I think I actually have TWO coaches....

Had my second practice session today. As I had hoped, giving my brain a day to assimilate what I'd practiced yesterday was very productive - you really do need to sleep after new learning, whether it's academic or physical. There's something that happens overnight in the brain, and you wake up the next morning with a better command of what you learned. It was that way for me. Stopping (which I spend half an hour on the previous day) came back well and I had pretty good control of it - so much so that I really didn't have to focus much on it. Instead, I worked more on my forward stroking (that bend-the-knee-glide-forward thing).

The difference this morning was that my coach and his dance partner were there doing their own workout. Will came over, said HI, and complimented me on my stops (I'd been doing some to warm up). Later as I was working on my forward stroking, his partner came up and said "this was driving her crazy and she HAD to fix it".... in other words, I think I've just grown a second coach. :) She told me I was killing my forward momentum by not bending my standing leg enough, then proceeded to grab my arm, press down on my shoulder and keep it there while I tried to move.... it worked, of course- I got the difference immediately. She allowed as how she's "not as nice as Will" as a coach - I think I'm caught in the middle of a "good cop, bad cop" thing - which isn't bad at all. I just hope she doesn't feel obligated, and that she's doing it because she wants to help. :) I very much appreciated the correction.

After just going back and forth on one end of the rink the whole morning, at the end I decided to take a risk and try to connect strokes together and make it around the rink... Remember, the place is FULL of people who know exactly what they are doing, and I live in terror of running into one of them in my inexperience. When you do this right, you spend most of your time on one foot or the other gliding, and one mis-step and I catch a toe pick and barrel into some unsuspecting kid in the middle of a spin. Kind of like bowling, except I'm the ball.

Here's where my acting training came in handy. I just put my courage together, remembered how I'd seen skaters all my life lift their chins, reach out with their arms, an just GO - and that's what I did.... and it felt right. IT FELT RIGHT!!!! I got all the way around the rink, stopped in a controlled fashion at the gate, stepped off the ice, and nearly screamed for joy!

By the way - it's amazing how much sweat you can generate standing on a block of ice. Counter-intuitive, I know... just one more weird thing to get used to. I have to start wearing layers that I can peel off during a practice. By the end, I could feel the sweat trickling down my back - but didn't care because it was well earned :)