Sharp Blades: I got to skate today....although it took waiting through a 15 minute traffic backup to get there! scratch spin was still on mark, as was waltz jump and salchow!

Blunt & Sliding: Believe it or not, my stroking felt sloppy! I think the spasm in my shoulder made me feel blah and my shoulders were slumpy...and i've had a bit of the stomach bug that's been going around. I missed work yesterday because of it. I didn't really feel well enough to go and do my normal stuff. It was all I could do to drive home! Next time (on a Thursday) I do plan on working on the loop and maybe the flip.

On another note: my Aces are wonderful blades, they were sharpened to 1/2" so I could get used to them being new and all that, now I need to get them sharpened again because they feel all "blunt & sliding" but I did notice that the hand-held sharpener does not come in 7/16" roh, only 1/2, 3/8 and some other size that's even deeper. Should I have them done to 3/8 and get the 3/8" sharpener? I'm looking for down the road when I go back to my home rink, my sharpener will only do 1/2" so it will be very long between sharpenings.

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

I had the same dilemma, and have decided to go with 1/2". 3/8" is pretty steep and I'm not jumping, don't have landing edges to hold onto, and don't think I would need that unless I were landing Axels and doubles anyway. I'm planning to use the pro-filer to keep my edges freshly sharpened on the theory that a sharp 1/2" is better than a dull 7/16".

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Sharp blades:
Had a dance lesson!!! it has been awhile so it was nice to have my coach back. MIF are getting better finally

Blunt and sliding:
started power class today. oh God dont get me started about that . i swear that teacher enjoys torture
~Cutie

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Skating is suppose to be fun , no PRESSURE at all

~*Courage*~*Confidence*~*Consistance*~

Sharp blades:

• First two moves were pretty good. The B-Xovers to BO edges are pretty good too!
• All spins except camel at the last few minutes were okay. Nothing great but nothing bad either. I should pass Bronze FS with those spins, no problem!!!
• Primary coach is reminding me to keep up with what I have for just A LITTLE WHILE LONGER!!! He thinks I'll pass it this time!!! (Then again, he said the same back in October... ... however, SECONDARY COACH and NYC coach now thinks I have a good shot at it too!!! )

Blunt and sliding:

• Had a few bad starts on the power 3's. Part of it is that I didn't want to crash into other skaters in the way... Once I tried to push my edges and almost killed myself going on a toepick instead!!!!
• 5 step mohawks... well, they're not that bad!!! I have the extension and all. Coach wants a FASTER cadance though. (And how the heck am I going to have a faster cadance when all I wanted to do is drop from exhausion and the heatwave that is hitting us right now in our neck of the wood???)
• Don't quite get this camel spin for some reason. Probably eventually I'll get it. But then again, I was REALLY tired trying for it then...and then the Zam came out to chase us off the ice!!!

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Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

well, that's the other part of the equation; if I get the 1/2" then it can be used on my daughter's and husband's skates, as well as the boy's hockey skates....

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

Exactly. A frequently sharpened 1/2" sharpening should serve you much better than a dulled 3/8" sharpening (it was 3/8" you wanted, right? I don't have that post right in front of me).

Well, i could go 1/2" and be fine with that, as i've skated on that for almost 4 years. And I really like sharp edges (get mine sharpened about every 20 hours)...the 7/16" was nice and sharp but so is a fresh 1/2"

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

Sharp Blades: Worked on getting my back sit spin today, did it a few times, but the other tries were hopeless. ALMOST got into a back camel, but the back camel is TOTALLY puzzling to me at this point.

I get to start learning my axel on Saturday. Was going to last Saturday, but 5 minutes into the lesson, and I got injured, LOL. So that equaled two weeks off the ice.

Blunt & Sliding: Was EXTREMELY off balance today coming back from a two week absence. It was early, and I was tired. Jumping was a definite no no. Landed MAYBE 1 flip out of a bunch when flips are almost always my best jump. Grr.

Hopefully Saturday will be a success, and hopefully I won't end up with another injury.....

~Jess

Sharp Blades:

I thought I was completely out of ice until a friend found a rink with publics but it was a bit of a drive, for the pleasure of skating oh once a month it was worth the drive. There were three other people on the ice. Heaven!

I tried all my elements and they were still there. Not great, but not completely forgotten. Okay, I can calm down now.

Blunt and Sliding:

As I said above, skating once a month, if I can even find that, is going to make me very cranky this summer, there are just no rinks with publics and the private clubs are very costly.

The public skate music was loud and hideous and the rink guy wouldn't change it. He liked it. I had a headache afterwards. I don't know what's worse, having the compulsory dance music embedded in my head (club sessions), or annoying 1980's hockey anthems (public skate).

If it's any consolation, I can't do a back camel and I have a hard time doing a back sitspin from its own entrance, but I can do a flying camel-back sit combination spin just fine! Just about everyone I've talked to agrees that the flying camel is easier than the reverse camel, and once you're in the spin, it's much easier to get into a back sit than doing the back sit from its own entrance (you don't even have to switch feet!).

I personally don't like skating on anything duller than 3/8". I had them at 5/16" last fall, then took to honing my own skates inadvertantly making them a bit duller by and by, then when I finally had them machine sharpened again they were dulled down to more than 7/16" so the sharpener decided to make the transition to sharp "easier" by sharpening them at 7/16". It felt slippery after the first couple days, especially on hard ice, so now they're at 3/8" (the sharpener still doesn't want to adjust it too much at once...*sigh*), and that's pretty tolerable for me. I still want them at 5/16", though...

It's largely just a preference and/or based on your size and skating style - try it and see. However, I have discovered that it's not only a personal preference, but depends on the quality of the sharpener too. My new sharpener uses one of the Skateology ones, and whether it's the machine or her, the end result is a much more pleasant and sharper-feeling skate than my previous fitter/sharpeners provided.

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Casey Allen Shobe | http://casey.shobe.info
"What matters is not experience per se but 'effortful study'."
"At first, dreams seem impossible, then improbable, and eventually inevitable" ~ Christopher Reeve

Now you've mentioned something that I completely forgot about, but is certainly important. If you're skating on hockey ice all the time, you will appreciate sharper blades and a deeper hollow than if you have the softer figures ice most of the time.

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Sharp blades:

I got new skates!

My current (now old) pair were 12 years old, severely broken down and the blade had been sharpened flat. So, I went to see the fitter at my club's competition tonight, expecting to have to pay at least $800 for boot & blade.

After measuring my feet, he tells me he has a pair of lightly used skates (Harlick Hi-Tester boot & Ultima Protege blade) that he think would fit me perfectly. I tried them on and they felt like a really comfortable (yet, extremely supportive) slipper.

So, I bought them - for $275! If I don't like the blade, I can exchange it within 30 days and he'll give me a credit towards new blades.

I'm really excited, albeit a little nervous, to get on the ice with these!

Blunt and sliding:

I'm not able to skate in aforementioned club competition this weekend due to an out-of-town family obligation and won't be able to really try out the new skates until Wednesday

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I've got mad salchow disease!

Blunt and sliding: My knee hurts! It "clicked" yesterday, as it sometimes does, and was still sore this morning. I was rather dreading skating, but luckily it wasn't too painful. But I was glad to get home and anoint it with Tiger Balm, and maybe I'll put some Ibuprofen gel on later. If it's still sore on Sunday, I'll wrap it before skating, but it ought to be okay.

Other than that, not a bad practice this morning. The No 1 Adult couple was out, practising for next week.... Their Dutch Waltz is better than ours, but I think our Fiesta is just better.... should be interesting. On paper, they should win and we take Silver, with the other couple from our rink coming 3rd, but we all have such issues with the Fiesta that it could go any way. I think they'll take the Free dance, though - theirs is beautifully graceful. No 3 couple's has harder footwork, but they don't do it very well yet. They will!

We took advantage of their music and did a Fiesta but I wasn't properly warmed up and the Mohawk made a horrible noise! But apart from that it was okay - we don't normally have problems with the Mohawk, unlike the other two couples. Our problem comes with the step to a RFI edge at the end of the dance, which the other couple do quite beautifully smoothly.

In my private practice, as always, cross-cuts! Grrrr. Tried to do 3, then hold the edge, which was okay on my right foot, but was I on a LBO edge as I should have been? You guess! Grrrrrrrr..... Cross-rolls were working well so I didn't try that particular exercise with them. Maybe on Sunday.

Sharp Blades: Worked a lot on our free dance. I think it'll be okay on the day - it'll have need to be! Husband, having been persuaded to consider his arms in his free programme, is now more aware of them, thank goodness, so we have been able to "fine-tune" them for the free dance.

And also worked on our Artistic - it's almost all choreographed now, except one tiny bit which, if we can't think of anything to do in it, we'll ask our coach! Hope we can remember it.....

Oh, it was so funny, though - we're doing Tom Lehrer's Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, and I've borrowed some decoy pigeons from my father to use as props. Trouble is, they are very, very old and worn-out. So I pulled mine out of my waist-band at the appropriate moment in the music, and the head flew off.... Husband said we were decapitating pigeons, not poisoning them!

My individual Artistic went well, except that on the first run-through I didn't jump my 3-jump, just stepped it. Having actually jumped it at the Mountain Cup (I was so pleased that I fell out of character for a moment), I don't want to just step it next time.

Spins are actually beginning to happen now that I know what I'm doing wrong.....

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

What a funny song to choose - I love it!

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Sharp blades: Learned the Canasta Tango. I found this dance to be a little harder to get to the right size on the rink than last week's Cha-Cha. I think I need to sharpen my blades as I wasn't quite able to get my swing rolls on a deep enough edge, though my slide chasses were "pretty" according to our guest dance coach. I have, once again, benefitted from my past life as a dancer -- counting and remembering steps is very easy for me, so I learn the dance quickly and have more time to practice. Though I do have to dodge teammates who aren't moving as fast as I am (when can I ever say that??).

Practiced on a freestyle before Synchro. Worked on my "spin" over and over. Managed to get a couple with four rotations, doing better on the choctaw entrance. Actually, I convinced myself that I wasn't practicing the spin, but was working on the choctaw. Seemed to help if I was concentrating on my entrance edges.

Milo had fun -- a friend was pushing him around the mall while I skated. They came up to the rink just as we were finishing and he recognized me in the crowd, pointed and started blowing kisses. They cam around while I was taking my skates off and he wanted to get out onto the ice in the worst way -- made a break for it every time my friend got him away from the door. He did walk out on the ice for a minute -- was fascinated by how cool it was out there. He wanted to go out in the middle of the rink (the ice was empty), but I wouldn't let him. This made for a little bit of a protest until he realized he could flirt with the other women on the team, LOL!

Glad you picked it up well- any plans to start an ice dancing career?


Sounds adorable!

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-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
Visit my skating journal or my Youtube videos (updated with 2 new videos Sept 26, 2009)

Sharp Blades
Skated yesterday for 50 minutes totally by myself and with freshly cut ice! Did lots of stroking, spirals, crossovers, mohawks with crossovers, every jump. Had a blast. Did about 75 toe loops. Days like that come along only rarely so it's nice to enjoy them while you can.

Happy skating everyone.

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August 22, back on the ice!

Sharp Blades - Like Razors!
I can't believe it, but after two years of not being able to do one foot spins, they are back! Now I know for sure that it was all a boot problem. I did still lean a little to the inside today, but was in total control every minute. I did three one foot spins from a deep LFO entry, and exited each spin deliberately, not falling out. At least one spin was four revs. I have been soooo discouraged by my boot problems and lack of coaching that I really thought maybe the spins would never come back. Same goes for LFO threes! They are back finally. I even forced myself to work on FI Mohawks, which are definitely getting smoother. I also had noticeably more stamina today, and was able to get in a few power pulls. Tomorrow I'm giving a private lesson on a public session and won't be able to work for myself, but I now have much more confidence.

Blunt & Sliding:
Still don't have the stamina and strength that I used to have. Must start scouting summer skating. Today was the last Friday afternoon empty public session for the season. I'm going to miss my friends at that particular rink, and also the skating, of course.

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Blunt and Sliding--FO mohawks! I keep tucking the back foot behind because I have a blinking choctaw in my program (which I can't do correctly either).

Sharp Blades--LBI threes are actually improving. Normally, my left foot is my "stupid" foot that doesn't do things as well, but my LBI threes are actually now better than my RBI threes--less trouble with the free hip dropping.

Lutz attempts feel good--getting so close....

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Ask me about becoming a bone marrow donor.
http://www.marrow.org
http://www.nmdp.org

WAY TO GO DBNY!!!! Doncha just love those moments I had one myself

Sharp! Tonight was my 2 hour personal session (nobody else showed up) and I worked mainly on my forward edges with a little on backward two-foot - my balance just wasn’t on enough for backward one-foot. As I was skating around working on the depth of my edges (which is getting WAY better), I suddenly became aware that something had finally “clicked” - my body was back! Everything from the ankles up had come together and I was skating like I did 36 years ago - tight, controlled, smooth, graceful, and powerful. Holy sh!#, when did that happen??? Suddenly there was full-body awareness and control and MY GAWD did it feel GOOD Of course the posture and control had a very positive effect on all my forward skating and tightened up my backward skating as well (even though I was just doing backward sculling).

Dull Nobody else showed up - that was $300 worth of ice

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Dianne
(A.O.S.S.? Got it BAD! )

Sharp:
Worked on Bronze moves today. 5 step mohawk is coming along nicely. Can't wait til my coach returns from vacation to help with more refining. I am liking Bronze moves. I am inching towards progress on my flip and also scratch spin. I am excited to try more pairs skating tomorrow.

Blunt:
Loop is still such a nerdy hoppy little cheated thing off of a RFI 3. It is making me bitter! I just haven't become friends with my RBOE yet. I am still hopeful it will come but I want it now!

Lots of practice of backwards edges!

My husband does his off a forward spiral, comes up, does the 3-turn, and then the loop. It works well if he remembers to hold the edge for a breath - if he rushes it, as all too often he does, it's a disaster. Big test will be on Thursday when he competes it again.

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

Keep practising. I first learned to do a loop from a RFI3. I now do it from backward crossovers and I love the feeling. I couldn't go back to doing it from an inside three turn now. It's important to really hold and sit on that back outside edge before you take off.

Nicki

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www.myspace.com/insatiableskater

Competition today. Wish me luck!! (we need a nail-biting smilie)

sharp:
Yesterday's practice went very well, we made it all the way through our tango for the first time EVAH (whew!), now just have to do it again today! And found out we only have to do 2 patterns each of the compulsories (I thought it would be 3 & 4, respectively), so I'm really happy about that!

dull:
New dress (yeah, it just won't go away!) finally arrived yesterday (they made me a whole new one), & I fixed it up a bit & stoned it so it's ready to go.....but the skirt is huge, full and heavy---& since I haven't had a chance to skate in it, I've decided not to risk it today. So I'm wearing the black one I found at Penny's, which I like a lot anyway.