Monday Night Madness

After caroling tonight, I had time to get in 1 hour and 15 minutes worth of skating :-) at the public session. Going skating was a great decision since, as luck would have it, Melinda (the coach I've been trying to reach) was doing a lesson. When she saw me she said very apologetically that she had gotten my message but hadn't had a chance to call.

I spent some time warming up, stroking etc. When Melinda was done with her lesson we spent a couple of minutes discussing times that we could get together, etc., and settled on tomorrow at the public session.

After that I spent the remaining time working on my various nemeses: backward edges, 3-turns and forward crossovers. I made some progress, amazingly enough, on my backward edges. At one point I almost thought that I'd made "the breakthrough" but when I tried it again later I couldn't quite get it. Still, I think I have enough muscle memory to remember what it felt like -- it was like my weight was concentrated, not on the ball of my foot, but juuust behind it in a way I can't explain. This is actually a little behind where it tends to be when I'm skating backward (which is too "turny") and was combined with a really good kneebend (I know it was good because my leg started to ache after a while). So I have something to work for.

No real progress on 3-turns or crossovers. I also did a few edges and some spins and a couple of lunges just on principle.

I'm really excited about getting this lesson in tomorrow!