Bleurgh day 2

I went up to the afternoon public session, before my lesson at this evenings patch, and to be honest, the less said about it, the better. It was incredibly busy, and I was even more bleugh than yesterday.

Luckily, my lesson went a little better.
Perimeter Stroking: Went quite well. I am getting a much deeper knee bend. Still struggling with the one foot "presentation" glide to the centre of the rink afterwards - as soon as I turn my shoulders to face the "audience", I veer onto an inside edge. We did it on two feet to both sides, and on that side, it feels like there is a restriction under my left shoulder blade that needs cracking.
Forward Crossovers/Figure 8: I need to get more of these into the circle. First time I did three CCW and a very pathetic two CW. After a telling off, I got four in CCW and 3 in CW. Apparently for field moves, you cover the whole rink with two very big circles, so if the rink is quiet I need to practice getting in about eight of them, in a circle covering half the rink.
Backward Crossovers/Figure 8: Pathetic. Completely. I did them and more or less on my own, but they were horrendous! I've done them much better than that - they did get slightly better, but not good. And the backward one foot glide between the circles scares me, but just about managing to do a very small one my own.
Russian Stroking: For those with whom I had a bloggy discussion with, I asked my coach. She says if I am doing them for speed, they will be down in the knees. If it is for field moves, then I should be rising up in the knee. We did them that way today. Not bad - need to make sure that I push off on the FO edge to the side more, rather than forward.
Backward Russian Stroking: It's ironic. This morning I look at 3-turns fabulous videos and at this especially with my eyes wide open going "Oooh!", and next thing I know, my coach gets that glint in her eye and says "Right, let's do BACKWARD Russian Stroking!". We just did one side of the rink with me resting my hands on hers, but do you know, I quite enjoyed it! I can see this helping a lot with my BXO's as well.
3-turns: FO3's more or less worked. To the extent that I was moved on to FI3's straight away. This were bleedin' awful. I need to spend a lot of time working on these - I think this will be my main focus on Sunday evening. For a start, I need to keep my free heel against my skating heel rather than waving it around like a dead fish.
Mohawks: Not bad - they did happen and I am getting my weight over the BI edge nicely now. I need to transfer the weight a little more quickly and I want to start building up a little speed on them as they are soooooo slooooow . . .
Lunges / Drags: I have been a bit nervous about these as I have a slightly temperamental knee and have visions of it being strained. So instead, D suggested I start by doing cheated T-Stops (dragging the back foot on the inside edge), concentrating on my leg position at the back so it is straight, and building up the depth. I don't mind doing it this way and something new for me to practice!

Stayed for the rest of patch, and was feeling much better by this point about everything, after feeling frankly peed off with myself yesterday and today (see, hormones!).

When I got home, I had a big bowl of Butterscotch Angel Delight (comfort food!), and then had a comment from Mrs Redboots that was quite lovely and made me feel good about my skating.

Back to work tomorrow. I think my feet will be grateful of the rest after the 10 hours skating I have racked up in the last week. I have big red rings round my ankles now . . .