Preparing to test pre-bronze

I had a skating lesson this morning and my single Salchow, Toeloop, and waltz-toe combinations are all consistent and good. My sit spin and scratch spin are great, and my back scratch spin is coming along nicely. I've learned a program for my test date, and my moves-in-the-field items are pretty good as well. I just need to polish my backwards inside edges a bit, but even as things stand, I'll pass my pre bronze moves test. I'm very excited about that!

The Pre-Bronze test is on the USFSA Adult Track and for moves, it involves:

1. Forward Perimeter Stroking


2. Basic Consecutive Edges

3. Forward and Backward Crossovers

4. Waltz Eight

5. Forward Three-Turns


So far...everything is coming along!

Blade in the Breast...and no it isn't a euphemism

Well...where to begin.

Oh yeah...a blade in my boob!

Last night at syncro practice, we were working on a section of the program where we break from a circle of 12 into a pyramid of 3 lines. My line goes to the back. The leader of the line, however, did not cut straight back and did some sort of pull-a-round with our line. The coach said she saw it in slow motion and knew that it would end badly. Indeed it did. I ended up on the ice sobbing. Someone's blade went into my breast, thankfully it did not cut, just made a big freaking bruise. My whole body just aches. I feel like I got runover by a truck when in reality I got runover by a "hot mess"

I was frustrated at practice last night anyway, and this incident did not help things at all. bad times. Bad times

And down I go

So, last night was our performance as part of the winter ice show for the Park District. It was um...special. I had some unexpected visitors in the audience, so I was extra nervous and a little emotional and when someone nudged me the wrong way, I fell. I was terribly disappointed to be the one to fall during a program. I did get right back up and right back into the program and finished without further incident, but it was a tough night and a rough skate for me.

Kalamazoo

Our first competition was a disaster! I was so disappointed. We went out on the ice and looked really good during our warm ups and despite the fact that I hdan't slept the night before (due to losing my job in an unrelated issue), I was ready to skate. I was so nervous...this was my first competition in over 10 years. The first time I had competed on a Synchro team! I was breathing so hard and could feel my heart pounding, but I put a huge smile on my face and skated my heart out.

Then they started our music...

Things were going beautifully at first. Our opening mohawks and our wheel were awesome. And then...half of the wheel got lost and we missed our pass through and we were literally just standing on the ice. Just standing there looking dumbfounded. Not sure if this link will work, but if it does, you can see us looking really sad.

I was so upset. I had worked so hard for the weeks leading up to the competition and I felt like the "better skaters" had kind of dropped the ball. Some of them even said "I don't care" as we were walking off the ice. I had never cried at a skating competition before, but I totally lost it after our performance. I couldn't believe how badly we did. We placed sixth. Yeah...it was that bad.

Another practice

So last night, it was back to the rink again. We had our dress rehearsal for the competition on Saturday. We had to have on our dresses, have our fake hair in, and have our bangs bumped. It was kind of surreal to be in a skating dress again-- especially one that's longer and made differently than the ones I used to wear. I spent a lot of time worrying that my boobs were going to fly out of the dress. It's a halter style on top and the angle of the front is a bit scary if you've got big boobies. At least the dress is black and PINK!!!!! The coach had cancelled practice for the other team, so the full hour and twenty minute ice session belonged to us. Thats a full 80 minutes of skating with no breaks and I MADE IT THROUGH THE WHOLE THING WITHOUT STOPPING ONCE!!!!! I made it through the whole practice-- no stops no tears and only one blood sugar crash that was remedied with a quick gulp of juice and a bite of a candy bar. But i made it!




The coach had the whole routine videotaped and it did not look nearly as bad as I thought it would look based on how it feels. She's not satisfied with it, of course, but I was expecting it to look much worse. I'm disappointed with how wide I look in the dress and how obvious that wideness is when i'm mixed in with 11 skinny people, but at least the dress fits and I didn't lose a boob out of the side at any time.



The best news of all however came this morning when I weighed myself... I've lost 18.8 pounds since starting skating!!!! I'm nowhere near my goal, but I"m so proud of the work I've done so far. I'm closing in on that 20 pound mark! Yay!

So, from 1993-2001, I was a competitive figure skater. I competed with both ISI and USFSA and won quite few medals, some of them gold and qualified for regionals and nationals (as an Adult Skater) and could have made somewhat of a career out of it. Obviously, I did not, but I loved skating and competing and learning.


Then I went to seminary. I was no longer financially able nor did i have the time to skate anymore. It broke my heart to stop skating, but I had an 85-mile-one-way drive to school, a full class load and a lot of work to do. So, I stopped skating. I put on weight pretty quickly without the 4-6 days a week of skating and my muscles turned to goo.

Fast forward to September 2009. A friend of a friend was at my house for a Labor Day cook out  and saw all of my old skating medals hanging on the wall and all of my old ISI patches and asked me, "You're a skater?" I politely told her that I *used* to be a skater, but hadn't skated in 9 years. She laughed and said, "You're still a skater" and somehow convinced me that I'd like to try Synchronized skating with the local adult team. She gave my name to the coach (Karen) who e-mailed me and convinced me to come to practice and well...the rest, as they say, is history. Well, not so much as history as painfully amusing, but same difference.

My first night back on ice was at synchro practice. I skated for an hour. I only fell twice. It's amazing how muscle memory kicks in even after all these years. My body was like, "come on, lets jump" my brain said, "You weigh 60 pounds more than you did last time you skated...do you think that would be wise?" I did not jump, but I was able to remember all the basics. But the next day I was so sore I could barely walk. It was a pretty sad scene.

Things were really difficult those first few months on the team. Really difficult. I cried on the way home from every practice. I started skating 3 days a week just to "catch up" and in the process quickly lost 16 pounds. Karen called me out in front of the team about my inability to make it through the program one night, and i was devastated. I couldn't believe she had said that, but ultimately it did motivate me to work even harder...

So to catch you up, there will be a few blog entries remembering the  2009-2010 season and to keep all my figure skating thoughts in one place.