Early Morning Skating

Lara has started the next level in the Canadian skating programme, she's moved up from CanSkate to StarSkate. This is something that's decided by the coaches, and they invite children to move up to this level, so this is a promising thing for Lara. It means more commitment, she has to put more hours of practise in, but she gets more one-on-one time with her coach too.  The best way to give Lara the time on the ice to practise, and to fit it in with school during the week and skiing at the weekend, and also to allow us time for Dan too, is for Lara to skate before school.
So now, usually once a week, Lara skates between 6.15 and 8am. This means an alarm call at 5.15, and we have to get Dan up too, so Olga or I take Lara to skating, get her onto the ice, then take Dan to nursery, then back to the rink to watch her. As a treat we take her to her choice of fast food place for breakfast. At the moment that means Subway, which is fine. She's moved on from kid's sandwiches in there to a proper 6" ham sub.
For this week, and the next two Mondays, Lara will be doing pre-school skating twice a week - her usual morning is Thursday. This is because she'll be going to hospital to have her hernia repaired on the 11th February, and will have at least two weeks off all sporting activity, so we want her to make some good progress and get settled into the morning routine. Hopefully she will see the benefit too in doing a lot of skating in the next few weeks (she also has an after-school lesson on Wednesdays) so she is keen to return to action as soon as her surgeon gives her the OK.
Yesterday morning was my first morning session, and Lara's third, having missed last week with her cold. I took a few photos and videos..





We're trying to keep it a fun experience for her, and not pressure her into going. She does enjoy it, and she will only benefit from the ice time, and mixing with the older girls during these morning sessions. Yesterday there was Lara, the coach and three teenage girls, and Lara spent the most time of them all on the ice. The older girls are really nice to Lara, high-fiving her when they get together to do some group practice work, and not belittling her at all. They must remember how they felt when they were Lara's age. The one girl that was left at the end of Lara's ice time helped out with the coaching, which was good for her as well as Lara:



We know Lara isn't a prodigy, but everyone's got to start somewhere, and so long as she wants to go to lessons, we'll try to make sure she goes as often as we can fit in, and she'll reach a standard where she realises that she's actually really good at it, and loves skating, and then early mornings won't be a hassle at all. For her, anyway... :-)