A big fall . . . but not me!

Usual Sunday now of skating at Lea Valley, whilst Stacey rode at the stables next door. Poor girl - she had her first fall off a skittish horse today and has hurt her wrist. But she got back on straight away, which is fantastic - some people would have struggled with that I think.

I had quite a nice skate at Lea Valley - surprisingly, it didn't get that busy today. More than a patch obviously, but I didn't feel like I was running out of room at any point.

Lots of power stroking today - it was like my iPod had been plugged into the speaker system, and all my favourite songs were playing, so for once it was just nice to skate around to the music, trying to stroke in rhythm and remembering that nice feeling of just skating. It's so easy to get so caught up on one element, that sometimes it's nice to just . . . move!

Saying that, I did quite a few bits as well. Backward crossovers (of course!) not long after getting on the ice. They have felt better and did feel a little shakey the first time round today, but that made me even happier that I still did them. The second time I did them, I managed to get a smidge more speed and power into them.

I did lots of one and two foot slaloming, FXO's, edges and swingrolls. Barrel rolls felt quite good and I practiced my LFO3 transition for changing from FXO's to BXO's on a figure of eight for my Field Moves. I'm just beginning to learn that doing an element in isolation is a far different game from putting it into some combination!

Twizzles next - they went slightly better than my lesson (which wouldn't be hard!) and tried some without using the barrier. I don't know how correct it was, but I managed a whole revolution just once! The rest were about 1/2 - 3/4 of a turn, but it felt like an improvement! I then moved onto spins - today I managed to do quite a few controlled, single rev one-foot spins, which I was really happy with. I can't wait to be able to spin properly!