Progress

I attended the lunchtime adult session and had a good skate, about 75 minutes of ice time. I worked on Moves stuff mostly -- no spins at all. I did do a few bunnyhops, singly. I suspect Anna is going to want to go back to the waltz jump tomorrow so I wanted to at least do some bunnyhops. I'll probably skate tonight at the public session so need to do some bunnyhops and waltz jumps then.

I spent some time on the power 3s, 5-step Mohawk, and waltz-8. The power 3s are really fun! I like 'em a lot. They are improving although the timing needs work, and the step forward is still a bit awkward. The 5-step Mohawk is fun too, and it's flowing very nicely. Of course it could be better and lacks power; still, the main problem right now is the slide chassé. When I come out of the step forward, I a) get confused as to what foot I'm supposed to be on, and b) run out of room for the 5th step (the chassé). So that needs work. The waltz-8... very rough. It's not at all a circle at this point, and I'm really bad at finding my way back to the center. Grr.

I also spent a little time on 3s and crossovers and stroking. Nothing exciting there to report. I also spent a few minutes on the footwork that Anna gave me, both the toe-tap one and the one from a while back that's Mohawk-cross step-step forward.

I am feeling, though, like I've made some kind of small breakthrough in the last week; I kind of thought so on Monday but wanted to see how it went today to be sure. The way that I picked these new Moves up and the (relative) ease that they came to me is both encouraging and a bit... disturbing (in a good way). The end result is I'm in a really good mood! :-)

Ice report: Today's session was, of course, on the back ice. It was a little rough. Not chewed-up, but rough, and there were some very significant lutz-gouges that were a bit scary. The front ice is in the process of being melted; I didn't realize it would take so long. There's bare sand showing in a number of places but still ice present as well. My guess is that it's not going to be done in a week; it seems like there's a lot to do (but of course, what do I know about it?).

I was pondering the sand issue driving back to work from the rink. The front ice has sand underneath, the back is concrete. Some people have registered horror at sand being under the ice, but actually it seems pretty smart to me. If there's a problem with the pipes/tubing under the rink, it's relatively easy to fix with a sand base. With concrete you have to jackhammer the whole thing and it would be much more expensive and time consuming. On the other hand I expect that laying down a fresh sheet from scratch on sand is a lot trickier than on concrete.

According to the new schedule I got (it's not posted on the website yet) there will be a Wed. night public session still, from 7-9 p.m. I'm planning on attending.