Halloween Skating

We had a Halloween theme at CanSkate today. There were some great costumes! One kid was dressed like a zombie and looked horrendous. Another kid was dressed as an Incredible and there was a ninja, superwoman, and about sixty princesses *roll eyes*. Two of the program assistants had cool wings. My coach was an angel with a vertical halo and another coach wore a snorkel. What did I wear? Just my usual figure skating clothes, blah. I had a couple of fun ideas for costumes but ran out of time/money/energy for them. Lame excuse, but true. One idea was to make a Rainbow Brite costume that I could also wear as a skating dress, but I scratched that when I saw the price of spandex. I probably could have bought a blue skirt at the thrift store but I was too lazy. My other idea was to go to American Apparel and buy an 80's aerobics instructor outfit. But when I was there I discovered how much it would cost and it was more than I wanted for a one-time gag.

Ok, lame excuses aside, I had fun even though I didn't dress up, loser that I am.

Here is how my practice went:

• Skating skills: They always play the music for my three Preliminary patterns during this time slot so I got to practice them all. I brought my printouts this time and noticed a couple of errors I had been making yesterday so I tried to fix them. Also noticed how another skater really covered the ice in her 3-turn pattern, need to figure out what she is doing in order to achieve that. We also worked on these during my private lesson with my coach, and one of the other coaches agreed that the Mohawk music is too fast and not to worry about it. My coach thinks both the 3-turns and Mohawks patterns are looking decent but to make it look easier/less stiff (i.e. practice a whole bunch). I practiced the preliminary circles too (long held edges on circle) but didn't get any feedback from my coach because it was right at the transition to the next session, oh well. They are fine just a bit wobbly and not sure what to do with my arms.
• Group lesson: We practiced doing edges down the ice and back. But not quite figures-style, the free leg is to be held in one position until the next push instead of passing the skating leg halfway through. My coach had to shout this at me a couple of times as well as reminders to extend the free leg, hehe. Since a couple of the younger girls didn't seem to know this exercise they got a bit of a primer while the rest of us practiced them in laps around the rink. Of course the top two skaters decided to turn it into a race and barreled around the rink rushing their edges so everyone lapped me and another girl and it got quite messy and dangerous with blades flying about. Then the silly thing is that the coaches cued us to change direction when the fastest skaters finished their laps, which meant that I had to skip the backward inside edges, which are the ones that need the MOST practice. The second time around I was lapped again but I still completed the last lap after everyone else was called in. I need the practice, and they were just saying the same old stuff anyway ;) This might be considered impolite or disrespectful to the coaches I suppose, but I don't like to skip an exercise just because someone else was able to do it faster. Well, group lessons aren't perfect, it's the nature of things.
• Spin lesson (small group): We started with backspins and mine have improved a lot. I still feel that I fall too much on the outside edge but I don't fall right out of the spin as much anymore. We also practiced sits and camels. The other girls practiced their combination spins and I told my coach that my old combo spin had been camel-sit-change-sit, so she got me to work on just the sit for now. It sucks, I lose the inward lean as soon as I try to bring the free leg around. After the lesson I put some quality time into it and tweaked my inner thigh a bit *roll eyes*. But the key seems to be to bring the leg around quickly, then there is less time for it to pull the centre of mass away from over top of the spinning foot. Of course, this means developing some power in my inner thigh muscles! :) I did notice though that it's easier to get into the sit position from camel.
• Spin practice: After lesson I got to practice stuff on my own. I started with my spins since we had just been doing them. My sits and uprights still don't centre but I'm trying not to overthink it. Sometimes a spin feels like it's centring but I check the tracing and it turns out that it traveled more than one that felt unbalanced. This makes it hard for me to really tell what to do differently and indicates that I still can't detect when I properly have my weight over top of the spinning point. Anyway, I tried not to worry about it too much and practiced upright, sit, camel, and attitude. I have been practicing the attitude position off-ice but it's much more difficult on skates *furrow brow*. I'm trying to lean back a bit more since I get very toe-scratchy in this position. I think I did a bit better today but the spin really slows down. This is harder than I expected! Then I practiced some backspins, upright and sitting. And, I worked on my old combination spin. I am still having some trouble with falling out of my camels about half the time but the other half the time they feel fast and balanced on the sweet spot of the blade. On those occasions, I tried the full combination and then I screw up the spin on the backsit because I get going so fast, I can't control it. And because they freak me out! Before I put my right foot down I have a moment of doubt and that probably doesn't help.
• Jumps:
  

1. Waltz - did the obligitory exercise of holding the forward edge without jumping, probably about 5-7 times. I tend to automatically curve to avoid someone, need to think more clearly about stepping onto a shallower curve. Then I did a bunch of the actual jump. Not sure how it looks but they feel klunky at first until I have done a few of them then I start to actually get some height and feel more comfortable.
2. Salchow - also did the exercise for THIS jump of 3-turn, HOLD, bring free leg around, HOLD. Trying to lean back more, to get off of the toepicks. Then practiced the jump, starting to get some height. Not sure if it is any good.
3. Toe loop - exercise involves doing them from a standstill. Also made myself do about 5-7 of them. Noticed that it really doesn't work if I try to jump while my weight is still mostly over the non-picking foot; that's not a shocker but I was trying to do it anyway, by jumping with my shoulders, heheh. Practiced the actual jump and sometimes it feels smooth. Would like to know if the ones that feel good actually look good!
4. Loop - didn't do the exercise (slo-mo at boards) but did try doing them slow on the circle like last time. When I can remember everything, this jump is actually fun!
5. Flip - I like to warm these up with some split jumps and then do them at low speed, then at higher speed. They still get a bit scary which causes me to hesitate a bit. I wonder how long I will have the luxury of not having to practice a dreaded exercise for the flip??!
6. Lutz - since I'm still afraid of these I don't mind just doing the exercise. From a left backward outside edge, I pick and do a little hop and land on two feet without rotating. It probably looks ridiculous, but I don't care. I was working up the nerve to do the whole jump when my coach called me for my lesson. Saved by the bell! :)
   

Well that's about it. I had a fair bit of fun today even if I didn't get to practice footwork or improvising to whatever is playing on the stereo. And I got to take home a Halloween cookie!

Good old-fashioned hard work

Yesterday morning I had an good skate focusing mostly on basics. I decided to start my figures work with edges on a line because the circle eights are giving me a lot more trouble than I had been expecting originally. After building a bit of confidence with all 4 varieties, I did do some forward circle eights. This time instead of focusing on the size and shape of the circles I was paying more attention to my edges. I think that I end up falling onto the flat of the blade when my free leg passes in front. Probably the movement is not smooth enough and it's erasing the nice inward lean that I keep on the first half of the circle. I asked my coach about it and she agreed that the lean has to be maintained as well as a "pressing" on the edge. Again that magic word that I'm still trying to interpret, heh.

After that I did some work on my crossovers. I practiced them with holding the edges for a long time in an exercise my coach taught me, then gradually speeding them up. I do them on a hockey circle but I get going so fast that I have to make my circle a lot bigger, I also start to get a little freaked out, especially when going backwards!

Then a little work on spins, but they were not so great. Falling out of my camel again! Never take a vacation, it will break half your elements!!

I can't exactly remember if I worked on my jumps, hmm. It was only yesterday, but I can't remember. I think I did some spirals, but not jumps.

For my lesson we worked on the stuff for my skating skills test. We worked on getting the Mohawks program to the proper rhythm of the music, but it still feels rushed. My coach decided that she didn't like the free leg position on the backward edges, so that was a bit of an adjustment to change it. She agreed that the music seems fast and let me know that performing it to the music is not actually required in the test. So, if I can't seem to get it to the music I can just skip the music, but I would prefer to be able to get it as prescribed.
My coach also took a look at my 3-turns pattern and thinks it is pretty good but I need to cover more ice. She says that someone "my size" should be able to do that, and it will be expected from the judges. In fact, according to her, it is my "strong, deep edges" that make the patterns curve so much and why they are giving me some problems. The Preliminary level is designed with little kids in mind, they aren't going to be very skilled and most of their steps will be more straight than curvy, my coach says. So maybe the best thing is just to get the test over with and move on to the more interesting levels anyway.

I noticed that I was skidding a lot on my three turns and spin entries so I went and got my skates sharpened in the afternoon. Whee! I hope it helps :)

Catching up

I was on vacation last week so I haven't updated for a while.  But in fact I've skated four times since I returned, I've just been too lazy to blog, oops!  Actually I will blame it on the NHK trophy taking up all my time this weekend :)

Friday Morning

I had my usual early morning skate on Friday (Oct  22nd).  Since it is only for one hour I opted to skip figures in favour of having enough time to practice everything else.  After about two weeks off most of my elements were predictably rusty but I wanted to practice everything and get it over with!  I did a whole bunch of stroking exercises including crossovers and power pulls (these really suck).  I worked on all my spins, most of them were not very good and the consistent camel spin I briefly owned was gone (no surprise).  With my coach we ran through all my jumps up to loop. She thinks they are all progressing especially the loop.  She thinks it looks "natural".  But it still feels strange!

Friday Afternoon

Because I missed four sessions I was allowed to make them up so I started by coming to the afternoon session that day.  I had the day off so why not?!  This time there were a bunch of different sessions going on for several hours.  It started with a skating skills time slot that was supposed to last half an hour but the CanSkate coaches started coming in early for the skating lessons and they started laying out cones and drawing on the ice and generally getting in my way so I left a bit early to go across the hall to the other rink where a freeskate was starting.  It was somewhat busy but mostly with small kids so it wasn't too much of a problem. After that the seniors joined us and we had a spin 'competition'.  Since all my spins were still rusty I just worked on a simple upright spin and trying to 'sell' it with good presentation.  Then there was another freeskate session and I worked on more or less everything until I started running out of ideas. I probably could have worked more on spirals an spread eagles and stuff but I'm a bit embarrassed to practice them, hehe.  Also with seniors there I was concentrating a lot on staying out of their way and ended up doing a lot of just skating around at top speed.  I like to skate fast :)  Too bad I can't even do a 3-turn at such speeds.  Eventually I got tired enough to leave even though the session wasn't over, but it was time to go home and my feet were hurting by then. I probably skated for about three hours that afternoon.

Saturday

On Saturday morning I was ridiculously sore from four hours of skating the previous day.  After two weeks off.  But once I am on the ice I usually don't notice it so much.  During skating skills I got to practice my three patterns to the appropriate music.  The 3-turns pattern is feeling more smooth and the choctaws are not as awkward as they used to be. The Mohawks pattern sucks the most because I can't seem to figure out the timing of the music; also I am not as good at doing the pattern with the left foot leading, it's a lot less controlled.  I also got to practice the Dutch Waltz to the music and even though I forgot some of the steps it mostly came back to me.  I still haven't had a dance lesson, something I'd like to rectify. 

For our group lesson we practiced a bunch of straight stroking and Russian stroking  just going down the ice and back in a big line.  I liked this lesson format because less time is wasted waiting for your turn to skate.  We even tried racing down the ice, both forwards and backwards.   I did not do as well as I expected going forwards but was second going backwards!

For my private lesson we worked on my spins.  We worked some more on fixing the travel in my forward upright spin and I was able to centre a couple of them.  But, I don't know how I did it.  My coach says that on the ones that were centred, I was 'pressing down through the ball of the foot' more.  I'm not really sure what this means.  My sit-spin was really not working and I even fell on one of them when I leaned too deeply on the spiraling edge.  I know that I need to spiral into a tighter curve before spinning but I just can't seem to do it. At this point I was getting too frustrated for it to really be productive so we moved on to the camel spin.  It still wasn't as good as it had been before my vacation.  My coach wants me to make a tighter spiraling edge and immediately straighten the free knee.  To practice this I tried skating a spiral down the blue line.  It takes me about halfway across the rink to get into the proper position, it needs to be much quicker than that.  Also need to think about getting both knees absolutely locked as soon as possible or it looks "horrendous". Oh snap!  On the bright side my upright backspin has improved drastically, Coach was surprised, even shocked! So was I!

The rest of the freeskate I mostly spent working on going into my jumps with more speed.  Not top speed, because I get out of control, but usually I practice them at a crawl so I tried to pick it up a bit.  The one this is hardest for is the toe loop.  For some reason this jump is confusing me lately.  Anyway it wasn't all about skating fast, I did do my dreaded jumping exercises including my least favourite one, the toe loop from a standstill.  AND I even got to doing some of the Lutz prep exercises.  Whee!  I did manage to practice some spirals and spread eagles toward the end this time, and got more comfortable with my right foot spiral.

No surprise, I was again ridiculously sore for the rest of the day and Sunday. 

Monday

On Monday I skate for only an hour and it's somewhat crowded, so it's not always the most productive day.  This time my feet were killing me so I had to adjust my skates a couple of times but it can't account for the way the time just flew by.  I worked on crossovers and power pulls a bit, ran through my spins saving the most time for camel, did some spirals, and suddenly it was time for my lesson.  We worked on jumps this time.  Some days my coach seems happy with them and sometimes she just picks them apart, and this time she picked them apart.  She would fix one thing, and something else would go wrong.  I think I was a bit distracted by all the other skaters or something, I wasn't focusing enough.  But we did manage to get each jump to a point where I could do one or two that was ok.  I hate it when my coach has to say the same things over and over, it's a waste of her breath and we both waste time and energy, but there is so much to think about at once it's really tough to get them all right at once.

The group lesson on Mondays is also kind of a wash because there are so many of us and they choose exercises where we sort of cross paths and it gets chaotic.  We practiced cross rolls and skiing and skiing with a turn.  One exercise that I just didn't get involved some kind of backward cross-in-front step followed by a double three-turn.  When I tried it I was told that I had turned the wrong way but I couldn't really figure out what I was supposed to do.  Sometimes this sort of thing happens in a group lesson.  They did finally split us up into 2 groups toward the end and we practiced doing a BO 3-turn followed by FI Mohawk.  We practiced them CCW but ran out of time for doing them CW.  And the coaches wonder why we don't practice everything in both directions! LOL!

Epic Lesson

I had a fantastic skate on Saturday :D
It started with skating skills, which was relatively empty due to the Thanksgiving holiday. I practiced my three routines to the appropriate music (a three-turn sequence, a mohawk sequence, and held edges on a circle in all 8 flavours). The music for the mohawk sequence seems a bit fast and I'm having a hard time hearing the beat so I don't have the hang of the timing yet. I'll have to get some help with that.

Then we had skating lessons for kids as usual (CanSkate). I taught my own group again, and it is getting easier now that I have taught this level a few times. As long as I stay with this level I'm good! They were having trouble with their two-foot turns, so I got them to practice "doing the twist" by just standing and swiveling their hips back and forth and it helped a whole lot. It's also a good chance to practice spinning in the opposite direction.

For the group lesson we did an intense crossovers workshop, ugh. My coach wants us to be able to hold the underpush without bending forward, but it's just so hard on my old knees and back. I started going to a physiotherapist recently though so I am hoping he can help me get into these awkward poses that my coach keeps trying to contort me into.

After that it was time for group spin lesson, but all my coach's other students were away so I got to have a private lesson for that plus the duration of freeskate :) We weren't really planning to use the entire 75 minutes for a private lesson but we were having such a great time that we just kept going. Next week I am away on vacation so it is just lesson time that I would have had later anyway. Plus I think my coach was happy to be employed that whole time!

I did in fact have a terrific lesson. We covered just about everything. We talked about testing and competing. We even got to three new jumps. Whee!

• One-foot upright spin: for the test, the want the free leg brought in beside the skating leg, not crossed in front like a scratch spin. I practiced one of these and was told "that was a really nice spin". Currently I'm holding the knee bend for quite a long time and was rewarded with one well-centred spin to boot.
• Sit-spin: more work on pointing the free foot forwards and up, not out to the side. The position coach likes feels like my toe is pointing to the left, but it's actually pointing forward. To centre them I need to spiral in farther on the entry and get more lean over the left foot; feel the blade really biting the ice. I feel the lean on the entry but once I get spinning I sort of fall inward. We made some progress on this including keeping the free leg straight on the swing around. Coach says they look more appealing now when I get everything right. Still need to work on deeper sit position off-ice.
• Camel spin: need to make the entry more smooth and really extend, almost lock both knees. I practiced two. The second one really felt good and coach says it's perfect, she doesn't want to mess with it. Only suggestion is to not lift the free leg so high, think more of getting an outward or even upward turn of the free foot/toe. And fold more forwards and square the shoulders. Pretty nice considering how awful this spin was two months ago.
• Backspin: bleah. I fall to the outside edge and scrape the ice; also have a real comfort zone problem with the free leg being in any other position except crossed in front of my skating leg. I told coach that I'm not thinking of my body position because I'm trying to find the right spot on my blade, but she thinks it should be more the other way around; a proper body position will naturally lead to balancing on the proper part of the blade. Aim for keeping the hips level, free thigh parallel to the ice, free foot directly in front of skating knee. Toe pointed. Duh.
• Attitude spin: didn't get too far with this, I'm having trouble figuring out if the free knee has to move behind the line of the body. We seem to be having a communications disconnect on this one. Anyway, idea is to work on a regular upright spin entry with free leg about 45 degrees out from the midline of the body. Then bend the free knee and try to make the free ankle point to the ceiling. Haha. One good exercise is to try this just gliding down the ice. This is hard. Did I mention the toe should be pointed?
• Waltz jump: we worked on the dreaded exercise and she claims it shows that I've been practicing it. No comment on the step forward, so I'm not sure if I'm doing it right yet. I've been trying to think about pivoting on the ball of the foot instead of deepening the curve. We had a bit of a discussion about how I can't absorb all of her great feedback at once, and I'm better at thinking about one thing at a time. She told me to try a jump without thinking about it; apparently that one was quite good. *shrug*. Also tried setting it up from backward crossovers. Scary fast!
  
• Salchow: coach thinks it looks quite nice, not too much feedback here. Remember to BEND the knees, and jump from the deepest knee bend without hesitation. Practice holding the check after the three-turn more.
  
• Toe loop: one thing I noticed on Friday is that when I look at my toe-loop tracing the toe-pick mark is at an outward angle to the direction of the glide. I think this means I am opening the hip of the picking foot before picking, which is probably a cheat. I focused on keeping the hips more square and coach thinks it looks much better. I still need to consciously sweep the skating foot toward the picking foot more closely before jumping.
• Loop: some serious improvement here. We are pleased that I am over my mental block on entering the jump from a backward two-foot glide and am managing something better than a bent-over hop. Need to get the timing of arms and legs more co-ordinated (this is true for all the jumps). One neat bit of advice was to turn the ankle of the jumping (right) foot so that the toepick is pointing down and to the right. So the ankle is flopping in a bit to the left side, and try to jump outwards not just upwards.
• Flip: After all this coach mused that I am almost ready to move on to the flip, so why not try it? I told her it is my favourite jump and I'm worried she will take the fun out of it, haha. So she had me show her my flip and she said "Wow, I don't want to take the fun out of that for you!" She thinks the jump is pretty good. :D But I am rotating too much on the ice, need to think about pick, jump, rotate in that order. She also showed me her preferred method to set up the jump.
• Lutz: since we are on a roll we moved on to the dreaded Lutz. I told her I have been too afraid to try it. She had me practice the setup from a clockwise glide on the hockey circle, same as waltz but without looking back and going the other direction (feels very strange). Then practice reaching back with the right foot, and move right arm back even farther. Then we tried the pick and jump in two ways: pick and jump but don't rotate; and try the pick and jump and rotate from a standstill. Then pick, jump, and rotate from the gliding setup. I managed to squeak out a couple of crappy ones. Whee!
• Bunny hop: We had not talked about these a lot but they are on the first freeskate test so I got to practice them a bit. Learned what to do with my arms, LOL.
  
• Mazurka: I had never learned these before but they are pretty easy. It's not easy to make them look really amazing though. Especially in my non-dominant direction.
  
• Footwork: we talked about it a bit and I showed her some of the stuff I had been experimenting with last Saturday. Then she tried to teach me how to do a bracket which was pretty much "do this" and "your way sucks" LOL! Well we were out of time so I'm sure next time she will bombard me with her usual plethora of technical tidbits.

I had a lot of fun in this lesson and was pleased we got to talking about programs, testing, and competing. Coach wants me to suggest some music. Too bad all my favourite tunes have vocals! I guess I could stand to skate to the Star Wars soundtrack. But it would be a bit goofy, especially at my age.

All alone

On Friday morning I had the ice all to myself! We had a holiday this weekend and I guess everybody was away. My coach arranged to double up our lesson on Saturday so she could sleep in, lucky her :) It was pretty nice to be alone on the ice. I only wish I had had more time. By the time I got through all my "icework" there was no time left to do fun stuff like improvise at top speed. Oh well!

I practiced pretty much everything, wasn't having an amazing skating day but pretty good nonetheless. I worked on my forward inside figure eights for the first time in a while. They are pretty sucky, but why would they not be? Still struggling with being on an actual edge for the second half of the circle. It seems like I can only hold an edge when going relatively fast. Huh.

Losers

We lost our hockey game tonight >:( 3-1. I had some moments of playing well and some moments of playing fantastically badly. I sure got winded too! Need to do some more cardio conditioning. Good fun anyhow, super good time to be back at hockey. My confidence grows with each game! Oh, this was the first team that could actually outskate me. Need to figure out which teams I can be lazy with, and which teams I can't slack off against!

One woman saw me doing a three-turn during the warmup and asked (as a joke) if I could do a triple toe loop. I told her that if I could, she would already know my name!

I had about two seconds to watch the synchro team practicing on my way out. They were doing some snazzy turns and skating in a circle holding hands. Also wearing very long skirts, almost knee-length. Strange.

"Excellent"

I wanted to name this post "More dreaded jump exercises" or something but decided to take a more positive tone. One of my salchows elicited an "Excellent" from my coach today! So I suppose it is not really my ugly duckling jump, that title squarely belongs to my loop.

I had been sort of avoiding doing jump work with my coach so I bit the bullet today and asked to work on them. Of course I got more of the hated slow-mo walkthroughs; you know, the ones that require patience, edge control, perfect body position from head to toe, blah blah blah. I admitted that I have not been doing them as much as I should, so I will make a better effort to do them now. We worked on all four of the jumps that we have been studying. I was a bit disappointed that the loops I did for my coach were sad little hops, when I had pulled off some more inspiring versions earlier in the hour. The main bit of advice on that one is to stand up taller and not bend forward.

I am not particularly enjoying working on jumps. The preparation going into the jump requires concentration and edge control. The jump itself happens so fast that it's hard to tell exactly what all your body parts are doing. There are so many little bits to remember, it's overwhelming. Jumping wasn't taught to me in this way when I was a kid, so it's rather jarring to spend so much time nitpicking them now. Of course I want to have nice jumps so I have to suffer through it. I think the key will just be not to overdo it, to make sure my lessons over the course of the week are balanced across all types of elements. Otherwise it's just too frustrating.

I spent the rest of the freeskate practicing all my elements. My camel spin was not as effortless as it was yesterday, but it was still not too bad, I don't fall out of it as much anymore. I tried some more back camels and still get about one revolution. I had some decent backspins too. Yesterday I probably did some thirty or forty camels; it can really take time to warm them up. So with only about ten minutes to practice them today, I was not really expecting them to be at the same place. I practiced my layback too and while it is probably all wrong, I am having some success with feeling less dizzy when looking up at the ceiling.

I practiced spirals on both legs, both edges. My right foot spirals feel extremely awkward. I need to make a point of practicing about ten times as many of these than left foot spirals. My left footers get plenty of practice doing camel spins. In the group lesson they made us try those awful forward spirals (aka "leg pulls"). I surprised myself by managing to pull off a sloppy, bent-knee, but not so bad version on each side. My coaches seemed surprised too! I had been griping about these things on Saturday and swore up and down I couldn't do them. They also noted that I had held them for as long as they had instructed, when hardly anyone else did. Still, I don't think I will ever put them in a program if I can avoid them. Let's just say they are a bit, um, suggestive.

After that there was public skating, so I decided to stay but after about 20 minutes it was just too crowded to do much of anything really. I managed to do some laps of two-foot and one-foot slalom/skiing, and a two-foot turn exercise that has been baffling me. I think I made some progress in combining the turn with the required change of edge and smoothness. I did some opposite direction spinning while helping a little girl practice her spins and turns. I stuck it out to the 40-minute mark when there was a Zamboni break, then I called it a night. I couldn't even practice three-turns in this environment.

Good news, the ice conditions were much better today. I wonder if it is because of the drier weather, or because of the complaint I made last week?

Wow!

I almost didn't go to public skating tonight, but I'm sure glad I did. When I arrived there was only ONE other person on the ice. I couldn't believe it! Usually Sunday night is well attended. Some more people did eventually show up but it was never more than ten of us or so on the ice at once. Under such conditions it was so terrific I stayed for the second session, even though they turn the lights out and put on disco lights which make skating a bit more disorienting. I think the ice is in better condition too, it was much smoother than usual.

I practiced just about everything I could think of and had trouble of thinking of stuff to work on sometimes because I had already tried everything. I was having a fabulous day for camels! I could get used to this. I practiced my camel-layback-change-sit combination with some success. I even tried camel-change-camel and managed about one revolution of the back camel. I did about a thousand backspins and my problem with them currently is that I am leaning so much into my outside edge that my blade scrapes deeply and I lose my balance. This was difficult to correct however. Sometimes I manage a decent back spin but I can't exit them properly, this will take some work.

All in all, it was about 2 hours of skating, really fun. I hope my camel stays with me when I get on the ice tomorrow.

After the skating I noticed some ladies filing into the changeroom and suspected they might be with the synchro club. I asked them and indeed, they were synchro skaters. I talked to a couple of them for a while, they are really nice ladies and I love the idea of skating with other women my age. Unfortunately they usually practice at another arena on another night when I am busy >:( There just aren't enough hours in the week to do all the activities I want to do!

Yawn

I have been very busy! To summarize, I accumulated about four more hours of skating in the last two days. I am skating well and having fun!

Friday

Morning skate:

• Figures: FO8. This time I got the first quarter of the circles to be in the right spot, when going without markings. But, the left circle is too large and the right circle is too small. Also after inspecting the tracings, the second half of the circles are being traced mostly on a flat instead of an edge >:( I never checked this before.
• Skating skills: Learned the new 'Watzing Mohawks' pattern with my coach and practiced both it and the three-turns pattern. She thinks they are almost testable; I want them to be breathtaking to watch.
• Freeskate elements: A bit of a blur now, but I mostly concentrated on spins I think. Also spirals, I practiced forward spirals on each foot, on flat, inside, and outside edges. Discovered that change-edge spirals are not as easy as regular change-edge glides.

Physiotherapy Appointment:

• I finally decided to go see a physio about my chronic knee and back problems. He says I have too much of an anterior pelvic tilt (i.e. I stick my butt and tummy out); this was not news to me. But I actually learned a lot at the appointment, he did a very thorough assessment of the flexibility in my legs and hips.
  
• Punchline: stretch quadriceps and psoas muscles, strengthen left gluteus medius, improve posture.

Evening skate:

• With my husband out of town and me being an ice-aholic, I went to public skate at the rink where I already have a pass. For about half an hour I had a wonderful time spinning and it was not too crowded to boot. I practiced backspins in upright and sit positions and found it helpful to keep the skating knee bent. I also practiced forward upright spins trying to reduce travel and found that keeping a deep knee bend helped some of the time. I experimented with attitudes and camels with some success.
• After that they announced over the PA that figure skating was not allowed! I threw my hands in the air and muttered 'Since when?' I have been skating at this rink's public sessions for over two months and always there is a collection of us figure skating in the centre of the rink. We don't cause trouble. And yet when I went a couple of weeks ago there were two boys kicking a puck around and teenagers pushing eachother around while sitting on those useless plastic contraptions for beginners, but I didn't hear any announcements about that. I had to speak to these kids myself. Who's more of a danger?
• After the ridiculous ban on figure skating I decided to buck up and practice my basic skating skills like stroking, power pulls, two-foot slaloms, two-foot slalom turns, FO and FI three-turns, Mohawks, swing rolls, cross rolls, etc. It's tough to practice crossovers in that environment except forwards CCW going around the ends. I wish they would have us at least change directions at this rink. I had originally planned to stay for the second hour but with freestyle banned I just wasn't into it, and anyway my knees were sore.

Saturday

• Skills lesson: we ran through the last pattern on the first skills test, which essentially consist of doing several crossovers then holding an edge for 12 counts going around a hockey circle. There are variants for each of the eight edges of course. My coach watched me do each of them and said these are a piece of cake for me because I did figures. After the backward outside edge, she said "Do you know how long it takes me to teach my students how to get into that gliding position that you just did?!" She seemed relieved! The only one I had to do-over was my LBI edge. Not a strong edge for me. Coach thinks I could test these next week. Whee! After that I asked her to look at my crossovers and we got through 3/4 types before running out of time. She did not have a lot of corrections except to keep the free outside leg straight when bringing it around on forward crossovers.
• Group lesson: we practiced some fun new moves like a change-edge with three-turn tacked on, and two backward cross-steps with three toe-steps (not sure of proper names for these moves). I was surprised that the coach running the lesson (not my private coach) put me at the front of one of the lines. There were more advanced skaters there that should have been at the front of the line. I suppose it was some kind of vote of confidence :)
• Spin group lesson: we started with camels and I was having a good camel day. I even pulled off one of my best ones with everyone watching! I almost cheered! Then we practiced backspins and I had less success >:( I hate those things. Coach wanted us to practice Biellmans next and I just laughed, so she said I could just watch. I was dreading getting to the extreme flexibility stuff, but they can't make me do it. None of that Gumby stuff is technically required, and falls more into the sport of gymnastics in my opinion.
• Freeskate: I dutifully practiced everything including all my jumps that I have been working on. Even my loop is a bit less embryonic. They all feel more solid but my coach hasn't watched them in a while, so I'm not sure how they are looking. Guess I should stop putting off another jump lesson. My favourite jump is the flip, but my coach hasn't worked on that one with me yet; I'm sure she will pick it apart when it's time. I noodled around with fun spin combinations like camel-layback-backsit, of course they're all very much in the developmental stages. But I had fun and even managed to look up at the ceiling in one of my proto-laybacks and didn't fall over! It left me pretty dizzy though. I had a fabulous day for camels. Then I had a blast making up footwork building on he stuff we did in group lesson. One of the moves just begged to have a spin tacked onto the end so I had fun doing that and also throwing in some split jumps and split jump followed by a toe loop. I used to be very bad at making up footwork, I am pleased to be improving in that area as well.
• I checked with a staff member if freestyle is allowed at this rink's imminent public skate, and she assured me that it is not, not even backwards skating. I gave her a bit of a hard time about it and she acknowledged that I must know how to control myself on the ice and not cause trouble, but freestyle is not allowed for anyone nonetheless. I left it at that. All the better for it, I saved my money and was tired and ready for lunch anyway.
  
• Stretching: It was a beautiful day today (weird for October) so I took my yoga mat outside and did some stretches, including the stuff from physio. I had some good progress with my left foot forward splits, my front calf is almost grazing my mat. Splits in the other direction still have a long way to go.