I'm Loving Our New Coffee Club

Week #3 for our coffee club.  We had 12 skaters today!!  Our guest coach was Chris Anders again...
Today after warming up we spent most of our lesson working on - and learning about TURNS.
I'm sure a few of the skaters today were learning about Brackets, Rockers and Counters for the first time.

Me? I know what they are but I cannot do any of them very well.  The Adult Gold MIF test has bracket turns on the test but I am nowhere near ready to take that test yet!

Pairs Pracice 17.2

 I think I will refer to my practices this year like an app release version 17.2 equals second practice of 2017 !!  That's as clever as I can get today!

 Yesterday was our first practice in over a month with a lesson. Today we thought we would work a little harder and some of our jumps and throws and spins.

National GET UP Day is Feb 1

Happy Pairs New Year

The last time we skated was right before Christmas.. at least a month.  Between my vacation and Hanks we havn't seen each other in quite some time.  A bit out of practice and out of synch ... we had a pretty good lesson with our coach Chris Anders.

Goals for 2017:  Work on our pairs skills -better stroking, tracking, deeper edges, learn some new tricks.  No competition for this year planned.

Adult Drop In Coffee Club

After attending a few "coffee clubs" in other cities I really wanted to start one at our rink.  The dilemma was whether to have it be part of our figure skating club or a rink function.  After weighing all the options I decided that making it a rink function would allow more new adult skaters to get their feet wet... or cold.   Hopefully some of our new adult skaters will be inspired to take more lessons and join our figure skating club as a result.  First things first...: To have the experience of skating with adult peers and getting a group lesson to boot.

My rink has allowed me to use an hour of normally unused ice as a Drop-In Adult Coffee Club.
The rink also offers Drop In Hockey so they decided it was only fair to offer a similar drop in for figure skaters.  (We have no rules about what type of skates you put on your feet - just no pucks or sticks and the lessons are geared toward figure skating)

I am so excited to have been instrumental in getting this started and I hope it's a big success.  Through just word of mouth and Facebook we scrounged up 10 adults at our first session Friday Jan 13, 2017.

Happy New Year 2017

This year starts my 5th year "back" on the ice as an adult skater.  I don't know what I expected when I started.  In some ways I am disappointed in what I have NOT accomplished.  On the other hand, I am very grateful and proud of the things that I HAVE done.

I never expected to be skating pairs.  I never expected to be learning or want to learn how to ice dance.  I wish I were winning the race against time with respect to my body and physical limitations.
DON' WE ALL?

Hope everyone had a great holiday.  We got away to warmer weather.  Had 10 days in Cabo & San José Del Cabo.  Unfortunately I got a nasty bacterial intestinal infection that landed me in the hospital for 2 days.  That was just a week ago that I got out!

So I am grateful to be home and feeling much better.  Today was my first attempt at getting on the ice since Dec 21.  I was weak and shakey so out of form and balance, but all things considered, it didn't go too badly.

We Get Up

Happy New Year Everyone!

I've been away for the holidays.  When I got back ... this happened!

Adult Pairs Christmas Pops Performance

One of the hazards of skating pairs or ice dance is the 2 blade click-of-death ~
Tangled blades took me down during our performance today, but in the spirit of
#WeGetUp ... I did just that and we managed to finish out the program only having to omit a pair camel spin just before the ending.

It was a.really nice program choreographed by our pairs coach Chris Anders formerly of Disney On Ice.  We struggled to learn a lot of the steps, but worked hard to try and do them justice.  We could have used another 1-2 weeks of practice on it, but we walked away with smiles on our faces.

Much thanks to our coach Chris and my partner Hank Landis for holding me up!

3 Days Before Holiday Show

This run was at the end of our 45 minute lesson today.  Weren't sure we could pull it off, but considering we were on public session and had no music playing overhead - It wasn't too bad.
I think we can finish on time and skate more "to the music" while we can hear it overhead.  We had to dodge the little ones, that slowed it down a bit.

We will head to a freestyle session tomorrow afternoon to give it a go with music.

Christmas Crunch Time

Hank and I are finally back on the ice in our last week of practice before our club holiday show on December 10th.  We should have 5 days of practice to get this to a presentable state!