Foot-In-Skate Disease

I finally got my snowplow stop figured out and last week it was crossed off which means I move up to Beta level now! All it took was a bit of individual help because I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing wrong. Then the coach spent a bit of time with me individually and I finally worked out what it was I was doing wrong and I can now stop, albeit slowly. It really is preferable to running headfirst into the side barrier. Or skidding on my knees in a 'snowplow position' which I did suggest I do instead when I didn't think I would ever master it. He he he...

I find I'm becoming more fearless the last few weeks and I'm worried that my increasing confidence and bravado will cause me to fall over more often. I am less scared of moves I'm not yet ready for but I'm too scared to do a backward crossover, moving anti-clockwise. I am not afraid of lunging or dipping or trying to spin or jumping up and down but I feel very unstable doing some basics like crossovers. I think the skates I had today have a loose blade - I had them last week and felt the same thing. It has a small wobble in the centre and it doesn't feel stable. The ones I had yesterday weren't as bad as this.

I don't think this was helping at all when I started to feel pain yesterday in the arch of my foot. I have had this pain for a while now, pre-skating, due to hurting my feet while in Europe last year. I think the combination of wearing extremely bad, unsupportive shoes, marching on cobblestones and the sheer amount of walking I did in that month contributed to damage done to my feet. Every since, I have felt agonising pain in the arches of my feet most of the time I walk but particularly when they are on a slight angle (i.e. walking up or down a hill, standing on tippy-toes, skating around a circle when the blade is on one of the edges, rather than the flat). Even now, as I sit here, I can feel them aching a little in the non-walking shoes that I have on.

As a result, skating has become unbearably painful and the last two days, I have only lasted just over an hour on the ice before having to come off (although it doesn't help that the hire skates I have are so worn on the inside, it's like wearing plastic buckets on your feet!). Even today, I pretty much just wasted my money going to the rink this morning because I had to keep coming off the ice every ten minutes and only lasted just over an hour in total. I want to be able to do this well - I really enjoy it and I have the motivation to learn - but if my feet continue to hurt, it's either buy new skates (which I REALLY can't afford, although I tried some the other day) so I can try and get them to support the arch more, or quit entirely.

I'd prefer the former.