Lunges and a Lesson

For tonight's lesson, we spent most of our time reviewing stuff we've already worked on -- 3-turns (my RFO 3-turn is still stuck -- don't know why and didn't get any advice other than "work on it"), crossovers, and backward edges (this was helpful). Actually, my backward edges are alllllmost there. We also worked on slaloms.

In the realm of "new stuff" we learned two interesting things. First, Allison had us trying doing a power pull (AKA a power change of edge pull). I'd seen these done in the MITF testing in October. Now that I've tried it I can say that at least I understand the concept -- for a forward power pull, the free foot is held in front of the skating foot and basically you use it to switch from edge to edge. Of course the baby ones I tried don't look anything like the nice ones I've seen in the testing!

The other interesting thing was the lunge. This was new to classmate Ashley, but I had been introduced to them a couple of weeks ago, and of course I'd tried one last night with not much success. Lo and behold I did two or three really nice ones, one where I helped myself up by pushing on my knee and two where I actually managed to get up just fine! I was so pleased. I think the secret to success with the lunge, at least for me, is to avoid hesitation. Just do it in one smooth motion!

After the lesson I managed to intercept Anna and set up a trial lesson for a week from Friday (Dec. 5th). She did say at first that she wasn't sure about adding more to her schedule as her school schedule is heating up (apparently she's in B-school at UA). I told her I just wanted a half-hour a week and she was okay with that. She also said she didn't come in on weekends (that's fine, there's no good ice time then anyway!) and as I'd assumed, she didn't want to do them on Wednesdays since she's there from 3 to 7:30 already as it is. Anyway, we agreed to do the trial lesson during coffee club on 12/5 and I guess we'll take it from there. I was really happy with our exchange though.

After the lesson I stayed to skate for a while, although the rink was quickly deluged by a large group of people. I was happy at first because it meant they actually had a Z-break (the ice was pretty gross around the edges, not so bad in the middle). Unfortunately, after the Z-break the group had apparently booked a "cyber-skate" so they turned off the lights and had the colored lights and the strobe. I decided to stick it out for a while, but the strobe (as usual) weirded me out so I left a little before 9.