Perseverance

I went to the evening public session tonight. I had intended to go to coffee club but I was attacked by the sleep monster :-) and wound up sleeping very late.

The session was not very crowded at the start; it got a bit thick later but never got really bad. I worked pretty hard on various things, mostly crossovers, FO3s and the RFI open Mohawk. I made some good progress on the 3-turns; I had long felt I was pushing them too hard. I realized that part of it is that when starting them from a standing start I rotate and then try to do the turn; even when doing them moving (which I can do for the LFO3) I tended to turn into it and then get "stuck". So I tried just starting from an LFO glide in neutral position and then doing the rotation smoothly and firmly until I got it "all the way" and then doing the turn; this works very nicely and feels much less jerky, more smooth. I'm very pleased at this but of course I need to work it more.

I spent a good amount of time on the RFI open Mohawk and I am making progress. Probably the most significant progress, which to a non-skater would seem stupid, is that I'm not afraid to try this move now (or at least mostly not afraid :-)). I worked on it enough that the idea is familiar and I can sort of do it but it's not smooth and it's still an effort to coordinate the rotation of the upper body with bringing the free foot to the instep. Still it's definitely progress!

In talking with one of the coaches during the session, she mentioned that they've been told no one is allowed to do any jumping during the public sessions; not even a waltz jump! That's just stupid. I can understand the desire to keep order, but any skater able to do a jump is, in my experience, pretty careful about watching out for others. And of course those skaters are not the danger to the skating public that the blazing fast hockey boys and the clueless 6-year olds with their EZ-skaters are. *sigh*

I also heard in passing someone mention a rumor that the rink might be sold to the Polar Ice chain (which has two rinks in Phoenix). If it's true I hope it's a good thing. A big corporation might be willing to invest in the rink a bit, which would be helpful; at the same time though it might not be the best thing for figure skaters, especially us adults. Hmmph.