Competition news, program excitement and a bit of a whinge. (Well, you gotta have a bit of variety in a post...)

Great news, guys.

As many of you will  know, the 10th ISU Adult Figure Skating Competition will be held as usual in Oberstdorf, Germany towards the end of this month, and I'll be able to bring you news directly from team GB over there thanks to one of the skaters.

Lulubelle Alexandra has kindly agreed to provide us with news throughout the competition as well as some video coverage if possible. She will be competing there herself, defending her gold artistic title and competing in the gold free skating category too. I wish you - and everyone else - the best of luck, Lulu.

For those of you not familiar with this international competition, it's been held in Oberstdorf every year since 2005. That first year, 120 skaters from 12 countries participated. Six years later, in 2011, that number had risen to more than 300 from 25 countries - so you can see how it's grown. It includes skaters from all disciplines - free, artistic, pairs, ice dance and synchro.

I'd love to one day
be good enough to compete in something like this - pipe dream or what?!

At least I may soon be one teeny, tiny miniscule step closer though....

To my great delight, in yesterday's lesson, Coach A finally brought up the subject of putting together a little routine for me - yay!

Celebrate good times, come on!

I suppose it's about the right time since I'm technically supposed to be working towards my gold passport, which requires a program anyway, but Coach A isn't too fussed on following levels exactly (and neither am I); we just work on whatever needs working on.

I'll be hopeless at it, I'm certain of that, but will love having something fun to work on. I love skating when there's good music to listen to anyway, so it's an exciting prospect.

Poor Coach A is going to have his work cut out though - there's not a dancer's bone in my body (and therefore no sense of rhythm), haha!

Good luck with that.

Speaking of music, we've had rather a few unhappy skaters at our local rink lately.
There's unfortunately a feeling that if you're not a teenager who'll skate at the disco session (and therefore bring in lots of money as one of hundreds crammed onto the ice), or a hockey player, there's not much interest in you.

It started when they put up the cost of lessons - not just by a token amount, but by about 14%, so £3 on a lesson. The argument was that it's still in line with, or cheaper than, other rinks around the UK, which is true, but this doesn't take into account that our region is a deprived one. I know many parents who had to cut their child's lesson to 15mins from 30, or stop their lessons altogether.

When a petition was presented to management, the response to our argument that figure skaters bring in a lot of money to the rink was that we don't. (!) They said the money comes from those skating on public sessions, and that, essentially, our money was a drip in the pond. There appeared to be no recognition that a lot of the "public" skating on the "public sessions" are actually people who have lessons, practising.

In addition, lately there have been quite a few daytime public sessions (mainly attended by adult skaters) where due to bookings, there has been only two-thirds of the ice available (ice which hasn't seen a Zamboni all day), and no music allowed. This would perhaps be acceptable if there was any warning in advance, or if they didn't still charge the full price.

Does this happen elsewhere?

All we'd like is a bit of communication. If we knew in advance, we could make an informed decision on whether to travel across to the rink.

In slightly happier news, I recently got some new blades (Coronation Ace), and while I expected to feel weird on them, I didn't at all. From the second I got onto the ice, I felt used to them (pretty much), and I LOVE them. Everything feels much easier and more stable, especially edges. It may be psychological, but whatever works, works. Happy me!