YASSS SNOW!

It was just a light dusting but I will never not be excited about the first snow of the season! This Florida girl is always impressed by snow! I made the cold and wet drive to the rink this morning for a drop-in session. Since Southwestern Regionals are happening this weekend in Texas, rink schedulers moved some things around to account for lower volume. They got rid of the Friday and Saturday sessions and added drop-ins for today and Thursday. Since we can't have our regularly scheduled lesson this Saturday, Christopher agreed to coach me this morning instead. I had plenty of time to warm up and it was nice because for the first 30 minutes I had the rink to myself. Yay, nobody will see if I mess up! Oh wait...what if I fall and nobody sees me fall and I can't get up because I'm broken again and nobody can hear me scream because there's nobody there and OMGPANIC!!!!! Hello anxiety, welcome to my practice session.

Needless to say, I didn't work on anything too daring because I really was worried I would fall and freeze myself to the ice while waiting for someone to help me. So...field moves! My Circle 8 is looking so much better these days! I actually have a bit of confidence on this now that it's more and more consistent. I am finally able to better control that LFO (it only took like, what? 8 or 9 months?Ugh). I did a few of these just to make sure this is actually a thing now before moving on to the other moves. I did some simple jumps (including some loop-loop combos!) and spins and, by that time, Christopher had arrived for our lesson.

Lessonz - Since I am excited about the progress I made on the Circle 8, we started with that. He said it was good enough to pass the test so I'm considering that a HUGE accomplishment for me since it's been a disaster for so long. He wanted to see the other moves so we started working on the BX-BO edges at my request since I'm still not sure what to do with my arms. Up until now, I've just been using the same arms I use for a landing position. Turns out, that is not what you are supposed to do. So he gave me instructions on when and how to switch my arms and we added a 5 count for each lobe. Once we put in some time on this, we moved on to the Power 3-Turns. I have a tendency to avoid these because they are still not entirely comfortable but I can't avoid them when my coach asks to see them. We worked a bit on the timing of things and making the 3-turn lobe smaller and more shallow than the crossover lobe. We also worked on arms and that made a huge difference. My arms were backwards and that has been preventing me from having some good flow and control. From now on, I should have my right arm in front when I'm doing an LFO 3-turn and vice versa. So, he agreed I should spend more time on the blue line with these because I'm stepping forward too early before the axis to get ready for the next 3-turn. For now, I need the blue line to act as a visual for the axis until I'm comfortable enough to do it without. Like icy training wheels for my brain :)

We didn't have time to do much else after that but it was a good lesson and the corrections he gave me will help with a lot of the little things I've been struggling with. I asked him if he thinks it's reasonable to test these right after the new year in January or February and he said yes as long as I get more control over these Power-3 Turns. He admitted he was more concerned about the Circle 8 but since that seems to be doing okay now I should focus on improving the power 3's and then I should be good to test. So, that's what I'll shoot for. If I don't have a goal with a deadline, I start slacking. So now that I have something clear to shoot for, I have a plan.

He also asked if I was interested in the Holiday Show(!). He said it would be a good chance to skate in front of an audience again and get rid of some of those nerves. No judges, just fun. I told him I would think about it. I really like Lindsey Sterling's cover of Hallelujah and it has kind of a Christmas-y feel to it so that might work well (plus I think it would be nice to skate it in honor of Kathryn). I still need to marinate on this. Christmas felt like a long ways away but then it started snowing today and I realized that the Holiday Show would be in like...9 weeks. That's not a lot of time to learn a program. But I also like a good challenge so....we'll see :)