Red nose and red cheeks

I have had a cold developing all day, so wasn't really relishing this evenings lesson. Particularly as I was worried about the cold affecting my balance, with a blocked nose and all.

Turned out to be a rather good class, but slightly embarrassing as well!

The first thing we did was backward skating (with the two foot glide) and I was taken to one side and asked if I minded demonstrating it to the rest of the group as I was the only one doing it properly. Flattered as I am by this (and it's good to know that I am going in the right direction - excuse the pun!), I have always been quite shy about being singled out like that. Funnily enough, stage fright was never an issue when I was dancing and neither was a karate tournament I participated in - deliberately performing feels quite different, so it's not the being watched, it's more the public praise I think - it makes me blush and I blush very easily! Luckily I demonstrated the backward skating okay and didn't embarrass myself by falling over!

Then when we were practicing our forward chasses, the coach was talking to me and suggested that when I have completed the 10 levels, I should really think about doing ice dance, as I have a nice line, posture and rhythm. I am quite tempted by this already, although I would like to learn some freestyle as well. I will get through Skate UK first and see how I feel then!

After we finished our lesson, I approached our teacher to show me how to stop when skating backwards. The one thing that worries me is that because I go relatively fast (for a beginner anyway), when going backwards it can be quite terrifying as we haven't been taught to stop, so I just tend to twist around and almost lose my balance. So I have had a brief lesson now in:

Backward Snowplough Stop: Luckily, these look like they will come much quicker to me then when I was trying to do my forward snowploughs! At the moment, I do these from a two foot glide - and then transfer my weight over to my left leg, and push my right leg out to the side on a slight inside edge, and slightly turned out. Just like going forward really only turning the foot out instead of in! I only spent about five minutes on these, but have managed a few successfully, so much happier now about going backwards.

That was about it for today. The only other thing we covered which I didn't mention was the usual FO's - not bad, these are improving all the time now.

Well, I am off to bed with my runny blocked nose. Luckily I feel perfectly okay, just the normal fed-upness that you get with a blocked nose. Unfortunately I have to go to Manchester on a work trip tomorrow, so will be spending about 5 hours on the train. What fun. Never mind - I am off work on Friday, so can have a relaxing day . . . after a bit of skating of course!