I haven’t been writing much of recent. Hell, my last post was in late April. Here are some random updates / thoughts on a rainy afternoon.
Injury Status
I pulled a groin muscle (tendon?) in the middle of December 2022. I am just now finally getting over it and/or back to normal. It took six months to heal. Six months. Why did it take so long? Because I couldn’t stay off my board for more than 10 days at a time, at which point I would aggravate it again (or shortly thereafter). During that time, I wasn’t skating much, and what I did do, was pretty low-key.
Confidence Status
Now that I am fully back on the board, wow, am I rusty, and have lost a lot of tricks. What’s even worse, is that I have developed a mental block/fear of some tricks I used to do all the time [e.g. axle stall to fakie (on transition)]. My confidence with some really basic stuff is just gone right now. Will it come back once I get back to a regular skate schedule? Remains to be seen. For the moment, it’s pretty frustrating, esp. because I know most of it is mental limitation, and not a physical one.
Wheel Madness
I went on a little wheel “madness” bender over the last two weeks or so. Part of this stems from the lack of confidence issues (see above). I have ridden Spitfire Classics for a long, long, long, long time. Classics are the most “rounded” off shape Spitfire makes, and the ones with the smallest contact patch. Without getting too deep in the weeds, I’ve been toying with the more squared off Spitfire shapes, and bigger contact patches. Everything has trade-offs, but for right now I am really liking the enhanced “locked-in” feel that a more squared-off wheel is providing on grinds and stall tricks. I am not a fan of how they look on my board, but maybe that is just because I am not used to seeing them (on my board). I’ll spare a detailed list of the +/- of the different shapes. Suffice to say, I’m riding 53mm Conicals (not the Conical Fulls) right now, and mostly enjoying them.
