Skating lessons 4, 5 and 6

Well, I've been lazy with the skating lesson descriptions... so it's time to catch up!

My fourth skating lesson was quite uneventful if I remember correctly. We didn't do anything new as we kept trying to get my outside edge on my left foot to go round and round in a circle. I told her that I had the distinct feeling that something's not quite right, only I didn't blame it on the blade/skate, I blamed it on myself. After I told her how hard it is for me to make the blade move on an outside edge, she got down on the ice and watched me skate in a circle. She then figured out that the blade was so positioned on the boot that it pulled me towards the inside edge, so I couldn't get the outside one, even if I wanted to!
Needless to say, I was very excited at the prospect of this not being my fault at all! LOL All kidding aside, she told me to go back to Scott (the guy who fitted my skates when I bought them) and to tell him that the "left outside edge pulls to the inside". I even wrote it down in my little notebook that I carry with me so I wouldn't forget. We continued the lesson and did some more of the same stuff, spins (she was impressed that I'd managed to get some sort of spin going), more two foot turns, swizzles, glides and a lot of brakes.
The Monday after that lesson I went to Cookes' and showed Scott my little notebook and what Christina had said. He took a look at me walking in my skates (like he had when he first fitted me) and did the same thing he had done when he adjusted my right blade all those weeks ago. He just unscrewed the left blade from the boot, put a little piece of what looks like leather between the boot and the blade and screwed it back in place. I walked back and forth for him to see and I did tell him that it felt different, like my left foot wasn't leaning in so much. Then I asked him to sharpen the skates. Oh if I'd only known.

Come Thursday, and lesson 5, I had gotten one practice session in my newly sharpened and adjusted skates in. And I was totally and completely lost. It felt like I could barely move on the ice for some reason and all the things I had learned in the previous weeks seemed extremely hard, if not impossible to do! I was very frustrated to realize that I literally couldn't skate all that well without making a superhuman effort.
So when I told Christina before my lesson, she looked at my blades and told me straightaway that they were sharpened way too much and that with these I'd be going to the 2010 Olympics! LOL She then got Richie (the guys who maintains the ice rink) to look at them and he told me to literally "wipe" my blades against the plastic that guards the ice on the inside of the rink. So that's exactly what I did for about 5 minutes, trying to dull the blades a little so I could skate halfway normally.
Once I'd managed to do that we started the lesson. I did all the usual stuff again and then we tried to do backwards glides on one foot. Weeeeeelll... that wasn't happening no matter how hard I tried. There is something in me that goes against the feeling you get when skating backwards. I can't quite put my finger on it which is very annoying because I pick up new things really quickly when I skate them forward but backwards is a complete disaster. She told me to keep practising gliding backwards on one foot and then showed me how to pivot.
Pivoting is the same general motion as the spin only instead of keeping your centered blade flat on the ice, here you stick your toe pick in the ice and put your entire weight on that. At the same time, you move your outside leg around in a circle. It looks so simple but trust me, it's not. First of all, my toes were hurting when I put all that weight on them and second, I was not able to control the width of my circle for my other leg. So I'd go waaaaay out with it and then couldn't bring it back in. Again, that was something to work on. Then we tried the outside edges on my left foot again and Christina seemed to notice that while it was a bit better than it had been before, it still wasn't right. So she made me glide a few more times in different directions, on different edges and then asked to write in my notebook so I could take it to Scott.
When I went to see him this Monday, I gave him my notebook and he read through Christina's instructions which included "the blade seems a bit warped" and "she's leaning in too much". It took a good half hour to get the whole thing straightened out but eventually I got into my skates, walked up and down and it seemed much better. He also put some soles into the boots to make my left foot fit better inside the boot as it felt a bit more flaky than the right.

Today was lesson 6 and I was kinda dreading the new changes because I hadn't had the time to see how the skates worked before my lesson. Getting on the ice though was a whole different story this time. I skated around the rink once and then immediately got onto the hockey circle on a left outside edge and boy, was it different! Suddenly I could glide on my left for as long as I could on my right! It was very cool.
I showed Christina and she was happy for me too - we did the usual stuff again to warm up, then tried over and over and over again to get the backward glides going. It just isn't happening for me at the moment. That move doesn't feel natural to me and I tense up so much trying to put my weight onto the front of the blades that my feet hurt like crazy! It's definitely the main thing I need to work on, no doubt. It doesn't make it easier of course, that whenever I do practice it's during public skating hours and there's lots of unpredictable people around so I can't count on them watching out for me. I could pay $10/hour to do VERY early morning skating at a great ice rink but that would not only make me poorer, but also late for work twice a week and I already feel guilty for taking longer lunches than usual when I go ice skating.
The new thing we started today was forward crossovers. Just hearing the word almost made the hairs on my neck stand on end. As she was showing me how to do them, I kept thinking "This is the biggest leap of faith ever!".
The basic idea behind a crossover looks so incredibly simple that you can't imagine it being so hard. The idea is you are, for example, going in a circle on your right foot. That means you're on your right outside edge. The crossover is called a crossover because you then basically pick up your left foot and whilst still on your right outside edge, you move the left foot across, or over, your right foot, set it on the ice so that you end up being on the same circle but on your left foot's inside edge. I know this sounds complicated but believe you me, it's nothing like having to actually DO it! That split second that you're on your outside edge and then move that other foot across and set it down is the most terrifying thing. For me anyway!
Once the actual lesson was over I still had about 20 minutes to practice so I started working on the crossovers. Needless to say the more I did it the more confident I became. When I finally got to the point where I actually pushed off on my right outside edge enough so I had some good speed, the crossover didn't seem too hard anymore. Of course I'm far from actually doing a real, good looking crossover but at least I'm getting there!

I guess the main problem I see at the moment with my skating is the fact that, as ridiculous as it may sound, my thighs and legs are so FAT that they don't allow me to do a lot of things easily. So I suppose I need to work on minimizing their size! LOL We'll see how that goes! LOL

Ok, enough of this for now - more next week! :-)