Flying high: We were able to skate again this morning, and had a good time. Husband and I were so pleased with our Swing Dance - someone was slightly in our way, so we had to really steepen the edge to miss him, and that made the whole dance way better. So we did a couple of laps of chassés, just focussing totally on finishing the edges properly, and got so much speed. But because we were letting the edge do the work, I didn't find it too scary.

Falling flat: I wish my dance moves were more consistent! I did one reasonable lap of the cross-cuts and then they didn't work again. Cross-rolls need to bring the free foot in closer behind, they'd look better. Was having trouble keeping the free leg in front long enough, but not too bad. Wish they'd let you play a waltz while you were doing them, it does make it easier! Preferably a Viennese or Golden waltz!

Husband, meanwhile, was having his lesson and demanded a week off from dance moves. He was working on combination jumps, salchow-toe-toe and loop-loop. And salchow-loop. If we go to the Coupe de France, and we are seriously thinking of doing so, he will just rejig the jumps in his programme and leave the rest as is. I think he _must_ work on his cherry, though - it's a toe-3 jump at the moment, especially on the end of a salchow! And two of them.... we're looking at -3 GOE here before we even start!

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

Flying High: wore my Under Armour Cold gear skating today..and except for my feet I was warm! I didn't put my toasty toes in my boots. Ran through my program and it was really nice except for falling out of my spin. Coach actually asked me to not pick so far on my 1/2 toe walley!!!

Falling Flat: My spins have been awful so we spent most of the lesson picking it apart and trying to figure out what's up with it....got it figured out and now I have tons of un-doing and re-doing....then we hit the backspin (I think my blade needs to be moved a bit too). Backspin from pivot, backspin from loop entry, then the loop. My insecurity keeps me from lifting that left leg and keeping it off the ice!!! DANG IT!!!

I am going to dig out my off-ice book and do some exercises for the jump. I really want to make this happen!

Talked about testing. I am going to put it on the back-burner. Was hoping to test at my rink but since it's a wash this year (someone screwed it up for the rink) I will wait until fall. There might be others that want to test so coach might drum up some other business for that also. Unless I go up to Lake Placid Adult camp for vacation and end up testing there.....just a thought!

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

Flying High:
I landed a clean double salchow today, not one of my usual 1/4-turn cheated ones, but a clean one! And even better, I know how I did it.

I landed my axel in my program run-through today for the first time since changing the setup.

Even though I fell on the double sal in my program, I managed to get up and get into position for my flying camel and, to my surprise, actually complete it! I also completed my other two spins in the program.

Falling Flat:
- Fell on my double sal in my program.
- Had trouble staying in the middle of the blade on my RBO spiral and toepick-scraped myself down to a crawl. I'm hoping it's just because the dimensions of the Olympic-sized rink changed the angle of entry to it and that I won't have that problem when I'm back on my usual NHL sized rink (fingers crossed!).
- Messed up on the loop-loop part of my lutz-loop-loop at the end of the program. I skated my program after an hour and a half of practice, so I figure I was probably just tired and shouldn't worry too much about it.
- When I saw myself on video later (my husband recorded my practice session. . .he's just the best!), I saw that my free leg is now barely above the hip on my right forward spiral. Pulling my right hamstring two weeks ago was a really BAD idea! I sure hope I've worked through it by Sectionals, but I know how long these things can take, having gone through the same thing on the left side already. . .

__________________
"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

Congrats on the double sal and the axel, doubletoe.

Flying High:
MITF were good
Started skating to whatever music was playing and I did well. No trips, no falls, no collisions!
A skater came up to me later and said "My mom likes the way you skate. I do too!"
Spins (forward ones at least) were great - I even did a crummy layback without travelling too much.

Falling Flat:
It was way too crowded to really jump. Did a few good ballet and waltz jumps.
Left the rink a half-hour early because DH is ill and there were science fair projects to finish.

__________________

Flying High

• I had ONE nice waltz jump. At least one kid had a . Funny thing was that it didn't feel like it was high. It's "nice, easy & light." (And the imagery that secondary coach had me thinking about did help me to kick thru higher! Hey, I told my "niece" about it for her axel and it helped her to get thru it with less stress, so why not???)
• Loops at the wall were fine until towards the end of the session.
• Spins are fine.

Falling Flat:

• Tried to mimick what I did at wall it on the blue line (away from the wall again). Probably should have stay at the wall for now. (GRRRR! My body *knows* when it's away from the wall. Can't even pretend there's a wall there. )
• Flips are also all two footed landing, but I feel a wee bit straighter this afternoon.
• Didn't stay long after the ice resurfacing b/c I had to rush to a friend's b-day party right afterwards.

__________________
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!!!

"A skater came up to me later and said 'My mom likes the way you skate. I do too!' ''

Isk8NYC - Worth any medal!


Flying: skated Sat am at one session then by chance caught a session at another rink. It was great - there were three of us on the ice.
Choreograpghy moving along.

Falling - Water main broke close to the house and there's a mini rink on the street.

__________________
Recycle Love - Adopt a homeless pet

Thank you!
And what a wonderful compliment for you to get! Were you walking on air for the rest of the day? I would be!

__________________
"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

Falling Flat: I took someone out yesterday at a general session, & I'm still mortified. I *should* have stopped, or turned, but it was so sudden that I just hit the deck and took her legs out from under her. There was a recent thread about this kind of thing, and now I know. The other skater was ok, maybe a bruised finger, but she left the rink imediately. I appologized and all, but only afterwards did I think that I should have offered to buy her a hot-chocolate and pay for her admission.

Flying: I'm getting complements from others on a predictable basis now at general sessions. I'm having trouble doing my two-foot spin, but that's because it's naturally going into a one-foot spin, and the hard part is keeping my right foot doing anything useful on the ice -- this I take it is a good thing.

None of that makes up for the fact that I caused an accident. Now that I'm skating as fast as the hockey guys, I think I'd benefit from taking a few hockey lessons to learn some quick manouverability and stops.

__________________
Me, on skating. Me, on me.
"It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness." ~ Tolstoy, via JWeir.
"I am not a pretty girl. That is not what I do." ~ Ani DiFranco

FLYING:
was so jazzed by Lysacek and Bradleys fantastic skates and the quad toe triple toe that I promised my wife I was going to do a Waltz, toe, TOE! this AM

trying to get back into dance and learn the Willow Waltz!

SPLAT:
my toes ended up with me coming back the way I came after a 3 jump combo

The Willow is weaping, now what do I put in the other half of the ice????

Lyle

Mrs. Redboots, "joy" on the Swing Dance, and here's to deeper edges! I bet you noticed a huge increase in flow.

Congrats, Doubletoe on the clean 2sal and landing the axel within your program.

JAZZ! Yeah! Good for you! You'll get the loop away from the boards....I used to move away in increments, yet remain parallel to the boards, and eventually I got it. You have to be far enough away that you know you can grab the rail, yet simultaneously it's "there", so you can see it and do the jump. LOL! Hey, it worked for me!

FLYING:

My second time two hours in new boots. I did more backward skating today, back swingrolls, tried back cross strokes, and many back xovers.

Knee is getting better, but there is still something wrong with it. It feels a lot better than it did. It's probably a good thing I can't bend a lot right now, or jump.

I got the backspin back today for a bit. Still cannot find my balance point on the rocker, but it was way better than Friday, when I........(see below)

SPLAT:

......got three new scars on my brand new boots *already*, from stabbing my R toe/foot trying the backspin.

Could not do twizzles (which the most I do is a double on the R foot right now). Could not get just to that rocker yet in a twizzle. Meaning, I can't practice the backward twizzle in my new program, at least not yet.

Flying High:
It's so nice to be able to go to the rink after work again!!
Spins were okay
Forward power pulls are making progress. I actually did the whole length of the rink only putting my foot down once!
Ran freeskate program sans jumps- had a nice backscratch spin!!
No heel pain at all.

Falling Flat:

Okay, now this is weird:
Struggled with the backscratch spin warming it up and did a perfect one running through my program!
Had no problems with the sitspin, but blew it in the program runthrough.
Only skating one hour as opposed to the hour and half/two hour practice I did in order not to aggrivate my right ankle/ heel anymore than I have to.

__________________
Adult Nationals, 2009 "The Time of My Life"

Flying High:
I taught my favorite, but most whiny, private student last night. After almost a year of skating for about 40 mins a week, (give or take a few weeks missed) she can now do RoL crossovers. I got ugly with her last night for refusing to try the LoR (again) and MADE her do them. Surprise! She did really crappy ones, but she didn't die, the ceiling didn't fall, and she actually CROSSED OVER!!! Hooray!
Now maybe we can get the outside three turns. *snicker*

I did lots of back inside edge/leg lifts while skating last night.
Much stronger than they were - of course they'll crap out tomorrow just in time for my lesson.

Did low-level stuff, but I did it well: Spirals, Lunges, and back spins.

Falling Flat:
I think I strained my right wrist hauling my skate bag in and out of the car. I took out my extra skates (only use them on Weds) and that seems to help. I'm cringing every time I guide one of my students. Owww!

I've been teaching Mazurkas for the past two weeks and I can do it easily from a standstill. Still, I chicken out from the moving edge. (Lyle-I need a chicken smilie, please!)

__________________

Flying high: So just as the season ends for our elite skaters, our competitive season begins, since we'll probably be going to the Coupe de France at the end of March! So in our lesson we worked on the Willow Waltz. Lots of stuff to remember. Coach sighs, but I think we're already doing it better now than when we last competed it.

We spent the last few minutes of our lesson working on skating backwards together in hold which, needless to say, worked far better with him looking at it! He made us try to increase the power a bit once we got to the red line half-way up (or down, depending on which way you look at it) the rink, and that helped, too. We even managed something that might vaguely have looked like an edge if you squinted at it sideways.

Falling flat: Dance moves had totally abandoned me today. Sigh. I do wish they were more reliable. But they weren't, so I went upstairs and did some stretching and weights instead.

Flying again: British men's singles champion came in with his girlfriend; I said he was a glutton for punishment skating so soon after the Europeans (he's not going to Worlds, I gather), but he said he was just having fun today. I suggested that he and his girlfriend do pairs, a suggestion eagerly taken up by girlfriend's sister, who was warming up with them, but he just laughed and said he'd need to put on too much body mass to do that!

Anyway, he'd had a lovely time at Europeans, which is what counts!

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

Falling Flat:

• Secondary coach is sick as a dog but still came in to teach! She has a squeaky voice this morning. (Should have STAYED HOME!!!)
• Tried to do backspin on the wall. Was fine at the beginning and ended up getting screwed up along with the ones away from the wall! (At least now both are consistent. )
• Spiral still needs improvement. I have to get more of a turnout on the free leg. (Free big toe is pointing DOWN!!! ) More stretching! More strength on the free leg. Have to work out my trainer situation.

Flying high:

• Secondary coach did acknowledge that it is getting better. I did one right after the lesson and saw my reflection. At least NOW the free leg IS hip level!
• Secondary coach's last student of the day... she is SO CUTE!!! She was upset when she couldn't find Mommy (Mommy had to drop off little brother at daycare.) but I managed to cheer her up by drawing pictures on the ice and encourage her to draw pictures on the ice while I try doing my backspin drill.

__________________
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!!!

Flying High

I passed my Junior Moves today! All three judges passed me over, and one was .5 over passing. I messed up the first set of power pull-quick rockers but I got a reskate. I asked for a practice one (so if I screwed up the first one, I could have another shot) but I skated the first one fine and they said "We'll take it!"

I cannot believe I am on Senior Moves ...

Falling Flat

My friend fell on the double three-rockers during her Senior Moves test, and then put her foot down on the quick edge step circle. She couldn't have a reskate because that was two mistakes, and she failed. This is her sixth time taking the test.

__________________

YAAAAAAY!!! Congrats to you!!!!

SENIOR MOVES!!! We're not worthy! We're not worthy!!!

__________________
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!!!

CONGRATULATIONS!

What an achievement, and good for you. On to Senior Moves (which are beautiful to watch --- I've had the pleasure of seeing three senior Moves tests, and it is really something to see skaters demonstrate those skills.)

Hope your friend succeeds at her Senior Moves, too.

Woo-hoo! Congratulations, especially on the .5 over!!!! On such a high test, that much over the passing standard means they REALLY thought you did it superbly. (Which move were you over on?)

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

The judge that had me .5 over (total) had me up .1 on the power circles, over .2 on the outside rockers and choctaw sequence. Power pulls were passing and inside rockers were .1 below.

All three judges had me .1 under passing on the inside rockers. I didn't think they were that bad ... The other two judges both had me .1 over on the forward power circles and the choctaws and passing on everything else.

Here are the sheets:
Judge 1 / Judge 2 / Judge 3

Congrats V!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

__________________
Recycle Love - Adopt a homeless pet

Congratulations, vesperholly! Those are great scores!

Flying high:
Ran through my FS program twice last night, so at least I'm able to get the practice time on it. Added an extra forward crossover before the spiral, as it seems to make that part of the program flow better. And I was able to hit (well, better than it's been, anyway) my change-foot spin (hopefully it will show up Sunday at NYI). CM program is coming along well, although traffic issues made it harder to complete everything in each single run-through.


Falling flat:
Flip out of footwork is still unpredictable, and when I mess up, it costs me a lot of time. Back scratch for CM is not getting the number of revs I'd like. And the back cross strokes and BO 3's (for the MIF event) are still inconsistent - Sunday should be interesting....

Edited to add that I just heard the weather report for this weekend - temps in the 20s both days - eeek! Maybe wearing a sleeveless dress for my CM event isn't such a good idea. Plus, it's supposed to snow a few inches on Thursday night - but I have to skate Thurs night - my last chance for practice (and a lesson) before NYI - aarrgghh!

Jenlyon, mdvask8r, anyone else....is Ashburn totally brutal when it's that cold outside?

__________________
Terri C is a Bronze lady!
Gold Moves, here I come!

I remember in 2004, when it was not only freezing cold, but some of us stayed at a Hampton Inn where there was no hot water on Saturday morning, the rink itself was pretty balmy.

__________________
Adult Nationals, 2009 "The Time of My Life"

Wow, Vesperholly!

Congratulations!

Flying high:

• Okay, at least I'm still sitting on the correct "cheek" when I fall out of my back sit.
• Most of the "wall loops" are okay....

Falling Flat:
...until some college kid came by and tried to bug me to get a Psychic Reader from her. (It's $10.) Needless to say, I told her that "No offense, but I got to get back to practicing my skating. My coach is watching." (Not exactly a little white lie either... since primary coach was there!!!)

Flying high:

• Camel is still spinning.

Falling Flat:

• Too bad spiral position is still sucky! (See this morning's lesson notes...)
• One scary landing on the flip. I was all twisted up! (It was clean though.)

Funny note:
Primary coach is wiggling his leg to "get his hip socket back into place." He was doing a bunch of double sal and axels earlier and fell a bunch of times!!!
Me: "See why I wanted to wear hip pads now?!?!?!"
Primary coach: "No! It's b/c I'm 46 years old and should be STRETCHING before I do all those jumps!!!"
Me: "Yeah? Doesn't explain why I saw you looking at me funny when I was jogging off ice earlier."
Coach: "Oh, you actually saw me looking at you on the ice? I was thinking 'What is she DOING jogging on the mat???' "
Me: "It's called WARMING UP!!! Since I'm an old lady, I have to do that type of thing, you know!!! "

__________________
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!!!