Monday Heaven

Since I had to fly out of town for work Monday evening, and will have to miss my Wednesday night skating, I squeezed in 1.5 hours of skating on Monday afternoon at the public session. When I got there there was only person on the ice (Linda, a coach); and for the first 45 minutes it was just the two of us. Then we were joined by a young girl for about 30 minutes, and then for the last 15 minutes I was there there were maybe 6 or 8 people there. All in all it was excellent ice time.

Since it was so uncrowded I spent a good chunk of time working on skating backwards. It seems I've been working on this for about forever! While I usually complain about my weak back edges, it's really my RB edges that are pathetic. My LB edges are just weak. I can get on an LB edge and hold it for a bit, even if it's not particularly steady; but I have difficulty in even getting on the RB edge, much less holding it for any length. I assume I'lll be working on this on Friday...

I also spent a lot of time on my FO3s. These are improving slowly. I find that I really need to work on several things at once on them, and I can't usually remember to do all of them at once:

• Keep the head up
  
• Look into the circle on the turn
  
• Keep the free leg pressed into the skating leg, don't let it loose
  
• Get a good kneebend before the turn
  
• Get a good rotation
  
• Don't force the turn, wait for it
  
• Get a good check
  

A lot to remember! I also worked on the RFI3 and it's a little better. I tend to come to a stop, though, which is either the result of a poor pushoff to begin with (probably), or not getting the turn all the way around (almost certainly), or both (that would be it!). I'll keep working on it. I worked a little on the RFI Mohawk as well.

Of course I ran through all the usual stuff as well, crossovers, lunge, basic stroking, etc. I spent a good amount of time stroking backward around the rink. It's really astonishing just how fast I can get just stroking backward; God only knows how fast I'd be going if I could actually do backward crossovers -- undoubtedly, faster than I (currently) feel comfortable!