Dutch Waltz

Had a rather frustrating skate today. I overslept. Meaning I had 15 minutes to get dressed, get my shit together (gloves, towel, water), make coffee, eat breakfast. And then traffic was nasty. I didn't pin my hair well, and flyaways kept coming lose during my skate. And trying to repin hair down with gloves on...I ended up looking like a hot mess. But flyaways annoy the snot out of me.

I suppose I'll start with the one bright spot about today. The only one. OK, so yesterday, I had my ice dancing class. I'm basically the only student. My friend paid for the class, but of the last 4 classes, she's shown up to 1. One. Uno. Eins. That was last week, the 3rd week. She was a no show again yesterday. Anyway, I'm struggling a bit with this Dutch Waltz. It seems so easy. It's not. That "quick" progressive is tough. My swing rolls were shaky and off-tempo, but coach gave me a great tip. As I'm counting, when I get to 6, instead of saying 6 in my mind, say down. So 1-2-3 (hip shift, swing) 4-5-down, to get me thinking about bending my knee in prep for the next steps.

In our class, we have very little space. Honestly, I don't know what the rink organizers are thinking. We get one little hockey circle. It's ridiculous. Coach has to tell me not to push, or I'll run out of room. But today, I had the whole ice. And after a few attempts, I was ALMOST covering the whole ice. I was covering between the hockey circles, not quite to the boards, but I'll take it. (bright spot) That tip about the swing roll really helped. My progressives still stink. Especially clockwise. That 2-1-3 is just too fast for me.

Why did I spend so much time practicing this waltz today? Because I'm panicking. Yesterday, dance coach said that next week, we'll do the dance in a hold. Shit. I'm not ready. The steps are still too quick for me. I'm probably going to kick him in the leg with my swing roll. And he'll be fast, and if I need to bail or go slower, he'll be holding onto me. And I sweat. I'm gonna sweat all over him. It'll embarrass me. But I lack confrontational skills. He'll ask why if I say I don't want to. I just wish I could test this solo. The test manual says I can. Why must we do this in a hold? I don't wanna. *pout*

Now onto the suck. My alternating 3's were terrible today. Not sure if it was the cold. Man, it was cold. I almost never complain about the cold. Usually because I'm not cold, duh. But it was COLD today. I kept rubbing my legs to get them to circulate and warm up. Thirty minutes in, and I still had my jacket on. That's unheard of! Then I tried the FIBO 3-turn pattern. My back 3's are still rough. I scrape and can't hold that forward edge very well. On my good side, I swing around too much, can't control it. On my bad side, I have to put my free foot down too soon.

And that damn scratch spin. I cannot stop coming up on my toe pick. It's maddening. I try just holding the extended position, but I can still hear my toe pick. I try making sure my free hip doesn't drop, my arms are "10&2" although it ends up being more like 11&2. It's like my upper body rotates, or can't completely rotate around, and I can't fix it. I dream of doing a layback. I'll never get there if I can't nail this scratch spin. le sigh.

Unrelated to all that, there were two other adults on the ice with me. Very basic skaters. I love seeing adults learning to skate. I think I recognized one of the women. She was working on shaky crossovers and forward edges. But the other woman...was wearing jeans. JEANS! the hell? Jeans restrict your movement. Your muscles tense up. You wouldn't wear jeans to the gym. Don't wear them skating. Plus, it's against freestyle rules. (Why is the rink so vague on the definition of "beginner" skater?)

 
She looked like a skater on a public session, just shuffling around the perimeter. Not to mention, for a while, the two of them were skating together, casually, around the perimeter, socializing, like it was a public session. That kind of irked me. But I guess they were moving. :-/