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!