About a week ago I mentioned that I had visited a secondary rink to skate at and initially I thought that I would end up at the rink in Royal Oak, but after some serious consideration I decided to give the rink in Troy a try. Despite the fact that I’ve had bad experiences there on the ice (it’s just not as smooth as the ice at Onyx) I figured that I needed to get used to it before my competition there in June. If skating there was anything like the public session ice I did a month ago, I would probably fail at my competition. So, after talking with the learn to skate director and adult coach (I’ll be referring to her as Coach M on my blog from now on) I decided to sign up.I attended my first class today and have mixed experiences about it.
Coach M did give me a heads up that there would be a couple children in the class and I was okay with that, but it basically became a four level class with four students. There was one other adult that was working on two foot turns and half pump swizzles, the children were starting crossovers, and I needed to really start to “feel the edges” on my crossovers because I was cutting them too short. Sure, I have made advances, I am working on skills like the waltz jump, toe loop, and footwork patterns, but I still really need to work on the basics.
Practice time was okay, I worked on several of my elements but forgot to work on spins, argh! We moved to the class space on the ice - which made me somewhat anxious because I wasn’t anywhere near the boards where I keep my binder, skating journal, and water but I got over it...somewhat. First we did stroking with T-stops for me, the others were doing hockey stops. Then we moved to the circle for crossovers (forward and backward) which took most of the class time. I am so sick of spending my money on these classes and just working on my crossovers, but they need work. I know it and I am still annoyed by it. Why can’t I just break up with crossovers in this sport?
After class I showed Coach M my binder so that she could see where I was at and what I needed to work on. I made it fairly clear that I really just signed up for the class because I needed more practice ice time to prepare for the competition and she seemed understanding so that’s good. It looked like we were missing some people today, while I spoke to coach M on the phone she had mentioned that there were some women who were practicing 3 turns and other adult 4 elements. Hopefully next week they’ll work with me and I won’t feel like there’s such a big gap in the class.
I think that overall the money I spent on the class will be worth it to prepare for my competition. It seems like it might just become practice ice for me, but I am okay with that. Plus, it’s another valuable day on the ice, even if it is only one hour. I guess I’ll have a better idea of how it went once it’s all over.
