There is no age, height, or weight requirement to skate. It is good exercise no matter what your age is. If you want to be competitive, most start young. But, I practice with many adult competitors.
My life has been a whirlwind since the '94 Olympics.
I worked also, doing things such as our paper route and, later on, waitressing.
People would ask me why I was doing what I was doing - but I always told them that I just loved to skate. There was no other explanation.
Falling down became second nature and it really didn't bother me.
It wasn't always easy getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning to go to the rink. Sometimes I wanted to just go back to sleep.