"There were some nice moments"

I dropped in on a Friday morning freestyle today since the rink will be closed for the holiday weekend and I won't be able to have my Saturday lesson. As soon as I got to the locker area I saw one of the students that I've been working with here at the college. We've talked before about skating and how we belong to the same club but we've never actually skated on the same ice. It was a bit intimidating because she's a very adept junior-level skater and I'm, well, I'm just me. But it was actually beneficial skating alongside her because I think I worked harder during this practice than I have in a while. Honestly, I just didn't want her coming back to campus and spreading the rumor that the librarian looks like a fool on ice (although she's a lovely girl and I doubt she would do that!). Still, I tried hard to look decent today so as to not embarrass myself.

Lessonz - I got to warm up for a good while before Christopher got on the ice. This is our second to last lesson before the competition so we had a lot to go through. He started out by asking me to skate my compulsory moves. All went well and I felt pretty comfortable with everything. He had me spend some time on the glide-through for the toe loop as I still have a tendency to pre-rotate. I was doing really well on these for a while. I was on a roll where I was doing proper, uncheated toe loops but it seems as though I have fallen back into bad habits. I'll focus on these more in practice. He then handed me the sash and I got ready to skate the program. All went well here; no falls, decent spins, a nice big loop jump like the one I did during my last practice, and I finished on time. When I skated back to him he said "there were some nice moments" which is as good of a compliment I can get from him since he doesn't hand them out often. I'll take it!

Competition Warm Upz - We talked a bit about what warm up will be like for the competition and he says to expect a 4 minute warm-up although don't be surprised if we get 5. He wants me to be strategic about my warm up and even practice it (I like having a plan!). So, he would like me to do a single lap of stroking, power stroking, and slaloms. Then, I move onto spins. He wants me to just do two; a simple one foot spin and then the attitude. He said to keep an eye on where he's at because if my arms go wonky during my spins he'll give me a signal to remind me to fix it. Then, I should warm up all of my jumps and try to do them in each quadrant of the rink so I get a good feel of what each part of the rink feels like. Finally, if I have some time left over, I should work one section of the program that is giving me the most worry. In this case, I'll choose the transition from the jump sequence to the attitude into the loop jump. All of this should easily take up four minutes. Having a plan means I don't need to worry about forgetting anything.

Makeup and Hairz - When we got off the ice he asked me my plans for hair and makeup, even down to the details such as what shade of lipstick will match best with my dress. I'm really glad I thought ahead and organized a hair braiding session. The makeup will be done by me and he would like me to go for more of a glam or nighttime look as that will be seen from the judges stand much better. Hair accessories are on order and should get to me next week. Oh! And he reminded me that now is probably a good time to get a blade sharpening so I can get acclimated to them before the competition.

As serious as all of this sounds, he reminded me that this is supposed to be FUN! Go out there and have a blast skating with other adults. This isn't as serious as it is for the younger skaters. I just need to remember to relax and enjoy skating :)