Backward Swizzles!

I had one of those wonderful Eureka! moments today.

I had hoped to go skating at Polar Ice in Chandler on the way back from Phoenix; but when I stopped there around 3 I saw three school buses in the parking lot, and a look inside confirmed that the rink was a total zoo. I gave up on that plan, it was just too crowded for me to accomplish anything.

Fortunately, this evening after dinner with a friend I had time to attend the evening public session at Gateway, my usual rink. When I got there it was not crowded at all, just one (really good) female skater and myself. A bunch of other folks did show up shortly, but it never got crowded. The ice was in terrific shape, too -- clearly it had just been Zamboni-d and was smooth and crisp. Yea!

I spent most of the evening working on standard stuff, paying special attention to my backward swizzles that I have been working on for a couple of weeks or so. At one point, I just had that wonderful moment of comprehension. Jennifer had told me I need to turn my knees out more, but I just didn't quite get it or wasn't paying attention or something. At some point though I remembered or figured it out, or something, and all of a sudden woo! I whipped out 6 or 7 in a row, just like that. It was a wonderful moment. I spent a bit more time working on them to be sure I understood it and that it wasn't a fluke. I managed to do many, many more of them, so I think I understand. I do have to be careful on them -- I notice it's easy to hunch over and then I'll fall forward or catch my toepick. It helps if I keep my hands at my side, or even slightly behind me -- it makes me stand up straighter, seemingly, and they come off pretty well.

The only problem I encountered is that having done a few of them, I realized I don't know how to stop myself when going backward! It's a good problem to have, I guess. I realized by the end of the lesson that I had turned some corner, so to speak -- I felt a lot more comfortable going backward and it didn't conceptually freak me out like before. Of course, I still have a lot to work on, but that's life. I also spent more time on my one-foot glide and actually got it up to six seconds a couple of times! However, I can't do it straight, I keep turning to the right (I'm doing them on my left foot). I'm not sure if that just means my weight is not balanced left-to-right, or it means my weight is not correctly balanced front-to-back on my skate. I'll have to ask at my next lesson. I was there for about an hour and fifteen minutes (8:00 - 9:15).

I had a lot of fun watching the one skater who was there when I arrived. She's really quite good and was, presumably, practicing a program. She looks to be late teens, I'd guess, and though she didn't do any actual jumps (she just waltz-jumped through them) they are clearly there. She also did a number of nice turns and some spins.