...are really big. Really big.
I'm not sure if it is inspirational or just depressing. But Tim was back in Coralville, and working on them. I know he's landed a few, but I don't think I saw any landed tonight. But even to see one rotated, is just freaking amazing.
What's weird is today EVERYONE was in my way. It was a really frustrating lesson, I kept having to skate around people, scoot around people, or just plain stop what I was doing and start again. Tim was probably the only person who didn't get in my way. But I think it is only because he whizzes by so fast, by the time that I see him he isn't there anymore. However, anytime I was holding a spin, he would fly by- I would freak out and have the following conversation in my head "OMG! He's going to hit me. NO NO keep spinning. If you stop, then he'll hit you, but if you just keep spinning, he'll go around you." It was kind of funny.
At the end of the session he walked through a program, but did his footwork full out. I was off the ice at this point, but at least 4 people were in lesson, and two coaches were working on the hickory hoedown. By the time he finished, everyone was pressed against the wall, and applauded him.
Yes, as this blog post characterizes it, we are a "fun rink". Seeing someone skate at this level, and this fast- is impressive to all of us.
As for my own skating- I'm ready for the test, but I think this will be a practice test. The loop just isn't there and I SUCK when I'm nervous. We've been practicing with me nervous. I get on the ice with a 5 minute warm up and do the program right away. The warm up gets me shaking- the pressure of having ONE chance to do each element, and do them right. Then I enter the program from the boards (on a freeskate test, do you go talk to the judges like moves? Or straight to the opening?) and that gets me nervous. At least I have practice there.
I'm also pissed off at my scratch spins, but I swear it is the brace. It has to be, I am SO thrown off, and I can't pull in normally at all.
I slipped off my back outside left edge 3 times today- it was freaky. Thank goodness I'm getting a sharpening this weekend.
Early Autumn
1 month ago
1 comment:
I agree - sharing a rink with a high level skater is somewhat intimidating, but very inspirational at the same time. We have a lot of world class level athletes training at my rink, and I love watching all of them skate, though it can make me nervous when I am working on figures (you pretty much have to keep your head down/eyes on the floor) and they are wizzing around doing triple jumps and spins.
Also, I totally get what you mean about having days where everyone gets in the way. At our rink, Sunday mornings are the "busy time" and we have to divide up the practice time between figures, dance, and freestyle. Most of our dance skaters are fairly young, or pretty old, which means they are all skating easier dances and using the same patterns, and they can share the floor quite nicely. I am working on high level dances (not quite gold medal test, but almost there) so my patterns are much more complex and very different from everyone else. During my lesson I could only get about 6 steps of a dance in before I was going to crash into other skaters... so annoying! My coach has decided to move my lesson to 5:30am on Saturday so we can have the whole floor to ourselves and total control of the music.
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