Wednesday Recap

Since this blog is primarily about my quest for adult gold, I feel that in order to continue holding myself accountable for that goal, I'll be posting a weekly recap of my training. Possibly with photos and video...although none today, sorry!

At the moment, I skate on Tuesday nights. It's literally the only time I have during the week to skate, while juggling work, parenting and allowing the husband his day to play hockey. For some reason, all the rinks around here are loathe to give evening ice to skating clubs, so there is very limited night ice. But I loathe dragging my butt out of bed for an early morning session--I've had to before for synchro and now I don't have to so I'm not and you can't make me!-- and I can't make the late afternoon sessions because of work, so Tuesday nights I'm on the ice. At the moment I'm training for a show at the end of May. My coach and I put together a jazzy program (to be revealed later) that I've been practicing.

This week my coach had a conflict so I was on my own. Warmed up with some of these newfangled moves in the field -- I breezed through all my MIF tests back before US Figure Skating instituted the changes that made them crazy hard (which they should be, but that's a rant for another time) -- so it's like starting over, and I found that it really helps other areas of my skating to perfect them.

Then I worked on some spins, namely my back camel with blade-grabbing flourish. It's looking better these days, more like an elegant skater than a dog peeing on a fire hydrant. And bonus, I didn't slice my finger open!

Tackled some jumps next: Axel, 2salchow, 2toeloop, 2loop, 2flip and 2lutz. All of 'em are pretty easy to knock off these days, though I'm working on getting the 2lutz to be purely on the outside edge, which is still a trouble spot. Single lutz is perfect, but for some reason when I try for the double, things get edgy (hahah). Attempted a few 2axels,  but I'm not feeling right in the air. Rotation feels way off, so I didn't have much success. I used to have a killer 2axel. Hoping to get it back to good.

Spent the last half of practice working on the new program. I huffed and I puffed and I made it through three run-throughs, though the end choreography is not set in stone. I have at least four more sessions to nail it down, and I'm feeling confident.