Crossovers, Crossovers, Crossovers

Today's lesson:

• Chassé -- around and around the circle. Anna made the mistake of telling me the first set were pretty good, so of course I didn't do them as well after that :-(. It figures. The CCW ones are, of course, not bad. The CW ones -- I feel like I'm pulling teeth or something, they are so uncomfortable. My extension is stinky on these.
  
• Forward crossovers -- almost the entire lesson (seriously, 20+ minutes) on FXOs. Anna had me going around the circle in the crossed position. Not too bad CCW, but again CW, eeep! From there we went to working the Moves pattern. Once we got to this we spent a good chunk of time working on the transition from circle to circle as it showed up some problems I have in getting adjusted to the new circle and in making a good transition. I really need to start practicing these as obsessively as I do the 3s, but of course it's harder to find the space.
  
• Spirals -- we finished up with a couple of spirals on each foot, first straight out then in the Moves pattern (not that I will be testing these). Anna wants me to open the hip just a bit on these, and reminded me to get the free leg fully extended (no bend!). In general they are somewhat improved though, which is all my doing since we've not looked at these in quite some time.

After our lesson Anna mentioned that there will be some changes coming up at the rink. The week of 4/4 they will be taking the front ice down for repairs etc. After they are done with that they will be taking the back ice down "indefinitely." Doesn't sound good to me. Anyway, one of the side effects of only having one ice sheet is that the FS sessions will be somewhat curtailed and we will be having morning sessions. The tentative plan is a 6:15 and 7:15 FS session M-F. This works pretty well for me, and we tentatively agreed we could move my lesson to 7:45 a.m. on any of M, T, or Th to go with my work schedule. It will be interesting to see how things shake out. I am not a morning person (AT ALL!) but this discipline will probably be good for me (and more importantly, probably good for my skating) so I'll try not to whine too much about it.