August 22, 2006

First skating lesson in Iowa
YAY! Skating lessons. I am a Delta- which I was kind of nervous about- the new skates have rendered me PreAlpha :) I was also nervous everyone would be four years old. I was close. The closest to my age is 9. Well that's not true. She's 22- our instructor.

I'm okay with an instructor younger than me, because she's been skating 10 years longer than me. That's the number that matters.

First my skates- they still aren't great. I didn't get to skate again before today, so it's only my 3rd skate in them (4th?). They are still quite tight, and I have a few pressure points, but they aren't painful. By the end of the half hour, I couldn't feel my right foot, but it never went through a "holy moly pain" stage. I still can't stop on them, but am slowly getting things back. My 3 turns are rudimentary, my backwards crossovers those of someone who has learned them but can't do them. So neither is where it was, but I am confident it will get there.

I'm not sure how much I will get from the lessons, but I am sure I will be able to pull something. I forgot how much of lessons with kids is run before we walk. We did some 3 turns and she saw that the kids had no control of their edges at all. So we practiced edges (YAY me- except the RFO which was a little wonky, I still have all my forward edges)- during which all the kids would do 1 footed turns on the tip of their semicircle. Impressive, but almost none of them could hold the edge.

Then we did a combo- 4 fwd strokes, lunge, spiral. For the most part the rest of the class did, push off from the wall, really good lunge, eh spiral. I've never done a lunge before, so I didn't get that- but I got the fwd stroking. In my opinion a perfect lunge isn't going to get you anywhere if you can't stroke and push off your toepicks.

The other reason I'm not sure how much I will get is because, as an adult, I listen when the instructor is speaking or demonstrating. Most of the girls just either goof off, or practice what she is demonstrating, without really listening. So I am skating signifigantly less during that 30 minutes. But I think it will be more beneficial to listen, so I know what to practice on my own time.

This is going to be very different from my very analytical adult lessons- but we'll see how it goes :)
I definetly am glad I did not join the adult class. Stephanie told me last session they could barely get them off the walls. This class will take patience to go to, but it is at my level.

The best part is, even though they raised the price, 8 30 minute lessons, 8 public skate session admissions (usually $5.25), and 3 (probably go unused) guest passes are all only $90. That's a pretty good price to me.