Ice Dancing

Today, I signed up for a beginner ice dancing class, over at the posh rink. Cuz duh, my older but comfortable rink doesn't offer such luxuries. A friend of mine who takes lessons with the ice dance coach told me about it, and why not? Class is a half hour. Drive time one way is 50 minutes. But I suppose I could hop onto the public session after (this rink has two sheets) to get a bit more skating in, make the trip worthwhile. I'm looking forward to it but also am nervous. My edges and skating are all comfortable, but I lack speed and power. I'm worried I'll be the worst skater by a lot. I hate that. But I'm doing it, have already paid. It's 7 weeks. Wish me luck! (Did I mention the coach is Gary Shortland? Two time UK National Champion. Fun!)

Also had a lesson with my coach this morning. It's been a month. She gave me some things to work on when it comes to my scratch spin...you know, the one that left me. If anyone finds it, please return it to me. I'm sure I could scrape up a reward of some kind. I told her about my bucket list goal of passing senior moves. (Yup, I want to someday say I can do all the same moves tests the olympic skaters can do...maybe not quite as technically correct as they, but you know, roughly passable.)

I was perhaps not completely clear with my coach. I probably won't test. I will be the judge of whether it's good enough or not. But she wanted to go back and do perimeter stroking from pre-preliminary with me. I indulged her, but I certainly don't need to spend money on a private lesson for her to watch me do perimeter stroking. When she wanted to move on to basic edges, I stopped her and told her I wanted to work on more difficult moves.

Cross strokes and edge pulls are what she suggested. These are comical. But...at one point, I said the same thing about alternating 3-turns. And look how well those are coming along. Just keep skating...