Well that didn't last long...

I see why skater's don't bother announcing retirements any more- it is just too tempting to come back.

After barely skating at all in November or December, and none in January or February, I really missed skating.

So today, I went skating.

I have no coach, and I don't really want to do group lessons right now, but I'm thinking about trying to adapt my old program to compete in June.

Being back on the ice today went pretty well.  Jumps are tiny, spins went okay.  The biggest surprise was that I was able to do my three turns in both directions (I usually freak out CCW).  I tried about half the silver moves (no spirals or 8-step)- do you think they'd give me 45 minutes to finish the test? Because I skate slow...

But the best part: my sit spins totally look like I'm sitting!

Here's the combo spin I'm going to try to work on. We'll see if it makes it into the program. ( Is there a time limit to change feet, because man it takes me awhile!)

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

1:45p

In which the bad mood continues...
I'm going back to trying to post each time I skate.
So Tuesday:
I had a really bad day (see previous post) and was not looking forward to skating. Snowplow class really got me in a better mood, despite having a new kid, who I don't think should have been in the class- who wouldn't stand up on her own (not get up, just stand) until half way through and this was class 6, no new registrations. Anyhow- it was fun and I felt better after it.

Took low freestyle with Tanya. We started with forward outside spirals on the circle. Man is my left spiral bad. Right one wasn't great- I can't turn out my hip, and get my leg behind me at the same time. :( Then we did backspins, and mine weren't great. I was disappointed because they had really been getting better and I wasn't able to show that. Then we did waltz jump-toe tap-waltz jump and she told me that I looked like I had more confidence this week, then we did some toe loops and we ran out of time so I didn't get any comments.

High freestyle we did about 5 minutes of stops, 15 minutes of toe loops and 10 minutes of sit spins.
My stops I think are getting good. Apparently, I was wrong. I'm not bending right, I'm being tenative-skating too slow, I don't even remember everything else that was wrong with them. I'm pretty sure I'll need a new right blade in half the time of the left blade...
I'll post good first. I did an actual toe loop. Andy told me it's the first toe loop he's ever seen me do. I just cannot pivot and pull my legs together. Because I was "on the cusp" he had me continue toe loops while the other girl moved onto loops (the third girl was doing double sal). All that resulted in was an extremely frustrated Jessi. To get the pivot I need to open my heel more, and I know that. I just can't figure out how to consistently do that. So I did a whole ton of not toe loops. Then when we moved onto sit spins I did what I were sit spins that I was really pleased with and that I think my coach would have been really pleased with, but Andy was not please. He told me it needs to be much lower. So I tried, and fell, and tried, and fell- and that's fine. But 10 minutes of sit spins are way too much for my knees, by the end of the lesson (and I wasn't going to stop, because I don't want to be percieved as a whiner- I'd been having a hard enough time with this lesson) I was doing so badly that I'd barely get a revolution before I'd fall, or I'd go onto the wrong edge. It was just awful.

And then I went home feeling as bad as when I got there. Here's to better skating tonight.