[Confident]
First post-test lesson with coach...worked on axels, spins, and moves...

Axels are getting so close and are really big in the air, but still....

[Hesitant]
...not landed on the toe coach tried to have me do waltz/backspin and then backspin/loop then loop/backspin and none of those were happening...I was wiping up the ice on those and the axels yesterday...

[Confident]
Spins were doing well....camel can still be a bit iffy if I don't watch how quickly I'm bringing my arms around, but they were fast. Did some sit change sits, and camel sit change sits. Then did some laybacks...my laybacks are getting really good with me being able to get into a really good position where I can see the yellow around the bottom of the rink and they are normally pretty well centered.

[Confident]
Coach taught me the novice moves yesterday but....

[Hesitant]
...as with any new skill set, it's going to take a little bit to get them up to standard....luckily I already knew one of the patterns from before when the bracket-3-bracket pattern was on intermediate (wayyyyy back in 1998...dang, I graduated high school in 1998, was that really 10 years ago?!?!?!?!?)...

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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

confident i did a really nice, 15 rev camel spin (we were counting each others revs). by like rev 4 i thought i was gonna lose it by like 8, but it just kept going.

spirals continue to get better, as do my splits (almost there).

my jumps were huge. i probably could have made triples out of them. they were hard to check out of tho bc i had to stop the rotation earlier than usual.

coach helped all of us with crossovers. she made us hold each stage of the forward crossovers for a long time, which helped a lot. my left over right crossovers felt the best they ever have.

we also did slide chasses and the intermediate pattern. i LOVE slide chasses. they are so much fun. plus i love the rip of my edge on the ice with them.

blades still super sharp. i've skated in them like 7-10 hours and they are as sharp as when i got them.

hesitant
OUCH! I did a huge, beautiful double loop, but when i went to check out, my (non-surgically corrected one) popped. i seriously felt my hip flexor just rip. it is so sore right now.

jumps were a little wonky in general today. i think i'm still adjusting to the lightness of the blades. i have to work on the timing of my jumps.

APs this week.

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Youtube Videos

Confident: Pretty much everything has been going my way the last couple of weeks. I'm in one of those (extremely rare) periods where I'm making quick progress. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts, which won't be very long. It took me over 6 months to reconstruct my axel, and as soon as I land one it seems like I've been doing them forever. I also discovered that I can do one of those change edge spins from a backspin. It feels really funky to spin that way on purpose.

Hesitant: Loops still suck. My spin entrance is usually inconsistent.

Confident
Another great session this morning. It was a crowded, chaotic public session, difficult to find room to practise sometimes, but I managed a great skate (by my standards)

Spins continue to be surprisingly good. Getting the hang of backspin into forward spin combo, though only to a stork at this stage, can't get into a scratch yet. In fact I did back/forward/back/forward over & over until I was too dizzy to continue. Another skater told me about going into backspins from Ina Bauers, so I tried that. Cool ! Not that my Ina Bauers are very good, but it's a different approach.

Jumps weren't as good as I'd like, though reasonably good, given the difficult conditions.

Hesitant
It was frustrating having to avoid the obstacle course of recreational skaters, wannabe hockey skaters, and wannabe figure skaters. Add in the 'sled of death', and it can get dangerous out there. Difficult to practise some elements which were placed in corners or against the flow of general skating. Poor coach was trying to give lessons in all this too.

Usually when I feel myself falling I go with it & let it happen. Today I had enough falling on lutzes (fell on 3) and decided to save one. I should know better, I've hurt something in my left gluteals. It was hard to put weight on it after that, and is sore tonight. With only 12 days to the competition, I hope this won't affect my preparation.

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Karen

I skate - therefore I am

As I said in my post the other day:

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

This post is belated and will refer to Friday, May 2nd, 2008.

I was still trying to get over my sinuse and chest infection while allowing my bunion/big toe/ankle to heal. Did only a few waltz jumps, toe loops and salchows in and out of combination before having my lesson. They were pretty good now that I had the bunionette side of my right skate (landing foot) punched out. Brian's Custom Proshop does a really good job here in Windsor with getting your skates to fit right. Just didn't have the time to test out the skates and get them comfy for Adult Canadians back in April.

For the first part of my lesson, I showed my coach the Preliminary Creative Dance I've been working on for what seems like forever. I won't go in to the whys because it's all history I'd rather forget. My coach loves the music I've chosen and likes the pattern I made but thinks there needs to be some changes with the steps. He was unsure at the time whether I could go backwards or not, so he said that he was going to talk with our regional rep about what the requirements are for the Prelim Creative Dance. He thinks that I'll be able to test and pass this dance for Spring Skate and that ends in 4 weeks.

Because of my toe and ankle not working right at the moment, I may not test my prelim FS for Spring. But positive things are starting to happen. Up to now, I've been rotating a full rotation on all of my jumps, taking off from being backwards competely with my arms still out in the air and when I land. This means, when I can get things under control with my right foot, I'll be landing cleanly all of my singles upto lutz. I have no idea about the Axel though. Coach was warning me to be careful not to pull in too much on my singles because when I did, I was easily doing 1 and half to 1 and 3/4's. Once I stop the bad habit of jumping too early and actually take-off from my jumps at the right time, I'm going to have to really get my arms to move faster to get the singles (in and out to check). Coach says that when I have this all under control that the doubles will be easy for me. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! What does he think this is? Ice Princess? I can't learn these that fast. I laughed so hard when he said that, that I just lost my legs and went down good sliding across the width of the ice.

Didn't think that I could do a camel attempt on Friday but the hip was feeling better to an extent and lo and behold, I almost had the 2 rev requirement with my freeleg above my hip for the preliminary FS test.

The back spin wasn't as successful but it did improve. Where I couldn't get a back edge after the three turn, I'm now getting too much back edge and just about having my boot touch the ice which flips me out of the spin. Except for 1 or 2 attempts, I didn't get anything more than half a rev because of the flip out. Once I had one full rev and the last attempt I had 1 and half revs. Hmmm, why can't I get the back spin the same as my forward corkscrew (8 to 12 revs depending on how I feel)? At least I'm starting to get confident with the backspin entry. Hopefully when my foot is healed, I'll be holding that back edge longer on not such a severe lean that it flips me out.

Sit spin, the competition with my coach didn't work out as well as it did last time. It seems I've been getting slopping with my LBx and leaning in too much on the last edge before going into my spiralling edge which slows the the speed of the hook which wouldn't allow me to get passed 6 revs (didn't even beat my own personal best rev count 8). Last time my coach was at 12 revs. I've got to get the speed up with the hook so that I can trash his 12 revs in the sit. ROTFLOL Hey, what can I say? I love to compete.

Coach and I had another competition of a different nature. We did side by side shoot the ducks (in UK teapots) and then stood up from them into spirals. Coach won the first half for lowest shoot the duck but I won in the spiral catagory because mine actually was high enough and higher to count in CPC, IJS and COP and his was not even hip height. LOL It was fun!

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"It's not age that determines but the heart." "Skating is not just a sport for the young but it's a passion for the soul of the young at heart." Brigitte Laskowski

I am a nomadic adult skater who is a member of Windsor FSC (Skate Windsor) WOS SC again since Sept. 1st, 2008.

http://eastcastlemusic.tripod.com

Singerskates Sports Music Editing

Confident: hm...did a good loop. Eight-step mohawk seq. coming along nicely that I am actually doing it right. Did a couple of decent backspins.

Hesitant: I am so constantly stressed out about work that it's affecting skating. Completely. I left practice after maybe 1/2 hour and went to work to get some things done. On a Sunday. Bleh. Anyway - tried to work on silver moves. Sheesh power pulls are hard but it might help if I got my skates sharpened! lol. Also the 3 turns are going to be tough - the RBI one. Though I practiced it again and again. But my upper body was strangely contorted and the lobes were very small. I want to blame it on public session! I don't think I can though

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Revised Official 2010 Goals checklist
Skate __
New boots __
(lowering the bar for 2010 as I haven't skated in a year)