Skating In A Fog

Monsoon season has hit Tucson, and apparently the rink's dehumidifiers just can't keep up. At the FS session this morning, there was some pretty healthy fog and lots of cones marking off ice "stalagmites" that had grown up during the night; and there was lots of rain falling from the ceiling all over. It was pretty bumpy elsewhere too. All in all, not the best of conditions.

Today's lesson:

• spins -- we'd not touched these in a while, and it showed. Bleah! Dropping the free side, and just rushing in general. We managed to get them more or less fixed.
  
• spin entrance -- still not quite there yet! Grrr. We did about a zillion of them today, mostly trying to get more aggressiveness and keep that free leg back on the step forward. It seems like I can do one or the other but not both at the same time :-(.
  
• 5-step Mohawk -- these are really improving. Anna told me to think of taking the 3rd step more straight back and wow, what a difference -- I actually have plenty of room for all 5 steps then! I'm also tending to lean back on the BO edge instead of just standing straight over my skate. Grrr.
  
• waltz-8 -- we'd not touched these in a long, long time. Some of the same corrections for the 5-step apply here as well, especially the leaning back on the BO edge. I was having a hard time seeing (glasses were fogging up so I took 'em off), which made it hard to judge the circle. Mostly the persistent cry that I need to have a better "set" and be more deliberate in my motions. These should be relatively easy for me; I suspect I just need to put a lot more time into them.
  

Next lesson will be tomorrow on adult session; ice should be better. The conditions were very distracting today and I'm going to do my best to stay off the FS if it's going to be like that.