Old Skates, New Skates

I did my lesson on Monday with the old skates because I didn't want to waste our entire 40 minute lesson with me just trying to stay upright. I practiced this morning in the new ones and that was an adventure. Oof. 

Monday Lesson - We started with Moves. I was able to make it around on all four circles of the Backward Circle 8! Except, as Christopher pointed out, it was hella cheated. The RBI lobe was more oblong than round and the LBI barely made it around. There are two issues. Issue #1 is that my pushes are weak and issue #2 is that my arms are moving around a lot. Both of these things are happening on my back inside circles and that's why they are such a mess. However, progress is being made. It's small progress but it's progress nonetheless. Next up were the Double 3 turns. He had me do an exercise where I do four consecutive 3 turns on one foot in each direction. I was able to do it (which was neat!) but they are slow and sloppy. This is now homework to be worked on every time I practice. We looked at Brackets for a bit too. FI brackets are happening but he would like for me to bring my free foot closer before, during, and after the turn. The RBO brackets happened too but I could only do them while holding his hands. We looked at twizzles for a bit and he had me experimenting with other entries. When I tried the LFO twizzle, they were near perfect! In fact, it's better the the RFI twizzle I've been skating for the last 2 years. Who knew! We finished up with the Willow Waltz and that's looking better. We just mostly worked on the partnering aspect of it. At the end of my lesson, I unlaced my skates for the last time. It was a bit emotional. I said a silent "Thank you" for keeping me safe and allowing me to skate great the last 2.5 years. Sigh :( 

Tuesday Practice - First time out in the new skates! Here we go! First of all, I opened my skate bag and the weed smell hit me. Ugh. Not what I want to smell first thing in the morning. Time to invest in some deodorizers. The other thing I noticed was that these are just really difficult to lace tightly. They have these lace loops that go all the way up the center of the tongue and while I understand the point of them, I just kinda hate them. I wasn't able to pull my laces enough to get the tightness in the top part of my skate like I'm used to. Later this evening, I'll re-lace them. The third thing I noticed was that the guards I've been using on my old skates are too big for these. They were so loose I couldn't walk in them so I walked on my toepicks from the bench to the ice. Once I was on the ice, the adventure continued. I did a lot of swizzles and forward/backward edges. The difference in rocker size wasn't as pronounced as I thought it would be but I could very much notice that these blades are different. In some ways, the difference is lovely. For instance, my forward 3 turns were butter and the five step mohawk pattern I did was so silent! No toe scratching at all! On the downside, my spins are gone. It's going to take me a while to find the sweet spot on these blades. Until then, lots of traveling spins. At the end of the session, I was brave enough to do a tiny waltz jump and a tiny salchow. Neither were fantastic but I did them anyway. So, I'll need to buy new guards, change up the lacing, and get two new Bunga pads for my ankles. I was using a Bunga pad for my right ankle in the old skates and now with these new ones, I'll need one for each ankle since it was a little pinchy there. Overall, these are great skates and I'm not regretting my choice to switch so dramatically. 

Alpine Skating Club Exhibition

Today is the day I debut my new Juvenile Solo Free Dance!

I was scheduled to skate at about 1:00pm but we got there at around 11:00am because I wanted to watch and cheer on the other skaters. Everyone did such a fabulous job!

Time to Shine! - I was in the sixth group to go on and they gave us a six minute warmup (but I only used 5 minutes since I was first to skate after the warmup and I didn't want to be exhausted). The warmup went well. All of my spins were centered and twizzles twizzled. I was ready. They announced me and I took my starting pose. It all went as planned except I felt a little slow on my footwork sequence and my catch camel didn't go. I got into the camel and it was so well centered that I didn't want to ruin it by trying for the reach back so I just kept it going as is. All in all, it was a good first time out for this program. I won't compete with it until September so I definitely have time to work some things out like speed and musicality (and that stupid catch foot camel). Oh! And the dress looked nice! It will look even better once I have time to bling it up. Here is a video of my performance. 

Final Practice with my Skates :(

Today was bittersweet. It was my final full practice with my Jacksons. They've been good to me for 2.5 years and I was happy to give them a fine farewell. They will be with me on Sunday for the exhibition and then they will be retired. Sad day. 

Gold Moves - I worked on EVERYTHING! Not much to report except that I find it odd that my "bad side" power circles (aka snails) are better than my good side. Also, I made it around on all circles of my Backward Circle 8! Yay! It was hecken sloppy but I did it. 

Bronze Dances - I worked on all three of them slowly to make sure my edges were nice and that I was sticking to the pattern fully. I'm struggling with the Ten Fox but at least I worked on it. 

Free Dance - I ran it twice with the music. The first run through was really nice. I was relaxed and I forced myself to have expression. I ended about a second after the music stopped but I ended on my knee the proper way so that was cool. The second run through was toward the end of the session and the other skater sharing the session with me kept getting in my way. I was so focused on not running into her that my performance suffered. It was a terrible run through. It wasn't the girl's fault. She was a very young beginning skater and didn't seem to know that the skater running their program has the right of way. She at least apologized which was nice and she said she liked my music. She was cute so I couldn't be mad :) 

So I got through my whole session with grace and poise and then I ate it as I stood at the boards taking a sip of water. I dropped my Yeti which echoed throughout the rink and water went everywhere, including where my ass landed. At least it was the end of the session and I didn't have to skate with a wet butt but man, that was embarrassing. I just kind of sat there and laughed because it was so dumb. Pretty sure I got pushed by a ghost. No other way to explain it, lol. 

Finally, I got an email from my club regarding the exhibition. They informed me that they were not able to secure a dance judge for the event so I'll just skate the exhibition without the critique. I'm the only dancer out of the 30 or so participants so I actually would have been impressed if they brought in a dance judge just for me. It would have been nice to get the feedback but the point is to put it out there for the first time in front of an audience. Maybe I'll do really well since there is absolutely no pressure. Just performance. They grouped me with the upper level skaters which is flattering but also sort of intimidating. I'll do my best. I'm the only adult performing in the exhibition so maybe I'll inspire some skate moms (or dads) :) 

Feelin' Dance-y

 Besides some time spent on Gold Moves, I just focused on Dance this morning. I'm still in my old broken down boots until after the Exhibition so no jumping. These boots are just dangerous at this point and I'm not in the mood to break bones so I'll hold off on jumps until I start using the new skates. 

Gold Moves - The Backward Circle 8, which was on its way to making progress, has regressed. It is back to being a disaster. I was only able to get around on the outside circles but none of the inside ones. I even tried using the Theraband to help my arms and that didn't help much either. Frustrating. Next, I moved on to working on the Double 3s on a hockey circle to try getting the lobe size more consistent. I worked on all of the 8 turns this way. Finally, Brackets. I didn't put them in the pattern but I worked on the FI away from the wall, the FO on the wall, and I dabbled in some BO against the wall. None of it looks good. Sigh. Since there were quite a few skaters on the ice, I did not work on the "snails."

Twizzles - During our lesson on Monday, Christopher worked with me a bit on getting more revs on my twizzles. I was able to get another half rev on my RFI twizzle (for a total of 2 revs) but am struggling getting more than just one on my LFI. So today, in lieu of jumps, I twizzled! I was again able to achieve that extra half rev on the RFI but it feels scary and when I look at the tracings, it's only a legit twizzle half of the time. The other half are just spins. I'll keep working on it, though. It's bound to get better with time. 

Spins - I ran through all of the spins I have - one foot, forward scratch, camel, sit, catch camel, and backspins with the leg crossed. I did not work on spin combos. I just forgot. The catch foot camel is still a struggle but I'm determined to make it work. The others were okay too. Nothing extraordinary. Just average rate spins. 

Free Dance - I was able to run it one time and it was mostly okay with the exception of the catch foot camel not happening (again) and the ending not being entirely graceful. I was able to get down on my knee for the end pose but I slipped and ended up in a splat. Damn. I still have practice on Thursday so maybe I can get it together still. 

HickHoe - I ran this with the music and it was pretty good. Just keeping it under my feet for now. 

WillWaltz - I didn't run this with the music since I just learned it but one of things Christopher really wanted me to work on with this is to make the pattern cover the ice more. I was able to get things a little farther down the ice so that's good. 

TenFox - I didn't work on it. I ran out of time (and also, it's my least favorite so I probably unconsciously saved it to the end knowing I would run out of time). I'll do better next time. 

Weed Skates

 Busy day today! My new skates are ready so I drove down to Littleton to pick those up and then it was up to Broomfield to pick up my Free Dance dress from the alterations place and then my lesson at 3:00pm. I'm pooped. 

New Skates! - Ok, they are BEAUTIFUL! However, they smell like marijuana. Like...a lot. I asked my fitter if he smelled it too and he confirmed that Risport boots just smell like weed for some reason. Maybe it's the material they use, I don't know. All I know is that it's potent. He warned me not to leave them in my car for too long because they will make my car small like pot. I would have a lot of explaining to do if I got pulled over. So yeah, I have weed skates. Appropriate for Colorado, lol. Anyway, he took me down to the ice for a "Meet your Rocker" session. These new blades have a 7 foot profile which will be a huge adjustment for me as I've only ever skated on an 8 foot profile. It's definitely different! He ran me through some exercises to get the feeling of how much to rock up for a jump. Then he had me skate back and forth for a bit down the blue line. They seem aligned pretty well as I didn't drift when I was doing some one foot glides. They are comfy and stable and, although it might take a bit for me to adjust to the new rocker, I think these are going to help improve my spins and turns. 

Dress - I picked up my Free Dance dress just in time for the Exhibition this coming Sunday and YAY it fits! She did an amazing job and it fits me perfectly now! I won't have time to stone it for Sunday so I'll skate "plain" but now I can order some pretty sparkly bits and make this dress really shine for the upcoming season!

Lesson - Today was all about Dance. He wanted to see a run through of the Free Dance. It was kind of a mess but considering I hadn't worked on it all week I'm not surprised. It will be fine for Sunday though. We worked a bit on the catch foot camel because that is still a struggle. He wants one rev in camel position before I reach back and, even if I can't grab it in time, still try to reach for the foot. Of course more expression. I started out with some and then 30 seconds in it was gone again. Alas. We worked a bit on the final knee pose thing and apparently I was doing the arm tornado too quickly because I was having a difficult time getting down on my knee. I kept rotating as I went down and that creates an unstable end pose. If I use the tornado as a moment to quiet things down a bit, the knee thing becomes easier. Next, I begged him to show me the Willow Waltz. It's the only one of the three Bronze Dances I haven't learned yet. I tried watching videos of solo willows and partnered willows but my brain was hurting. He showed it to me and I actually picked it up pretty quickly. It all made sense once I partnered it. It's actually not as difficult as the other two (the Ten Fox will be the death of me). So yay! I can start really digging in on all three Bronze Dances!

Slumming it

 My struggle to find ice time continues. In a rare act of desperation, I not only went to the Sport Stable for a session but it was a *gasp* public session! I wasn't the only figure skater slumming it at the Stable. One of my Unicorn sisters was there as were some familiar faces from the Promenade. But you know what? It really wasn't that bad. I hate myself for admitting this but the ice was nice and it was relatively uncrowded. Obviously I couldn't run my Free Dance program but I was able to work on parts of it without the music. 

That ending, tho - Yeah, mostly my goal was to get control over the new ending that Christopher gave me. You know, the one with the hurty knee pose. I was able to get it worked out and I have the bruises on my right knee to prove it. 

Moves - There wasn't much room to do Gold Moves but I was able to work on the Backward Circle 8 a bit as well as some of the Double 3 Turns. 

The session was two hours but I only stayed for half of that. Sigh. 

Final Touches

Lesson today and I told Christopher that I signed up for the Exhibition and Critique on May 22. So, of course, he wanted to see where I'm at with the Free Dance. I got the sash on and ran it. 

First Run Through - This went well! I hit all of my musical cues and ended on time with the music. The only snafu was the catch foot camel. It didn't happen. I replaced it with a regular camel. He seemed pleased but still had corrections for me. No surprise, he wants TONS more expression. I know this. He's told me this. I would also like more expression. I just go into survival mode when I'm running a program and expression takes a backseat. I really just need to practice this with expression every.single.time. We also worked on the catch foot camel for a bit. On average, it take about 3 revs for me to grab my foot which is entirely too long. So we worked on arching my back more and bending my knee to make things easier to get to while spinning. I did a couple that were okay but these still have a long way to go. Next, we talked about the end pose that I made up. It's not bad but he would like something a little more challenging and way more dramatic! He proposed a pretty arm tornado thing and then I drop to one knee while the other leg extends and my left arm swings up. That's certainly dramatic..for my knees! I expressed concern over how my knees aren't getting any younger and I want to keep them working for as long as possible (I already have a weird crunching noise in my right knee. Doesn't hurt, just makes me cringe). He insisted that I do this ending. He said, "if it were easy, you'd be able to do it." I want the challenge so he showed me how to do it. He then wanted to see the program again in its entirety with the new ending. 

Second Run Through - Here we go again. It was pretty much the same as the first and I was able to do the knee thing at the end except my supporting foot slipped out from under me and I went full sploot, lol. This is a risky move but if I get it right, I know it will look great. The trick is practicing it, but not too much. It's really hard on the knees and too many attempts will certainly start to get painful. Fun. 

Gold Moves - For the second half of the lesson, we worked on Forward Double 3s and the Backward Circle 8. I was not able to repeat any of the little successes I had yesterday during my practice. Sigh. He asked if I've been working on the Backward Power 3 turns from the Standard Juvenile test and I admitted that I've completely forgotten about them. I have a lot that I work on and often only an hour to do it all in during a session. So yeah, sometimes I forget things. I promised I would bring them back to my practices. I know they will help. 

So yeah, he seems to think this Free Dance is in a good enough place to be presented to judges. I'm excited to put it out there. 

Sunday Grind

There was an hour and half long session at the Y today and, since it was Mother's Day, the place was practically empty. Just me and two other skaters! Yay! My practice was divided into quarters and I got a lot of work done!

Gold Moves - I was able to make it down the entire length of the rink without a foot down on the FO-BI side of the Forward Double 3s. I'm sure the lobes were a wonky size but I did it! I cannot say the same for the other side. That still needs a lot of work. Then, I spent a good chunk of time on the Backward Circle 8 and I was able to make it around all four circles!!!! I know it wasn't perfect (the circle sizes weren't consistent and my pushes were weak) but this gives me hope that it can be done. I did some brackets but nothing extraordinary happened with these. 

Spins - I dedicated a good portion of my practice to spins sine I'm not entirely comfortable jumping until my new boots come in. I did a lot of sit spins, backspins with the leg crossed, camels, catch foot camels, and upright scratch spins. Everything felt nice and centered today but I'm still struggling with the catch foot camel. It takes about 3 revs for me to make the grab and then I can only hold the position for maybe one rev after that. I'm able to grab on solid ground so I'm guessing the problem is that I'm fighting physics. This is frustrating. 

Free Dance - Now that it is fully choreographed, I was looking forward to running it in its entirety with the music. After practicing the footwork section for a bit, I put the music on and off I went. Man, this is a fun program to skate to! I hit all of my elements (except for the catch foot camel, I just did a regular camel) and I ended on time with the music. Christopher didn't give me an end pose so I added one myself. I'll see what he thinks about it tomorrow during my lesson. I think this is the quickest I've ever gotten a program to a point where I feel okay putting it in front of judges and I'm really excited that my club is hosting an Exhibition and Critique for club members on May 22! There were just a few spots left so I did the thing! I signed up! It will be nice to get some good feedback from the judges and still have time to make changes before I compete with this in September. My dress should be ready on the 16th so I can wear the dress but I won't have time to stone it. That's fine. I don't think they are judging me on the sparkle (or non sparkle) of my dress. 

Bronze Dances - I worked on the Ten Fox without the music. It's such a quick dance and I'm not entirely confident on the end pattern with that dreadful mohawk so I'll keep working on it slowly until I'm ready to pick up the tempo. The Hickory Hoedown feels pretty good though. I think that one might be ready to test by the end of summer. Hopefully, I can test the HickHoe and my Free Dance at the same time. 

I pick up my new boots and blades on Monday the 16th but with the Exhibition coming up, I'll hold off on skating with them until after I skate my Free Dance for the judges. I'm really nervous about the blades. I feel like it's going to be a huge adjustment. Yikes. 

How Fitting!

This post is all about change and it's a long one!

Schedule Change - My home rink got rid of my Monday morning and Wednesday morning sessions in favor of hockey (*cue internal screaming*) so now I need to find other times and places to practice. I was able to do a couple of hours at the Y this past Sunday so that helped make up for the two practices I missed last week but I feel so behind now. I have a lot of work to do and I'm frustrated that my typical morning practices are gone. Boo. 

Boot and Blade Fitting - I went for my fitting yesterday morning expecting to get a Jackson boot one level higher than my Premieres and hopefully keep my current blade since they still have 3-4 more sharpenings left in them. That is not what happened! I asked about the Jackson Synergy and the Supreme boots and they pulled them for me to try on but as soon as I said I'm a toe heavy skater, my fitter suggested I try Risport since the heel on those are significantly lower than Jacksons. So I tried on the RF3 and they were super comfy! He measured the heels between the Jackson and Risport boots and there is a half an inch difference in height! That's huge! He also convinced me to consider a new blade since my current ones only have so much life left in them and I'll have to replace them next year anyway. He suggested the MK Professional Lite which will help my spins and turns eventually but the adjustment period will be tough since it's got a 7 foot rocker instead of the 8 foot I'm used to with my Legacy 8. Since he had a used boot and blade setup in this configuration already in the shop, he let me test drive those. I could tell the blades will be a challenge. It felt like I was going to slip off of my heel. Yikes. I did a couple of spins (just a two foot spin and a one foot spin) and they were easy to center so I know this will be a good blade for my spins. So I placed my order and I pick my new boots and blades up next Monday! Aghghghg!

Dance Dress Fitting - So the Brad Griffies dress I ordered a couple of months ago to go along with my new Free Dance does not fit up top. I took it to a local seamstress and she's going to take it in for me. She also did my measurements and I lost two inches in my bust so it's confirmed that I indeed shrunk. The dress should be ready in two weeks and then I can start stoning it!

Free Dance Choreography Complete!- During yesterday's lesson, Christopher gave me the final bit of choreography for my "Lifts" Free Dance! We haven't settled on an end pose coming out of the final element (an RFI 1.5 rev twizzle) but it's done! Yay!

Silver Free Skate - I picked out my music and I'm having a dress made! Yup, I'm having one made! The music I chose is too pretty to try to buy and stone a dress myself so I'm having a lady down in Florida make one for me that goes with the music I chose. She has my new measurements and my deposit and now I anxiously wait for it to be made and sent to me. It's going to be GORGEOUS! And the best part is I don't have to stress about stoning a dress. Everything will be done by her! My first custom dress!

Hickory Hoedown and Ten Fox - Also during our lesson, we ran a couple of the Bronze Pattern Dances. I feel like I'm actually skating them slightly better now after having not worked on them in a few months. I still need to learn the Willow Waltz. Hopefully I can get one or more of these tested by the end of the year. 

So yeah, lots of changes happening!