Tuesday 30-30

I have been off the ice since last Wednesday's lesson since I was traveling for work and then I was feeling ill. I'm mostly better now but I postponed my lesson with JJ from this morning since I knew I would need to sleep a bit late. I skated coffee club at Chandler so I could get some ice time before lessons tomorrow (figures) and hopefully Thursday (freestyle).

I had a pretty good skate! In the past I've done 30 minutes of freestyle and then 30 minutes of patch, but this time I did patch first. In my patch blades I mostly worked on FO edges since they were atrocious; but I found that I was able to place my weight more in the middle of the blade than I have been and that helped a lot. I'm going to try to remember how that felt! I only worked briefly on 3s and didn't try the LFI3 (chickened out).

For freestyle I had a pretty good skate as well. After 30 minutes in patch blades, FS blades gave me a real sense of freedom and speed! Salchows and toe loops are about the same. Made some progress on my spins though, I had several that I had good relaxed entrance on and one in particular where I actually felt myself to (finally) be on the sweet spot (not that you could tell much from the print, I was traveling so much)! Still inconsistent though.

I was really pleased to spot an old sk8 buddy at this session, one of the skaters (Bob) that I'd skated with at coffee club in Tucson back in the day. He was up to skate. It was great to see him. He's kind of a personal hero since he is probably in his 70s and still skates beautifully (he's an ice dancer). I hope to be like him someday.