Attack of the Killer RFO 3-Turn!

Tonight was the Lesson from Hell. It started off with me noticing during my warmup an older (50s, I'd guess) woman nervously "walking" across the ice in her own skates. I turned to classmate Ashley and asked if she thought the woman was going to be in our class. She thought it seemed likely. "Great," I replied, "I can see how this will go. You guys (pointing to us) go in the corner and do some crossovers."

And indeed, it was like that, except instead of being in the corner we were in the center. Allison worked with the woman for a while as we faithfully practiced our crossovers. We also looked at 3-turns, Mohawks, and T-stops, while Allison bounced between the two of us and her beginner. Watching her I wondered if I had really been like that. I suspect I was, but really only that bad at my very first lesson. This woman had, I think, been taking lessons for a couple of weeks at least and couldn't even glide. Eeep! It reminded me to be grateful (thanks God!) for the gift of skating.

Of course during the lesson we had to work on the dreaded RFO 3-turn, and while working on it I managed to have a really nasty fall -- one of the backward splat ones. Ow! I landed pretty much flat back and didn't do a good job of curling or rolling at all. The only good part was that I did manage to tuck my head so I didn't hit it. The fall was hard enough to really stun me for a few seconds, then I got up and brushed myself off (and assured Allison and Ashley that I was okay) and resumed skating. In taking stock later it appears that while my neck is a little sore, the only real problem is that I may have slightly sprained my right wrist. It doesn't hurt to move it but it does hurt to take weight on it. Not good. Oh, I also managed to lose some skin off my palms since I wasn't wearing my gloves at the time (dumb, I know, but for some reason I almost never feel comfortable wearing gloves during my lesson -- I usually put them on after the lesson. I don't know why, it's just a thing). I'm really surprised it wasn't worse.

I was somewhat lacking in enthusiasm during my skate after the lesson. In particular, I was rather surprised I'd fallen on a 3-turn and not on a Mohawk (which wouldn't have surprised me). I think my free foot was not behind me during the 3-turn, which both made my fall possible (I think) and worse. Stuff to remember.

Incidentally, today was the debut of my new fashion statement -- I'm wearing a red ribbon tied around my left boot at the ankle. No particular reason, I just thought it would be fun.