Good news...

Well, good news for the blog. I'm thinking about going back to
skating. Since I won't have a coach, I'm not sure how it is going to
go- but at least I'll have skating to write about. I plan to just
skate once a week for now. I'm not sure what I'll work on- maybe a
program for the summer competition?

I have to say, I'm glad I decided not to continue toward the dances.
It would have cost me a lot in coaching fees, plus inconvienent lesson
times since my coach doesn't do weekends anymore, to keep taking
lessons to this point (I haven't skated since before Christmas I
think) and the test session papers for April came out- they aren't
offering dance! So it would have been in vain, and I would have had
to wait until June!

So when I return to skating, dance is pretty much out. There is a
girl at our rink who I think may be willing to do lessons with me, but
I need to get there for awhile and decide if I still want lessons. I
know she has her first few ice dances, but what made Carson so ideal
for dance was that he was a great partner. Plus, I don't think I'd
want to do the first 3 dances for more than a month or so before the
test, I am so tired of them! I do like the cha-cha, even though that
was pretty well finished too. (The swing dance though, that needs a
ton of work and that feels like a real dance!)

Mostly, I just want to spin.


I think the longing for skating is coming because the ballet class is
just not working out. I had decided to set a 2 years to pointe goal,
which I thought was realistic, my ankles have gotten quite weak while
skating. But our class has turned into adult exercise social hour. I
won't sign up again, but it is a 16 week session, so it goes until the
summer. Sigh...


I am really enjoying classes at the gym. I do a Kick Butt Step class
that is insanely hard and a Sh'Bam class, which is kind of hip-hopish
dance. I love them both. Last night, KB step was replaced with
"Athletic body step". Body Step is a Les Mills program like Sh'Bam
is. It was terrible. It was simultaneously too hard for me, and not
much of a workout at all. I say too hard because so much of it was
jumping- it wasn't a step class, the step was like an accessory. And
not enough of a workout because we took these hugely long pauses
between all the songs. It was ridiculous. In KB step, I rarely do
even the medium option (the high option- no way), but even the low
option provides me a chance to work my butt off. In this class, I was
taking a lot of the high options that I could, and I still never felt
that challenged, and then the things I couldn't do there wasn't really
much I could do in the time except basic steps. It was not a good
class. The other thing that just drove me crazy is the way Les Mills
has their instructors call the class. The instructor NEVER stopped
talking. The other thing is the instructor says the lyrics to the
song as part of her cueing. They do this in Sh'Bam too, and I've
often felt it was silly, but maybe because it was a dance class it
didn't seem as weird. But during one song, she kept telling us to
"keep our eyes open". I was wondering if this was a problem or
something, until I realized it was the song (I wasn't familar with
it). She also kept saying "we are nearing the finish line!" for
another one. But in Sh'Bam they do it in a singing along way, and in
step it was like a motivational yelling way, so it was just
ridiculous. I did not enjoy the class at all. (We also did burpees
and pushups with our hands on the step- and the steps are PAINFUL. I
think maybe I had an allergic reaction to the rubber or something,
because my hands hurt for the entire class after those.) Oddly, it
had about half as many people as normal in it, and Kevin said his spin
class had about 6 people in it who were usually in step, so it seems
like I'm not the only one who didn't like the class. People were
purposefully avoiding it when the change in class was announced.
Thankfully, next week is KB step again.

So wish me good luck in skating on Saturday. Not sure what to do for
my program. Maybe I'll just keep my music cut from Geisha, and
rechoreograph to meet the jump and spin requirements of Bronze (my
current program doesn't because my test had 3 spins, and the jumps are
too basic.)