Darn LFI3s!

I woke up this morning feeling exhausted and a bit achy, so I called in sick to work and went back to sleep. I got up about 10:45 and dashed out of the house for my 9th lesson with Anna. It's amazing what a prepaid lesson and the desire to please your coach can do for your level of determination...

The coffee club session was on the back ice (Rink 2) due to some event on the front rink. I'm not big on the back ice, it's really cold back there. The ice today seemed brittle and there was a nasty crack on each end of the rink in the middle that was marked off with cones.

Before my lesson started, I warmed and talked with Nicole a bit (Anna's other Friday adult student). Nicole asked me if I'd be willing to change lesson times with her (she's at 12:30). I'd been thinking about asking her that as well since sometimes it's challenging to get there from work especially when conference calls run long. So I agreed, and we asked Anna and that's fine with her, so starting 3/26 my lesson will be at 12:30.

We started by working on forward stroking and forward crossovers. These are improving, especially the CCW ones -- I'm starting to get into a bit of a groove with it. The CW ones are still kind of rough -- Anna suggested crossing my foot just in front and not so far into the circle, which helped. I think I just need to practice them a lot more.

Next we worked on the FI3s. The RFI3 is improved but I'm still having trouble getting all the way around; partly I'm tending to raise my right hand too much ("No Hitler!" Anna said ;-)) and my left hand down, so then when I turn I'm off balance a bit. Then we went to the LFI3... not much progress there. I really need to get over this, it's screwing me up.

We finished up by looking at back edges a bit, and Anna showed me how do them (well, start them, anyway) down the line. I can see this is going to take a lot of work; while I can somewhat do them I'm finding it really hard to avoid rotating my hips outside the circle. Eeep!

After my lesson I worked on a variety of things, in particular my back crossovers -- still trying to get more kneebend in the back leg and more heel-pressure so I don't toe-scratch. There's some improvement there. I also spent time on the LFI Mohawk, trying to get it back to where it was in Wednesday's practice. After some initial screwiness I did manage to get it back somewhat. I'm hopeful that being able to do the LFI Mohawk will help me somewhat with my problems with the LFI3 -- I guess we'll see. There's so much to work on!

After the coffee club session I had a nice long talk with Anna (for a bit) and especially with Nicole. Nicole revealed that she and Anna had looked at this blog, so...

Hi Anna! Hi Nicole! :-)

Nicole has only really been skating since Dec. 2002; she's been taking lessons from Anna the whole time. It's really amazing how far she's come. She's doing loops and flips! I'm impressed, anyway. As I told her, one of the great things about this blog for me is that whenever I get discouraged (like on this LFI3 thing) I can just read back and remind myself how far I've come.

Nicole mentioned that Gateway has started an (unadvertised, of course) adult session (not coffee club, just an adult public session) Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:45 - 1:15. I'll have to check that out. I have a 1:30 conference call Tuesdays so I might be able to make that so long as I leave by 1 -- at least until the time change in April, anyway... Also after April 19th I'll have my Monday nights free so I can hit the public session then, which used to be pretty good. I have plenty of moves stuff that I can usually accomplish at a public session.