Bad sharpening

I've always wondered what people meant when they say that they got a bad sharpening.

Unfortunately, I learned the hard way - one week right before my very first test : (

Being an A type overly cautious type of person, I got my skates sharpened 2.5 weeks beforehand so I can get used to the newly sharpened blades. After the sharpening, I skated once on public, and had a lesson on freestyle last week. During my lesson, I didn't really notice anything since coach and I are talking most of the time or there is program music running and I can't hear noises from my blade. However, once she left, I kept hearing myself scraping a lot, but I didn't have much time left and coach was gone anyway, so there wasn't much I could do about it. I skated two more times on public after that, but on public, I can barely even hear myself talk let alone my blades.

Today, I went to practice at a very empty freestyle (5 skaters total) and it couldn't be clearer. I was scraping. Even on the simplest perimeter stroking the blades were making noises. It scraped on my straight line spiral too. I skated on what I think is a flat and the lines from the two edges look uneven. I don't know if it was just the idea that the blades were messed up getting into my head or that they really are that messed up, I couldn't change edges very well. So I scratched through the session hoping and hoping my coach had a lesson and would show up, I was really freaking out at this point. Thank goodness right before I left I caught her and very pitifully told her that I think there was something wrong with my blades.

She looked as worried as I was but couldn't see anything wrong herself. She took my skates over to our rink manager (who I never knew before actually knows about blades, but apparently he does) to ask him to take a look, and after a while, he said that it does look like a bad sharpening. For one, there was a tiny bump along the length of the blade, which both he and coach J could feel (I can't tell, but I trust them). Also, he says it feels like the blades don't have much of a hollow, as if they were figure blades.

Great, just great.

Because I've had a few people tell me to not go to our rink's sharpener but to go to this other sharpener instead, that's what I did, even though my coach has no problem with the rink sharpener. Our rink sharpener is a grumpy old guy (imagine the grandpa in the movie Up!), so I was petrified at having to now go to him and ask him to fix a bad sharpening and perhaps get asked why I didn't go to him in the first place. Coach was nice and told him beforehand about the problem and told him not to yell at me lol. When I went he just looked displeased, but then he always does so I don't know really how annoyed he was. Hopefully the blades are now okay, I'll find out tomorrow morning.

So much for driving out further to go to a reputable sharpener! I guess I should have just listened to my coach and stuck with our rink sharpener. As grumpy as he may seem, if my coach has bought skates and sharpened them with him since she was four, he must be good right? But then what's with the skaters who tell me otherwise? : (