Long time, no post

Oof, it's been a bit, huh. I was in Portland for a week for a library conference (so much fun and learning!) and then I got sick like I do every time I get on a plane. I really thought flying would be different and I wouldn't get sick this time since masks are required. Alas. On day 3 of the conference I started feeling awful and it is still lingering in my chest. I got a Covid test at the conference (negative) and took another once I got home (again, negative) so this is really just me getting sick from airplanes...again. This is one of the reasons why I would rather drive than fly but work was paying for everything so airplanes it was. Anyway, it was neat to see so many librarians descend upon Portland from so many areas of the U.S. I met some pretty rad people!

I did a lot of cool things in Portland when I wasn't in sessions but I made sure to make time to visit the rink at Lloyd Center where Tonya Harding got her start. Super tiny rink and I was tempted to rent a pair of crappy skates just so I could say I skated there but I have enough respect for my body to not risk getting injured from rental skates. 

Dance - I didn't write about my last lesson with Christopher because I left for my trip soon after. But he gave me some new choreography for my free dance! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to practice it at all (except awkwardly in the hotel gym) so I was worried none of it stuck. Well, it did stick. Just poorly. I was working on it for the first time on the ice this morning and it was hot garbage. Whatever I worked on in the gym did not translate to the ice at all. I still have some practices to get it together enough that it looks presentable for him. There is hope yet. 

Freeskate - So yeah, with nearly two weeks off the ice, I am most certainly not going to meet my program challenge that I set for myself so I'm officially not caring about meeting the numbers. I'm just going to run my program at each practice and maintain it. I ran it this morning expecting it to be pretty rough but it actually wasn't that bad. It wasn't entirely clean but can still be polished in time for Funtastics. 

Compulsory Moves - I ran this a bunch of times. I just need to polish up the transition from my jump combo to the footwork but other than that, it was in solid shape. 

Swing Dance - While I was in Portland, I tried to come up with some intro choreography for the music that I have chosen (a swingy cover of Creep by Karen Souza). I really don't have a lot of intro time, just one eight count so I'm just going to do a LFO 3 Turn into a nice backward glide (with pretty arms), step forward, two quick progressives and then I'm into the steps for the Swing. I'm not sure it's the most creative as far as intro steps go so I may play around with it a bit more. It's what I have for now and it works (I tested it on the ice this morning). I also need to figure out what I'm going to do for choreography once I'm done with the pattern. I would love to put in some twizzles somehow. We'll see. My dress is pretty though! It's a beautiful lilac color and it fits well (hooray for not needing to alter this one!). With three events and three costumes, I'll be doing a lot of quick changes. Stressful!

Axel Progress

 Busy day today!

I started my day at Apex for my morning practice session. I was able to run my Free Dance a couple of times, I worked on my Silver Compulsory Moves and I ran my Free Skate

The 24 Program Challenge (5/24) - I'm starting to think I might not meet my challenge goal this time. I've missed some practices due to weather and then I'm missing an entire week for an out-of-town work thing so I'm either going to have to grind during my remaining practices and start doing double run throughs or I'm just going to have to face that I won't meet my challenge this time. I still have a full month left so I'll see what I can do. My run through this morning was pretty good except that my opening jump combo felt unsteady. This isn't usually a problem so I'm not going to fret about it. I'm in maintenance mode at this point and feel pretty comfortable with things. 

Afternoon Lesson - We started off with some field moves. I admitted that these have been neglected because I'm focusing on so many new skills and programs right now. I really need to make time for these again in my practices. We started with Forward Power Circles. These tend to have proper technique until I start getting faster and then two things happen 1). I don't get any faster and 2). I get hella steppy and lose all proper technique on the crossovers. Christopher gave me a drill to practice where I do two quick forward crossovers in one direction and then two in the other direction down the length of the rink. We moved on to the Backward Power Circles and these seem okay. I have the opposite problem with these. The slower ones are more difficult than the fast ones. Next, we worked on the FO-BI Double 3 Turns. My biggest issue with these is patience. I can do the turns but I'm turning the first one too late and then the backward one is turned too early. Maybe I should start counting in between them. After working on the field moves, I got strapped into the harness for some work on Axels. I'm landing them more often than not but the technique is still iffy. At one point, he told me to go full out, so I did and I landed it (it felt like a struggle and the landing was really rough). That's when he said "Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I was going to hold back on supporting you this time!" Agh! That's why it was so hard! I was doing most of the work! But this is good! At some point I have to stop relying on the harness and land it myself. He said once I can land a couple of Axels in a row with minimal support from him, then I can move off the harness and start doing them out on open ice. Scary! Finally, to round out the lesson, we looked at my Swing Dance since I'll be competing that next month at Funtastics. He said the timing looks great but I need to fill out the corners of the pattern more and lean back more going backwards. We'll figure out something pretty to do with my arms later. 

So yeah, things are progressing nicely in my Axel journey. My off-ice Axels are feeling better (and I'm even starting to get some extra rotation on my off-ice loop to the point where I feel like it could be a double someday!). My backspins are finally getting the cross-foot too. The free leg is still too high up but I'm just happy that it's crossing at all. I feel like if I keep working at things the way I've been doing, I might get my Axel sooner rather than later (and by sooner I mean within a year?). Honestly, I feel more comfortable with the Axel process than I ever did with the Flip or Lutz. Why are those so much more difficult?!

Super Cram

I skated this morning and it was just myself and another skater working with her coach. However, it looked like they were preparing for a test and were running programs and moves and I didn't want to run any of my programs until they left. Their stuff seemed more important and mine can wait a bit. By the time they got off the ice, there was only 15 minutes left in the session so I ran my Free Skate once, my Free Dance twice, and the Swing Dance once. Whew! That was an intense 15 minutes. 

It's not like the first 45 minutes were wasted, though. I ran my Silver Compulsory Moves routine twice (because it doesn't need music) and I was able to work on the new Free Dance choreography to get it under my feet enough so that when I put the music on, I was capable. 

But man, those last 15 minutes? Let's just say it was a nice exercise to improve my stamina. I was wiped! But I got it all done. 

The 24 Program Challenge (4/24) - This went well! The only issue was my step sequence not filling out half of the rink like it usually does. I'm not sure why. But my spins were nice and I finished on time with the music. 

Free Dance - The two runs I did were pretty good. I'm practicing at home to get the timing right and then I'm working on the ice to get the flow of the movements. I'm just eager to get the rest of the choreography so I can do full run throughs. 

Swing Dance - This is maintaining. This part of the competition is a Memorial Dance so it will be open to all levels. I have zero hopes of "winning" as I'll be going up against senior level skaters and even some coaches but I'm hoping to at least not come in last. If I placed in the top half of skaters, that would be even better.

Battered and Bruised

 Lesson today and we worked on more choreography for the Free Dance and more Axels (that's where the title of this post comes in). 

Free Dance - We are about 50% done with choreography now! There are four required elements for the Adult Juvenile Solo Free Dance (a short edge element not to exceed 7 seconds, a dance spin, a step sequence, and twizzles). So far we just have the short edge element worked into the choreography. I'll be doing a backward catch foot spiral. It's all very beautiful but I'm still not comfortable yet with the timing of the movement and I definitely need to work on expression. So much to think about!

Axels - We spent the second half of the lesson working on Axels and I was able to get a couple more landed in the harness. I'm still having a problem with the snap. I'm spending so much of my energy just trying to stay relatively upright that I can't focus on the snap of the jump. I'm getting my leg crossed over but I'm struggling to get that last 1/4 rotation because it's not crossed at the ankles - it's crossed higher up by my knee. There are so many moving parts to this jump! Christopher seemed pleased with the progress I made from last week to this week. My goal was "Axel by 50" but I think I might get it sometime in the next year or two. I had a couple of bad landings (one of which was on my right knee) and I'm bruised as a result. And this is WITH the harness. Imagine how destroyed I'll be once I'm ready to do them on my own. I see lots of padding in my future.

Where the hell did those go?!

As a follow up to yesterday's "Where the hell did those come from?!" post where I was so excited about skills that just suddenly appeared out of nowhere all of a sudden, this post discusses the tragedy of having a skill one day and having them disappear the next. Those fancy crossed-legged backspins? Gone. My ability to land a loop jump? Also gone. My patience? Totally gone. 

Dances - I'm competing in a Memorial Swing Dance at the Spring Funtastics in April and it's been a while since I've skated it. Christopher and I danced it during the end of yesterday's lesson but the ice was crowded and I'm paranoid so it wasn't the best. I remembered the steps though! So yay for that, I guess. Today, I ran it a couple of times with the music and it wasn't the worst. I put special emphasis on picking my free foot up high enough during the backward chasses and making sure I'm leaning enough on the swing rolls. After that, I ran the HickHoe because it's been a while for that as well. And I ended with the Cha Cha because it's fun and I wanted to :) 

Free Dance - I was hoping for some additional choreography but we were busy with other things during yesterday's lesson. So I ran what I have with the music. I probably did about 4-5 of these since it's only the first 30-ish seconds. I feel like I'm rushing which is no bueno considering timing is huge in terms of scoring a free dance. I've been doing a lot of run throughs on the floor to get the timing better but then I get on the ice and I rush. Ugh. 

Compulsory Moves - I also signed up for Silver Compulsory Moves for Funtastics so I ran that a couple of times to keep it under my feet. This is when I discovered the first of many tragedies today - my loop jumps are wonky. I know the problem (spoiler alert: It's my severely broken down right boot) but I just don't have the means to fix it right now. I'm really hoping my boots will last until late spring/early summer. Fingers crossed. Other than that, things here look nice. 

The 24 Program Challenge (3/24) - I actually ran the music three times but two of the runs didn't count as I fell on the damn loop again. I'm hoping it's not so much the boots as it is all the stuff in my head. We'll see how things go on Thursday. 

Backspins - The memories of yesterday's backspins are just that - memories. I tried them again today and was only able to get one with the leg crossed but it only had two revs. I know this is still progress so I'm trying to not let myself feel discouraged here but damn, where did they go???

Dress Drama - Keeping up with the whole "where the hell did those go?!" theme, apparently I got smaller in the uh....chest area, because my new customized Brad Griffies that just came in is too big up top. I've always worn mediums in his dresses and they have always fit me so well so when this new one came in for my Free Dance and it was "roomy" up top I thought he must have changed his sizes or maybe this was a mistake. I contacted him and asked. He was totally understanding and he confirmed, given my measurements, that I am indeed a medium and that he didn't change his sizes. He asked for me to send him pictures of me wearing the other mediums that fit and it wasn't until I tried those on that I realized, damn, those are baggy too! He said it's an easy fix and I can just take it to a seamstress and have her take it in and, in the future, he can make me a split size - small on top, medium on the bottom. Clearly, all of the Pilates I've been doing lately has toned my shoulders and arms enough that it took me down a whole size up top. I mean, cool. But now I have a bunch of dresses of his that I haven't even worn yet that need to be altered. Ugh. Also, if you are looking for a workout that really tones your arms and shoulders, apparently Pilates is the thing! LOL.