March 6, 2007

6:41p
Last week
Oh my goodness! How did I forget to write about last week's lesson. Oh I remember, I got tied up in the most unbearable eye pain (I had a corneal ulcer).

Well never fear, a lesson recap is here.

We decided on my spotlight/interp music. I'll be using Gotta get a gimmick from Gypsy. Of course, this means i have to pay to have the music cut (bummer) because the other option (Mrs. Otis Regrets...) was already cut, but just WAY too fast. Anyhow, skating to Gimmick was tons of fun and I fell flat on my butt while doing high kicks. No high kicks on ice. But I forget when I skate to music that I suck, I just want to dance. My lesson tonight was canceled so we will start the program next week. Performance is April 28th. That is not enough time for my liking.

But the rest of the lesson- I asked to review the loop. My loop sucks. All my jumps suck. So we practiced them and then Burton decided that I needed to do jumps in the harness. So he got the harness ready as all the little girls (most below my level, the girls who are good don't get excited about the harness coming down) asked if I was practicing my axel. Nope, my waltz jump!!!!

So we started in the harness just winding up, jumping straight up and rotating. Burton tells me to "go for a triple". I hope I showed him that I have no jumping ability at all, and it's not just skating jumps. I think the best I got was 1.5 rotations. Just from winding up, bending and jumping. I am not a human spring at all.

Then we moved onto waltz jumps. Now, without the harness, I would have maybe landed one of these- but they were huge waltz jumps. I jumped at least a few inches, and covered a good amount of ice. Normally I jump about half an inch and barely move from my starting position. After we got down from the harness this translated into a small amount of improvement without the harness- yay.

Then, rather than doing loops on their own, we did waltz jump- loop. Once again, these probably would not have been landed, but I was able to wrap my foot in a backspin position on the loop, and come down on my toe pick rather than on the flat of the blade. At one point I noticed my toe pick divot was over an inch in the ice- I need to lose some weight! But it was facing the right way, rather than somewhat sideways, and Burton said that's exactly how a landing should look. We did these for quite awhile. I still hate the loop, taking off and landing on the left side is just too scary, it's my weak leg! Stupid spin direction.

Then we worked on toe loops which went well in the harness. We also did salchows which I had more success on then I ever have. I'm doing these from a 3-turn, step, 3-turn entrance and the extra speed really helps (I still do all my jumps from essentially a standstill, except waltz which comes from crossovers).

My eye was bugging me at the end of the lesson. Needless to say- that turned into a nightmare by the middle of the night. Now I can't wear contacts for quite awhile. Has anyone skated in glasses? I'm nervous about them flying off in spins, or me falling and breaking them. But skating blind seems even scarier.


And today- taught snowplow 1 and snowplow 2/3. No adults came, so I went home. I need to find my old glasses, and hope the prescription is good enough I can skate in them!