Falling in Penguin Hell

OK, so had another lesson today. Really enjoying the experience of skating again, and can see progress is being made, which is great motivation.

There's a vote happening in the UK today, so the rink was REALLY busy when I arrived at about 11am. I did my warm up off ice, and had a skate round to let the crowds die down. It was during this time that my coach coined the term "penguin hell", because there were so many kids with these penguin skating aids, and they were all over the place, against the flow of traffic, cutting across the centre of the ice, etc.

Anyway, eventually we began, although we still had to dodge people. We started with basic forward skating, and apparently my progress after just two lessons is really good, and she's really pleased.

After that, we did some forward chasses, and worked on doing more of them, more quickly. This worked very well, and I had great fun with it. Still not 100% sure what chasses are actually FOR, but mine are closer to being signed off, which is good.

Then we did forward crossovers, these are going to take a while to click, I think. I've got the motion, but just doing them with any kind of speed isn't happening yet. It was here that I fell, for the first time in what feels like forever. I think I got my feet all tangled and just sort of, fell over. I was wearing my new wrist guards and a pair of gloves so didn't hurt my hands, my right thigh took most of the impact. I did practice crossovers again later, which is good, don't want to be scared of doing them.

We then did one foot glides in a straight line, which I had no problem with, and we signed off in my Skate UK record. We also did snowplough stops, which are OK, just need a bit of polishing to get them to passing standard.

Backwards skating next, and another thing I just can't fathom. I can STEP backwards, no problem, but can't turn those stepping motions into pushing ones to get me gliding. I've tried watching a few Youtube videos, and they've kinda helped, so we'll see next week.

Then I did some practice to finish, and had great fun. I also impressed my coach somewhat. I was skating around, and then just stuck one leg out in front and glided round the corner of the rink. Apparently it was very elegant and a great inside edge! I didn't even think about it, it's just something I was doing for fun. I also had a go at skating clockwise, because by that point the rink was empty.

My coach, at one point, was showing off her jumps and spins, and telling me "I'm going to teach you all these." At the moment, the idea of both feet off the ice, or spinning, both scare me!