Saturday Zoo

Today's installment of the Saturday zoo was rather less crowded than usual; I don't know why. I got to the rink after yoga and (as usual) went in the restaurant to eat lunch. I bumped into my choir director from UA; his daughter is in the freestyle 5/6 class on Saturdays. It's a small world :-).

I had a reasonably good skate today. I worked on my RFI pivot a fair amount -- it's pretty darn good actually. I can get some wicked speed up on this thing. I feel a little guilty though -- every time I do one I drill about a 1/2" hole in the ice. Eeep! I also worked a little on the spin, although they are not really letting people do spins and jumps in the weekend public sessions since they are so crowded. I worked a lot on turns and also on my "moonwalk" homework, and skating backward in general. Lisa, one of the teenaged skaters who also works at the rink, commented that my backward skating has improved, and that I'm a lot faster. That was really nice to hear. At one point I started experimenting with my back 1/2 swizzle pumps. I do these a lot these days, often on a fairly tight circle (6 ft. diameter or even less). Anyway, I experimented with doing these but then moving the skating foot backwards as I swizzle the other foot. I think in doing this I could actually manage to bring my swizzling foot across -- I've got clearance. What's really stopping me is that I'd have to move my weight onto that foot in order to pick up the other one and move it in. I'll work on it.

In general it was a good day and I was pretty tired but happy with my skating today.