Cross training : skating

When I was a kid, winters were cold, at least 8 months long and I learned to skate on a flooded backyard ice surface. Oh how quintessentially Canadian! I love skating, but don’t skate nearly enough these days. My son (who grew up in coastal British Columbia, where “real” snow-covered and sub-zero winters last about 2 days) and I have adopted an annual tradition of skating together during the Christmas holiday season at one of the local ice arenas. The rink is decorated with festive lighting, and only costs a Loonie entrance fee and that includes the skate rental… Such a deal!

Loving skating!

This year was no exception, we hit the ice arena again, paid our Loonie, laced up our skates and prepared to have fun. Now, true confession time… I always insist that we go early and not just to beat the rush, but so that I can see the Zamboni. I have such an enormous love for these wonderful machines and not just for their obvious functionality: scraping and flooding the surface to make it oh so smooth. In the places I skated when I was a kid: backyard rinks, outdoor arenas, small town indoor arenas, and frozen ponds, there were no such miracle machines.

Arena with festive lighting and a Zamboni.

I attribute Charles Shultz and the Peanuts cartoon for fostering my love of the Zamboni. Who else recalls Woodstock cleaning the ice on the frozen bird bath so that Snoopy and the other birds could play hockey? And what a great name for an ice making machine, Zamboni… it makes my mouth smile just saying it! I could tell you all sorts of facts about the Zamboni, all learned from the book Zamboni: The Coolest Machines on Ice, by Eric Dregni (2006), but I digress. However, I will tell you a bit of trivia… The Zamboni was NOT invented in Canada, as you might assume, but in the most unlikely place, Paramount, California. And I will also tell you that last winter a very good friend of mine arranged for me to ride on a Zamboni between periods of a pick-up hockey game. Best present ever or at least on par with a gift of a (much smaller) remote control Zamboni. Oh and yes, I do sing the “I Wanna Drive a Zamboni” song frequently.

Anyway, back to skating. Round and round my son and I skated to music; first one direction and then the other, stopping, starting, crossing-over, skating backwards and falling at least once (yes, there was bruising). It was so much fun and oh, yes, the point of this post is that skating is an excellent cross training exercise. I figure we covered at least 2k during our skating session.

For a full-on exercise program, someday I would love to skate on the Rideau Canal Skateway in Ottawa where one can skate for 7.8 kilometres on the longest outdoor ice rink in the world. Not that I haven’t tried. I was there a few winters ago with a friend and we tried three times to skate on the canal: the first time it was -25C (too cold), the second time it was +5C (too warm), and the third time there was a meter of snow on the surface. Alas, but I vow to someday having the pleasure of skating the entire length of the Canal and to check out the Zamboni-like ice resurfacing machine used to smooth it all.

About Denise

I am a runner.