 5:30). I do, however, get flexi-time, which can be taken as full or half-days, up to a maximum of two days in a four week period. I therefore take a half day each week for skating, and make up the time by coming in early and/or taking half hour lunches on the other days. I then skate an hour's patch (freestyle) session, followed by 2 hour public session. That's basically my only option, other than not skating at all, and I use up all my allowable flex-time to do it.

I can't skate early mornings as I'm not eligible to skate on patch before 9am, and in any case I would probably find it too intimidating. I'm grateful to be allowed on 9:30 patch though, as going strictly by the rules, I shouldn't be allowed on that session either. Fortunately my coaches used their discretion, as those sessions are usually quiet with mainly adult skaters, and I'm very careful not to get in anyone's way.

The rink is a minimum half hour drive away, so skating at lunchtime is out, even if I had access to a car, which most of the time I don't, and there are no closer rinks. I won't skate on weekend patches because it's too busy - I wouldn't get anything done as I'm low level and nervous. Evening public sessions are full of teenagers (there are usually security guards on duty outside the rink!).

So yeah, working full time and skating as well requires a lot of things to work in your favour, and most of those things are outside of your control!

time management, supportive family, weekend ice, have skates and clothes in car

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Champagne in 2005, 2008, 2009 - who's next out of the pre-bronze club...?

Wang chung!

When I can! There aren't any rinks near me that offer evening sessions on weekdays, and no rinks near where I work that offer lunchtime sessions, and now weekend sessions are limited, so....it's not pretty until fall again!! I pretty much get to one session a week right now...

What Mel said... (AHHHHH!!!! My glory days.... )

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Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

I echo all of the above as a full-time working adult who squeezes in skating. I wish I could have my college years back when I had SO MUCH TIME, even taking a full course load and working part-time. Why were there so many more hours in a day back then??

Yeah, but have you noticed how you never have both time AND money at the same time? The only times I've ever had a schedule that gave me lots of time to skate were when I was either a starving student or unemployed.

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

Or, for that matter, opportunity! I went to college in a postage-stamp sized town and never had a car, so getting to a rink would not have been an option, even had I been interested in skating then...

How about working almost full time with 2 kids under 4!!

I get by on 1- 1 1/2 hours a week on the ice training for a 3:40 program. How?- not much of a clue! Actually, I bring my kids to my office (big sports performance complex) twice a week for intense off-ice strength and conditioning. They can run around while I sweat! Too bad they can't run around on the ice while I skate... That's the only way I can train my stamina (which has never been stellar due to reduced lung capacity) without being on the ice.

This is why I'm such a big proponent of the correct off-ice training. If you have enough core stability, strength, and stamina, you don't have to skate a lot of hours on the ice. With good technique, you can repeat things in little time by compelmenting your skating with strength training. Yet, if you're trying to perfect something new, that's a different story. I'm having a hard time prefecting all of the new spin variations, as I don't have time to practice them!

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Visit www.sk8strong.com for complete off-ice training information and sport specific DVDs for figure skaters

Too true!!! (heavy sigh) I need to somehow become independently wealthy.

I try and schedule my skates just after work. I dont want to go home, sit for a bit and then go back out. I take transit and that would be far too much running around. Some sessions are a bit later so I stay at work later (I'm a teacher) and other days I'm pretty much running right after work. Occasionally meetings come up that must be scheduled so I have to miss. C'est la vie.

I also skate on Sat morning (no sleep ins) but it allows me anotehr day of skating.

Just to add...I will ALSO be doing my masters come fall. Now that will really add to some fun scheduling

It's no different then people who go to the gym in the morning before work. Some rinks even have a bathroom with showers.

When I skated I was lucky to only live 3 miles from the rink. I went home after the morning skate to get ready for work.

And the good thing about ice skating vs. other workouts is that you are in a cool place and won't be drenched in sweat as long as you peel off layers!

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

I am lucky, I have a very flexible job (I am salaried and work in a residence hall, where I could potentially work 24/7 if I wanted)....as long as I work my 37.5 hours a week, and I am getting my job done, no one really questions that I leave some days at 3:30 to go to the occasional session at the rink on campus or when I leave at 4pm to go coach at 5. Plus the fact that I am entering my 5th year in my job doesn't hurt anything

The only issue I have is that I also need to participate in an on-call rotation, which means that for the weeks I am on duty, I am not supposed to be more than 15 minutes from campus and need to be back by 8pm (yes, I am 29 and sometimes have a curfew, it sucks). If I can't get anyone to cover the phone for a few hours, I can't go skating at my regular rink. Luckily, my colleagues are pretty good about helping out.

The other piece is that there are times during the year where things just get so busy that there is no way I can skate (unless I get up and go for the 6am session, which I try, but because I work from 8am-midnight those days, I don't like it). Luckily, that is only a couple of times at year, mainly during our training/opening and closing periods.

I am looking for a new job currently (after 4 full years in one job, I need a new challenge!), so it is making me worried that I won't find another position in this area that is as flexible with hours...I will however, try to negotiate leaving early at least on T/Th

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Skating Dreams

"All your life you are told the things you cannot do. All your life they will say you're not good enough or strong enough or talented enough; they will say you're the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. THEY WILL TELL YOU NO, a thousand times no, until all the no's become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no, quite firmly and very quickly. AND YOU WILL TELL THEM YES." --Nike

I am a physician, but we are on call for 7-10 days in a row. I can't be more than about 30 min from the hospital in case a kid gets really sick.
When we had a rink in town I would skate 6-7 am. Most of the time the patients weren't awake yet to figure out something was wrong, and the residents knew not to bug me during that hour unless crucial.
Now that the rink is way over an hour away I can only skate the weeks I'm not on call. Grrrrr. Hopefully a rink will be built soon. Right now my share of the call is 20-23 weeks a year.
I definitely prefer skating in the morning. It's easier to get things done that way. Plus standing on my feet all day makes them puffy and skates don't fit as well at night.
I don't have kids but do have a menagerie of pets to deal with. A maid or a personal chef would be ideal!!!

I'm currently lucky in having a relatively stress free job and flexitime with an ability to work 9 days out of 10 work days. So every other week I have a Friday to skate. That's REALLY nice. Other than that, it's really early mornings (5am wake ups) and making sure I'm out the office on time. I've been known to clock-watch through meetings (I've had understanding bosses). The days I don't skate, I work longer hours to make up for all the flexing. It's normally OK, but when synchro starts demanding off-ice before practice it gets a bit fraught as I start having to get up earlier on my non-skate days to get the hours in.
I'm currently looking at the prospect of maybe being made redundant and needing a new job. Whilst this doesn't scare me from the work front, there's two questions to answer, how to skate without any money and how to skate when I get a new job which ain't quite so understanding or not quite so convenient for the rink.
The trouble with the skate schedule at the moment, is that there's not enough time for anything else as I need to start time managing my remaining time, and I like to have this thing called sleep (sometimes!).

You haven't seen me ! I look like I've been for a swim! Layers? I wear a light warm up jacket which comes off after about 5 minutes, and t-shirt & pants. For some reason I sweat a lot on my head. Despite a moisture wicking headband, my hair is dripping wet with sweat after every session.

Working full time, it has been a matter of really wanting to do it.
I skate public sessions Saturday & Sunday mornings and used to do Wednesday night after work. Wednesday nights I was exhausted and rarely skated well. But I needed that midweek session to keep my 'ice feet' so I could really work on the weekends, and it was the only time I could skate to my program music or dance music.

My husband knows I need to skate to stay sane, so he tries not to complain too often. Daughter used to skate, which made it easier, but now she won't get on the ice, so it's hard when husband has to work & daughter has to come with me.

At the moment I am not working Thursday mornings, so I am having an hour private ice with new coach instead of Wednesday evenings. Much better. I feel so good all day if I can skate in the morning. Just the issue of getting up early in mid-winter.

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Katz

Saved by Synchro!
I was over it, now I'm into it again !