Wearing myself out

As I can skate a lot this month at Ally Pally, with my days off, I went for it and bought a monthly pass. So yesterday, I did two public sessions - not the whole lot, but probably about three hours in total. The ice was lovely as well - really smooth, and apparently they've been working on evening the bumps out by watching where they lay the water down. It is a pleasure to skate there at the moment :)

In the morning, it was seriously quiet - at the most, there were four other people, and for half an hour it was just me. "Static" things like mohawks and 3-turns weren't playing so I did some "big" things instead.

I did some forward crossovers on a figure 8 - not bad, both sides happening at the same speed. My only reluctance on the CW direction now is how steep the curve is - I need to work on being less worried about the curve as I seem to prefer doing it much straighter. But pleased that I have the speed up on these now so I am sure this will come soon. I am also concentrating on getting good extension and am almost breaking it up into bits, to ensure I am hitting the right position. In fact, I am doing this on a lot of things now. I'm kind of going back to my ballet training, where you would learn a new step slowly, making sure technique was right, and then speeding it up and letting it flow once those basics are there.

After doing the field move edges on my lesson and not getting six edges to fit the length, I did a lot of work on these today, especially my inside edges which were falling woefully short of the end of the rink. I first of all spent a lot of time just doing the edges with my free leg extended nicely behind me, and working on increasing the power behind the push. Then I started introducing the bringing through of the free leg to the front, and bingo! I can now get six of these nicely into the required length. I could definitely feel all the muscles in my back and bum working as well, which was great :)

I spent some time doing them on the outside edges as well. Now, I don't have any problem fitting six of these in. In fact, my outside edges are a little shallow and need to be increased. My blades are somewhat slidey at the moment though and I am going to have them sharpened hopefully on Monday, so I am hoping that my outside edges will feel a little more secure and I can get a steeper edge.

I practiced some Russian Stroking (by the way, my boss thinks I am making up these names - it took him a while to get over "Mohawk"). Being new to this and as before, I am trying to do it slow and controlled, so I hit the correct position with each step and with nice leg extension. I do like this though.

I then went for a coffee, a rest and a read of a magazine while they Zamboni'd the ice for the next session. I stayed for about another hour, and apart from chatting far too much to another skater, I concentrated on mohawks and 3-turns. As before, they weren't playing initially but then they decided to co-operate. I was quite pleased with mohawk progress in the end - on my R-L side at least, I am sometimes getting much more over that LBI edge now. FO3's were playing by the end as well - beaten into submission I think! From tomorrow, I will start bringing FI3's back into the equation.

I was completely exhausted by the time I got home! Not skating today though. Taking it easy and just had a lovely Eggs Benedict in a Crouch End cafe - yum! Back to the Littlest Rink tomorrow evening, and then Ally Pally again Monday, as I am not back to work till Thursday. Sigh - if only I could win the lottery. Then I could skate like yesterday, every day!