Warm Rink:
My day began with the delivery of one of the dresses I bought on eBay. This one is an older GK style that I thought would be good because I have a similar one in size XL that no longer fits me. The new one (actually used, and only $10) is a Medium, and fit perfectly and looked great. The neckline is more flattering than what appeared online. I got to the rink to first give a private lesson, and found that there is a Mommy & Me class for me, that the director forgot to tell me about . There were only two kids, and it went really well and made us all happy. Then I gave the lesson, and moved on to my ice dance lesson. By that time, two adults that I know from my old club had come in and were skating. One had recently passed Juv MIF. When my lesson was over, they came over and told me they had been complimenting me . In my lesson we did edges as usual, then the Prelim dances, once each, and then, for fun (my idea) F cross rolls in kilian (coach's idea). It was also his idea to do them one per beat at close to Paso Doble tempo. He commented "not bad", and I said I had surprised myself, and he added "me too". I'm taking that as a compliment. So, my adult friends had seen that too, and were duly impressed. Considering the fact that I will probably never be able to pass Prelim MIF, I needed that!

Arctic Circle:
My right hip really hurt afterwards, and my PT appointment for tomorrow was cancelled, since they decided to close the office for the holiday. I'll heat the hips myself tonight.

__________________

Warm Rink: Solo Swing Dance performed to music for the first time today in lesson was pronounced "not bad" by my coach. Which pretty much means "yeah, you are close and it should pass" in coach's language. On to partnering work tomorrow

Arctic circle: Yeah, spins just not happening today. 8-step mohawk: I can see from my tracings that my outside mohawk is very, very, very, very shallow. . . barely even done on outside edges. Bleah.


PASkate, congrats on the student landing the axel!
Petlover, your description of your pre-bronze program scares me. . . I have only a sal and a toe-loop, and my coach has suggested I skate up to bronze (and no, I can't do a sitspin or a backspin either)???? How is it you're not Bronze level??
KimtotheMax: Can't recall where you are--New England? If you're anywhere in the Midwest, come to Fort Wayne. August 11th test date.

__________________
"Go wash an elephant if you wanna do something big." -Baby Gramps

LilJen: I'm in upstate New York...I said something to our club president tonight, and she started thinking, so maybe something can be done....but I'm not going to count my chickens...there is a test session in the end of September that may give me enough time once I get back from my 2 weeks off the ice.

[Warm Rink]
Did back to back run thrus and while the 1st one pretty much sucked (2 footed the SINGLE sal , fell on the camel/back sit, and missed the loop on my flip/loop....yet I landed the axel?), my second run thru was clean

Double Toes were MUCH closer today...I think I was able to fix (for tonight at least ) my issues with picking, and they were getting close to being landed, so I'm getting excited

[Arctic Circle]
Double sals were not happening tonight and I don't know why....I was leaning and falling on the landings...but that's okay

Starting next week, I need to adjust my skating schedule and either skate less during the week (and substitute with running) or I need to skate Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday instead of Sunday-Thursday...we'll see...I could probably drop down to Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday since I don't often get a lot accomplished on Monday/Wednesday it's usually a much less intense practice...

__________________
Skating Dreams

"All your life you are told the things you cannot do. All your life they will say you're not good enough or strong enough or talented enough; they will say you're the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. THEY WILL TELL YOU NO, a thousand times no, until all the no's become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no, quite firmly and very quickly. AND YOU WILL TELL THEM YES." --Nike

Warm Rink: Well, lacking any ice and air-conditioning, the roller rink is warm in summer by definition!

I didn't do too many exciting elements, although my spins are improving on my PIC skates. I hope this leads to better on-ice spins in 2-1/2 months when we have ice again.

I also practiced moves and generally had fun.

Here's a very short video (perhaps 4 seconds long) showing a RFI double-three turn on my PIC skates...

http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~schneidw/...une09-004p.avi

I need to lose weight! (Videos - AARRGH!) The trim person shown skating in the background of the video looks like they are in their 30's, but George is actually 70. I need to discover his secret!

__________________
Bill Schneider

Warm rink: I do think these new blades are quite the best teachers I've ever had! I absolutely have to have the correct posture, or else!

Arctic: It was very misty this morning, it had rained overnight and the humidity level is through the roof. And I still have no backspin, and no step to forwards. Sigh. As for the thrown 3-jump, don't let's go there....

__________________
Mrs Redboots
~~~~~~~~
I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

Warm rink
Returning from holiday and having not skated for three or four weeks I expected the worst, but to my utter amazement everything felt fine. Jumps felt quite low at the start of the session but after i concentrated on really flexing knee and ankle and pushing hard/extending toes on take off i started to get more of a pop.

Most importantly in my lesson I landed a number of loops, a couple of 3-jump/loops and even the dreaded flip i managed to land (poorly) on one foot TWICE!!! I might even be able to remove the mandatory expletive that usual preceeds the word "flip"!

Forward spins went very well too, after failing to do anything resembling a camel spin my coach gave me two pointers in my lesson and it came back better than ever, even managed a camel-sit (though the sit was pretty poor both times). Even bigger kick was trying a change camel and getting a whole one revolution on the back camel before i panicked, flapped my arms and put the other foot down!

Arctic: the upright backspin. There is nothing, and i mean NOTHING I can do to get this going. I always, always, always come on the toe pick as soon as I try to spin. There's nothing that can get through my thick head to stop me from doing this and both my coach and I despair. I'm hoping that I'll get the feel of the back camel in the end and this will teach me where to spin when i'm upright.

Ant

Thursday

Warm:
Party! OMG it was insane insane! But once I cooled my head down, they are pretty cute kids. Just be nice to them and they're nice too.

Arctic:
The rink cleared slowly after lesson and it was freezing.

Warm:
Lesson was amazing. That was the first time in a very long time that things just clicked. Many things clicked. The bracket-3 (on both edges), sit spin position, CAMEL (which I thought I'll never get it), Camel-sit, sit-change-sit. It was just enlightening. I hope those changes will stick the next time I skate.

Arctic:
Until I solve my feet issue, I'll take breaks between skating. Like, skate half hour, rest 10 min, and continue half hour etc. Unlimited time so it doesn't matter. I think it hurts if I skate for a long time because my feet swell. Gosh. I'm spraying the leather stretch thing, but how well will it work, not sure yet.

Warm:
I think I did some awesome attempts on axel. But I'm not sure because I never know if it's a tense waltz or a good axel attempt. If they are rotated, I'll say I almost landed some. Had a very hard fall (fell and right boot went under my left thigh, end of the blade stabbed, and my lower body almost flipped over). I left the rink.

Arctic: Many places hurt but the bruises are very faint!

Warm: The rink was empty today (my birthday!). I managed to do all my tricks. My double loop seems to be getting better.

Artic: My scratch spin still travels 15 feet. It took me awhile to get the axel going and even then it wasn't all that good.

Arctic:
the weather! - though as I'm in the southern hemisphere perhapds it should be Antarctic. Midwinter here, and feels like it. 2 hours skating followed by 2 hours judging skate school tests=frozen Katz.

Been feeling off for a few days; nothing serious, just icky tummy. Couldn't get into things today. Again, major frustration at not being able to make improvements to things new coach wants changed , though she said on Thursday that most things were "better".

Have lost all spins now, discovered toe-loop has been cheated into toe-waltz and need to fix that. And my landing knee hurts. Not a good session.

Warm:
at least I get another go tomorrow.

__________________
Katz

Saved by Synchro!
I was over it, now I'm into it again !

Arctic:
Failed my level 1 dances last Monday :| it was so humid that I couldn't breathe properly. A combination of that and nerves knocked my timing off, so I'll have to retry them after the summer.

Warm:
Started on variations, they went well. Spin wasn't as bad as I thought it would be after several months of ignoring it either.

Sounds like bad luck! I've passed on several possible dance test sessions because they were either too early in the AM for me, or on Monday, when I'm always tired. I'm sure you'll do better next time. Which are the level 1 dances?

__________________

arctic circle - only once chance to practice between lessons this week, and it was a crowded public I couldn't really do moves patterns on.

warm rink - since I couldn't drill moves the way I wanted to, I got out my notes and reviewed jump corrections from Winter coach the last couple of months and drilled jumps. Noticed immediate improvements in Sal and toe loop, and landed several flips which I've been two-footing for weeks now due to not seriously practicing them.

__________________
It's all about the dress!