Pretty active skateboarding week behind. Still struggling with fear issues. A week ago, on Friday night had a very nice skate session in a small pool near to where I live. It is a bit too difficult for my skills, but I still did quite well.  I started this week going there on Monday evening, but it just didn’t feel good – and left the place pretty soon.

On Tuesday evening dude and I drove to Antwerpen to my ‘comfort zone’ skatepark Antwerpen Spoor Noord. Again, it just didn’t feel good. Felt nervous, and needed a lot of courage even in my comfort zone small bowl, that I usually enjoy riding. Didn’t even feel going to bigger bowl, even thought been pretty okay there some other times. Dude suggested some other park that was new for me, and luckily we went there. First, it was a struggle, and didn’t feel comfortable, but bit by bit felt better, and it in the end it was okay, and could have stayed longer, but it was too late. (This usually happens, it takes time to warm up, but then I am reluctant to leave and go on loooong.)

I decided will not give up nor let the less-nice sessions to get on my way. Thought to have a change for my routines – which has mostly been riding on the corners in a bowl / pool – by focusing on other stuff: mostly on kick-turns, pushing & balance, as well as being more comfortable with speed. There’s a nice not too steep hill near Antwerpen Noord park, and have now couple of times tried down hill there. This Monday too. Still too scared to go all the way down. I know I can, it is  just that old friend fear kicking in, and preventing the full ride. I’ll promise by the end of the summer, I will ride that hill down like a pro!

Twice this week I started my days going on a mini ramp to work on kick-turns. I went back and forth pretty high and turned okay on the low part of the ramp. Still a lot of work to do with kick-turns and pump the speed up –  and of course to have courage to ‘swing’ higher and faster.

(here’s a clip for this week’s morning session https://wordpress.com/post/crazyskatelady.com/456)

By the end of the week, the weather got wet again, so there were couple of days no skateboarding. I was still busy on my free time with it by creating own Facebook page for Crazy Skate Lady (please like and follow me on Facebook too!) and watching some skate videos. On Monday I already sworn I will stop watching them all together, as my skating doesn’t relate to any of them, and makes me just more annoyed by how crap I am. Yes I know, not mature attitude. I am sure though all of you who skateboard, do know that frustrating feeling when you just want to throw your board as far as you can…for Finnish readers I can say it feels like wanting to put the board ‘tuhannen p*****n päreiksi’… Anyway, there were a skate video that did motivate me. Look here how this 40 years old beginner have learned to nail many tricks by training hard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14-sOzwJgD  

That video made me want to try ollie. Something I have not really done before, expect of some odd tries once in a while. I think last time was last summer.

So this morning (Sunday) I woke up thinking of ollies. Dude too wanted to skate, and despite of drizzling rain, we tried to find a dry spot to skate. First try was a mini ramp on Vilvoorde under the bridge. It was damp. I learned now first time in practise what it means when surface is wet: dude fell and I slipped, so it was time to continue the hunt of the dry spot. I must say before slipping, I did pretty okay kick-turns, so something is happening – and I am motivated to practice to get better with that.

We didn’t have luck with a car park, where we managed to skate few weeks ago, when the weather was wet. It was full of cars today.

Finally, on the way back home there was a dry spot under some bridge. Rough surface with pebbles and garbage, still possible to do something. And I did: ollies! Few of them were like almost okay 🙂  Dude was holding hands, and balance sucks – still did something new. In your face, fear!

You must believe my words with the ollies. For some reason, the camera didn’t work. As they say: you can’t have everything.

The video above is filmed on mid February when I am first time on new cat board. Feeling good and comfy on that day.

Below Skatepark Stadspark after I had started to warm up – finally. (warning includes not happy being filmed comments 😀 )

And here some tic tac attempts from couple of weeks ago on rainy day in car park.