At the beginning of May I went over to London for a long weekend to visit some friends and decided to take a skateboard lesson while I was there. Google wasn't giving me any useful results for 'skateboard lessons in Dublin' and although the older guys at the skatepark are all up for showing me how to things, it's not quiet the same as having a lesson from somebody that actually teaches skateboarding. Wayne Gallagher had mentioned to me the name of a female skateboarder in England that he had skated with before, called Lucy Adams. After a bit of googling it turned out that Lucy wasn't just any old girl skateboarder but the number one female skateboarder in the UK. And luckily for me, she also happens to be a skateboard coach. After a couple of tweets and emails I had arranged an hour long skateboarding lesson with Lucy (who kindly offered to come up to London for it) in Clapham Common Skatepark. As it was on a Saturday, and it's a free to use public skatepark, we had arranged the lesson for 9.30 in the morning (I'm not a morning person!) to try and avoid the place being packed with scooter wielding kids. I was a bit apprehensive before the lesson, mainly because I was afraid I was going to make a complete fool out of myself and not be able to do anything she showed me. Thankfully this wasn't the case. Being an expert in your field doesn't necessarily translate into being a good teacher but it was obvious from the start that Lucy was a good coach. She managed to quickly put me at ease, was fun to work with, and most importantly she was able to help me progress onto new stuff as well as refining what I could already do. Unfortunately the weather wasn't very good. It was freezing cold for May and after around only 30 minutes it started to drizzle rain, which made the smooth concrete surface very slippy. This slightly curtailed what we could work on, but Lucy managed to improvise on the less slippy tarmac and I was able to practice fakies and kick turns among other things. The lesson flew by and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so that I was on a complete high for the rest of the day. There are days when I sometimes wonder if I will ever be able to skate at a decent level, but this lesson certainly gave me hope that I'm not completely wasting my time. I am already planning some more trips to England during the summer and want to arrange to take some more of Lucy's expert coaching lessons!
coolio! ;)
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