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Blades of Steel

Sun, 07/08/2007 - 8:24pm — Nick

I actually did it. On Thursday, I got all of my equipment together and went out to the local ice rink to play some pickup ice hockey for the first time in a year and a half when I injured my shoulder as a result of playing (Impingement syndrome was the diagnosis from my doctor). I've been itching to play again for nearly a year now, but the combination of wanting to nurse my shoulder to 100% plus life cutting in (job change, girlfriend, etc.) made that rather difficult. Plus I wanted to go out the public skating sessions on a regular basis and get some exercise back instead of starting up hockey cold (like I did three years ago when I sprained my ankle during that pickup).

I guess it's just the signs of aging.

How I did? To say the truth, I'm a bit surprised at what I've retained. Yeah, thought the pace wasn't too fast, I lost much of my old speed and was pretty much ran out of gas only 30-minutes into the 2-hour session (keep in mind, each side only had 7-8 skaters available to rotate for 5 positions...). But it feels like my puck handling is much better than it has ever been. I've been practicing puck-handling at one on the ceramic tiling with a roller-hockey puck, and it seems that has been paying off. My legs felt fine as long as I had energy to provide them. Though I couldn't push them any further for some reason; might be some psychological issue related to when I injured my ankle.

How that sprain happened: I went out to play hockey then when I haven't even skated in 6 months. It was about an hour into play, and my body was exhausted, yet I was able to keep it going (on what? I have no idea...). Unfortunately, I was changing directions by doing a full hockey stop then attempt to take off in the other direction at full speed. When pushing off, my ankle pretty much gave up; I ended putting full power into twisting my right ankle, and I fell down in a heap. I drag myself up and limp-skate over to the bench, rested about 15 minutes, then went back out to play some more! Stupid, stupid move. I'm lucky I didn't do serious damage to my ankle as a result. In the end, I wake up the next morning to a swollen ankle that didn't want weight put on it. I still went to work that day, but it had hurt for a good month and a half after that. I didn't even try skating for three months. And, to add to it, I didn't even get it check out by a doctor.

Not so smart, am I? Well, I dislike going to the doctor for various reasons. Most of the reasons pertain to the wait time, not finding out what's wrong. Then again, with my sprained ankle, the most that could be done is a brace (which I wore for several weeks) and rest it, really.

Well, I hope to return to playing hockey on a regular basis. I'll be trying to do pickup twice a week, though it would depend on how fast the pickup sessions goes. The local Junior hockey team players sometimes come out to play, and when they come out in large groups, they game gets very fast. In the past, I would try to keep up, resulting in the last two injuries. Hopefully, I'll get better at stretching my limits, but not giving myself a setback by injuries again.