Trial Lesson With Lucy

This morning I had my trial lesson with Lucy on the 8 a.m. freestyle at Valley. We had the ice all to ourselves! It was heavenly, really, just heavenly. I had a good half-hour warmup before our lesson and felt pretty good.

We spent a few minutes talking about my background, her background, her schedule etc., then went in to looking at forward stroking. I was reasonably happy with my CCW stroking, CW less so. Lucy pauses after each element and asks for my analysis, and then would add her own. I liked that as it both reinforces my own self-coaching ability and lets her know that I do know some of what I'm doing.

After stroking we looked at FXOs, waltz jump, BXOs, spin entrance, mohawks, edges and FO3s. Lucy gave me some feedback on all of them, mostly stuff I've heard before except for a couple of tidbits that, of course, I can't call to mind right now. She was very positive and knowledgeable and I enjoyed her attitude.

I had one fall, nothing major, just one of those silly falls where you wind up sliding 5 or 6 feet on the ice and laughing. It's good to fall in a trial lesson, I think -- it lets the coach know you can fall and be okay. For adults I suspect that's important.

I told Lucy that I would be in touch with her, I need to have trial lessons with some of the other coaches at the rink. Still need to make it to the Thursday night club session to meet some folks from the club here and try to line up some other coaches.

After my lesson I skated until the end of the session at 9:30, a full 1.5 hours of skating. I was whupped! But I felt terrific, what a great skate. It felt so good to have a lesson again, some direction, after 3 months without.