The Simsbury report

Toby's in the Ivan Lendl wheelchair sports camp this week in West Hartford CT.  He adores it.  I adore it too - not only because it's so great to see him in a such an active sport-focussed and accessible experience, but also because I drop him off and head to the rink.  There are three to choose from:

Veterans Memorial Rink.   This is a great rink.  I skated on it for the whole week last summer.  They have long mid-day public sessions, although lots of camper kids who get on about an hour into it.  I'll skate there a few times this week.  Bonus - I found out last week that this is the rink where Mary Jo skated while growing up - a coach from North Carolina who I adore.  Skating there knowing that?  It's pretty touching.

Newington  According to my skate-mom informant, this rink has the best freeskating ice around and sessions aren't that expensive - I'll head there later this week

and Simsbury  home of a zillion Russian coaches and a fair number of elite skaters.  I called to see if any of the coaches had time available this week for a guest lesson with me - and yes, both M Gregory and Denis P had time. 

Today I skated a single hour-long session – the first half was a lesson with Melissa G.  I went into the lesson with the goal of coming out with a bit of a footwork "toolkit" - things I could play with for putting together a footwork sequence for a new program.  I'm playing with new music (a Yo-Yo Ma track - it screams for deep edgework) - and I specifically want some input on pulling pieces together to get a leveled footwork sequence under IJS judging.  I ended with the beginnings of a footwork sequence - it needs some more stuff added for the leveling, but it has potential.

In the video, Melissa does it first, and then I do it - not well b/c my brain hadn't encoded it yet - but Melissa was calling out the pieces so mostly that part is for me to remember it.  We did a bit more after this - adding some chotaws, a LFI twizzle and a loop going in the other direction.

I thoughly enjoyed the time and the lesson.  We listened to my cd/new music (thanks Mary Jo!) and simultaneously did my old footwork sequence so she could get an idea of what I could do.  Then we just started playing – putting together things – and ended up with a decent edgy footwork sequence that’ll probably work pretty well with the new music – or some variant of it. 

I did take a plop straight down while trying a F counter that I hadn’t tried in a long time – one of those where it just jars along your entire spine.  So it’s extra hard to pick Toby up tonight – those muscles need some “rolling” with my stick and maybe some Tylenol.  Aside from that – it was a really good lesson.

I skated hard for the next half hour – jumping much of it, though it took a while to get a decent axel or two.  I was going to do another session – but decided to hold it for tomorrow – and I scheduled a dance lesson with Denis P tomorrow after watching him work with a few others. 

I spent the next few hours watching some of the other sessions.  There were some really great little skaters.  A friend of the family's daughter Brooklee is really quite good – lovely high fast-rotating jumps, and really nice musicality.  Her spins were awesome too – she had at least one that’s a level 4 – where she eventually ends up in a back pancake that goes on for a dozen plus revolutions.  Holy cow.  The Training Center does a good job at focusing on IJS-oriented programs - it was interesting to watch a lot of the program run-throughs.

There’s more tomorrow, then Thurs I’ll go to Newington.