New Coach, New Me

Today I had my first lesson since June 14th!

It's time to announce that I've made a coaching change: my new freestyle coach is Holly Harrington. After 7 years with JJ it's hard to make a change but it was necessary for several reasons... not at all a reflection on him or me as I am extremely grateful for all we accomplished together. No hard feelings between us (quite the opposite, actually).  We are and will remain friends.

We just had a 20 minute lesson today, next week we'll bump it up to 30.

Today's lesson:

• swizzles -- a lap of swizzles.  Tiring, but not bad.  Clearly my stamina ain't what it used to be, though.
• half-swizzles -- another lap of half swizzles, trying to bend into my knees more.
• stroking -- not too bad. 
• slaloms -- ugh.  These got a lot better though.
• two-foot spin/pivots -- these were a bit scary at first, and I had my first fall since 6/14.  I'm fine, lol.  Glad to get it over with though!  Some pivots and then a two-foot spin that was... just okay.  I'll take it though.
• FXOs -- I was pretty scared about these but we went after them and I was able to do some decent ones, actually.  I was glad to get over that hump of fear though.
• BXOs -- not bad.  A little scratchy at times but actually not really much worse than before.
• one-foot glides -- just kind of a check, gliding for about half a rink length or so on each foot.  It was okay.
• short edges -- down the line alternating FI edges.  Okay.

All in all I was pretty pleased with how this went and Holly was too.  Good stuff.