CHAMPAGNE!

 You know how I've been working on the LBO 3 turn for a year and a half and it hasn't turned? Guess what happened today?!?! IT TURNED!!!!! It was a legit turn too! With a glide out! YASSSSSS!

Before we talk about my new awesome LBO 3 turn, I should talk about what came before that. I warmed up with the usual routine of Silver Moves, jumps, and spins. I had one really good camel today that was speedy and had lots of revs. I finished it off with a nicely centered scratch spin. I think this was my best camel spin to date! I was pretty excited! I ran through all of my jumps and jump combos and those were looking okay as well. I even did the flip exercise using my guard in place of Long Dog. 

24 Program Challenge (7/24) - I ran my program and it was pretty nice. Everything happened right on cue and I finished in time with the music. All spins and jumps happened as they were supposed to and my choreographic step sequence was pretty good too! I was having a pretty good skate so far so I moved on to working on MIF trouble spots (AKA the LBO 3 turn). 

Turnt - As usual, I went to the wall to work on practicing these at the boards and a funny thing happened. They turned! I was like WHA?! so I did some more and those turned too? So I was like "what would happen if I tried them away from the boards? Would they still turn??? So I went out into open ice and I tried it and IT HAPPENED! I literally stood there with my hand over my mouth and tears welled up. It's been a year and a half working on this one turn and Christopher and other people have tried EVERYTHING in their bag of tricks to get this to happen for me. And here I am standing there after having just done it! I couldn't believe it! Like, how can it just suddenly happen like that? I didn't do anything different except try again like I always do. I was so giddy, I got my phone and I recorded myself doing it and I texted my husband to tell him the good news (he's been listening to me lament about this turn for almost two years and he was the first person I wanted to hear the good news). Christopher got on the ice for our lesson and I skate flailed up to him and told him what just happened and he was just as happy as I was! I'm so thankful he kept working with me on it and didn't give up on me! Best coach! So, of course, we worked on them for half of our lesson. AGHGHG! This means I can maybe test Silver Moves this year after I get them spruced up a bit! YaY! Let this day live on in infamy! Mandi got her LBO 3 Turn! Hells yeah!