Lately it seems my practice times are getting interrupted a lot. Sometimes by multiple(!) doctor/dentist appointments, others by shifted work hours, and others by home services who don't show up on time or not at all. When I have to change my sked. so much to accomodate for all these, it cuts into my ice times and forces me to hop around to all these other rinks struggling to find something accomodating. I managed to get up at 5:00 a.m. today (a Saturday) for what turned out to be a crowded 6:50 a.m. (1-hour) session at a new (for me) rink. Turns out a lot of kids were having privates and/or practicing for their upcoming show (next month).

Who else has dealt with this sort of thing??

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I know exactly what you mean. This past winter, one thing or the other would keep me from skating. In December, I had a bad allergic reaction to something (I still don't know what, and probably never will) which kept me off the ice for 2 weeks (including a missed lesson). Then, when I was cleared to practice, the heat in my house decided to break down on the one day I could go. I ended up going to my next lesson after not skating for 3 weeks - throughout the lesson, I felt very off-balance. The awful winter we had (it felt like every week we had a snowstorm) affected my ability to get to my primary rink - it's about 40 minutes away. I practiced somewhat at a rink closer to my house, to cut down on travel. I also skated a few times at a rink that is about a 20-30 minute drive, depending on traffic - this particular rink had some early afternoon freestyle times, which were only do-able for me b/c I wasn't working (that might have been the only good thing about getting downsized).

It is definitely frustrating when you can't practice the way you'd like. I try to set a weekly schedule for practices, but that doesn't always work out. Next year, I'll be in business school, so I know keeping up with skating will be involve a lot of juggling. There's a really good ice rink complex between where I live and my b-school (it's the rink where Michael Weiss trains, and I believe Liz Coates is coaching some top dance teams there, too) that seems to have some open freestyle times in the late afternoons (in other words, not designated for high-test skaters), so it might be convenient there to practice once a week. I'm also thinking about joining flo's club (I'm not a member of any club yet) which is at the rink that's closest to me and has several hours of club ice (where I could take a private lesson) on Saturday mornings.

I know that to be really successful in skating, I would need to practice more, but I also need to be realistic about how much time I can devote to skating w/o sacrificing other important things. I'm just approaching it with the desire to improve my skills and enjoy myself.

There are two threads for this topic. Sorry, I didn't mean to do that....

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