Spot The Turn

In a fit of optimism, I went to the Saturday afternoon public session. I had to go anyway to pay my Sept.-Oct. skate school tuition. While it was not too bad for the first 15 minutes, it quickly grew almost to the usual zoo-like proportions. While I was paying my tuition I asked if I could speak to the skate school director, but she had already gone home. I will try to catch her on Monday when I go to coffee club.

Since it was so crowded I mostly stuck to the center ice, and worked extensively on my turn and my glide. While working on the turn, I was still fighting my tendency to look down. It occurred to me that if I "spotted" my turn (i.e. focus on some fixed point) that I might be able to counteract this. Sure enough, I tried spotting a point on the wall and was able to reel off a pretty nice turn. This both prevents me from looking down (especially if I choose a relatively high point) and also improves my check because it guarantees I keep looking in the direction I'm traveling. I suppose this idea is a crutch that I won't always need, but in the meantime it was quite helpful. I had a number of really good counterclockwise turns, so I spent a good amount of time working on the CW turn. This one is still giving me difficulty, although I did manage a couple of good ones. It's mostly just getting my mind in the right frame that I'm going to turn the other way -- it seems so unnatural!

Besides the turn I worked a lot on my one-foot glide. My left-foot glide is looking quite good, and I'm able to get a lot of extension on my free leg and even point my toe. My right-foot glide is coming along, it's much better although far inferior to my left foot. Still it's good progress.

I stayed a total of 2.5 hours, which included a Zamboni break. After these long sessions my left knee is hurting, although it stops hurting pretty much immediately after I come off the ice. I'm not worried about it at the moment, I suspect it's just a side effect of my left knee having to do things it's not used to.