De-Iced

I just got back from the doctor.

The good news: the break is clean, it's already starting to heal, no surgery needed, no cast necessary, it should heal well.

The bad news: I have to wear a boot. No skating for 6 - 8 weeks and no competition for me :-(. Grrr. I will have to withdraw from Cactus. Dangit!

Ouch!

I went to the doctor this morning, and got a phone call back at lunchtime that I needed to make an appointment with an orthopedist. I have apparently fractured my 3rd metatarsal in my left foot.

I'm not sure what this will mean for competition, etc. I'm not speculating until I see the ortho (appointment is for Monday afternoon). After that I'll talk with Sonya and we'll figure out how to proceed.

In the meantime I will stay off the ice so as to not make things worse. *sigh*

Perseverance

I skated the evening FS session as usual. The rink has changed the schedule for these -- it used to be 5:15-6, 6-6:45, and power class from 6:45 - 7:15. Now it's two 1-hour sessions, 5:15-6:15 and 6:15-7:15 and they are $10, instead of $8. So I skated 6:15 - 7:15. It's nice to have the extra time. There were about 9 or 10 skaters, but since two of them were Sam and her ice dance partner and also a bunch of people were working on their programs it was pretty busy!

I got some good work done on my program transitions. I tend to break up my programs into chunks and work them that way, in random spots on the ice since I don't have problems doing that. I try to break them up so that the hard transitions are in the middle of a chunk so I work them. Anyway, the challenges for me so far are the inside step forward into the RFO spiral, the RFO3 into the spin, and the brush back into the waltz jump. I worked these a fair amount but of course they need a lot more work. Sonya wants to add arm movements to a lot of the stuff we've already choreographed... eeep! I talked with her briefly and she thinks we can finish the program choreography on Monday.

One slightly scary moment, when Sam and partner went flying by in whatever dance they were doing, I didn't (apparently) flatten myself to the boards *quite* enough, and Sam's blade snicked my boot. Fortunately she didn't fall! No harm done but a little scary.

My L foot is still bugging me, it's been 2 weeks since I hurt it and it's still painful, though a lot better. I am not skating again until Friday evening so hopefully the rest will help.

Choreography

Today's lesson was at 7 a.m. (on ice at 6:45). It really cleared out at 7 from about 9 people down to something like 4. We continued working on the choreography for the program. I would say we are about half done. Some of these transitions are quite hard for me and are very rough right now.

Here's the program as it stands:

• push forward slowly & 2-foot glide
• engage L toepick and do a forward CCW pivot into
• back swizzle
• engage R toepick and do back CCW pivot into
• back CCW crossover
• power transition
• two back CW crossovers
• step forward (inside)
• step to RFO spiral
  
• step to LFI mohawk
• CCW BXO (one or two?)
• brush back to landing position (extension)
• step forward to
• waltz jump
• step forward
• hockey glide CCW
• push to RFO3
• windup & 1-foot spin
• exit spin, step forward
• CCW FXO
• RFI edge
• CW FXO straight into
• toe loop

That's as far as we got. We still have a waltz-toe combo, a half flip, and a two foot spin to get in there as well as some footwork. Eeep!