Evidence

 The Promenade was closed today so I skated a session at Apex instead. I brought my husband along to record for me since Christopher requested that I send him a video for him to critique in lieu of our typical Monday lesson. 

Moves - Wow, it was crowded. A bunch of the skaters who usually practice at the Promenade were there in addition to the skaters who usually skate at Apex. So, it was twice the amount of people and everyone was working hard on moves and programs. The nice thing was that everyone was polite and respected the order of things (something I don't usually see at the Promenade). Even though everyone was courteous, it was still pretty crowded and therefore difficult to do a full pattern of anything. So, I just worked on things where I could fit them in. I did everything except the 8 Step since that takes up so much room. FO-BI turns were nice. FI-BO not so much. It's making me pretty anxious, actually. I'll need to register for the test in a couple of weeks and I really don't feel like I'm quite at the passing standard yet. Ugh. 

The 27 Program Challenge (3/27) - Crowded or not, I needed to run my program and send the recording to Christopher. One of the girls was nice enough to let me borrow her sash and, since it had her name on it, I was "Adrianna" for a couple of minutes. Sadly, I didn't skate like Adrianna. I was hoping her sash would give me powers. No such luck. Oh well. It wasn't the worst program run through I've ever done but it was certainly still garbage. I ended on time with the music and I didn't fall. I even made all of my musical cues. But man. It's really rough. The good news is that I have a full two and a half months to polish this up before my first competition in September and at least I'm getting through it at this point. I think by the time I compete, I might be able to skate it well. 

Watching the video, I see a lot of things that I need to fix right away! The most glaring of which is my Lutz-Toe combo. I enter into it with speed and my set-up looks okay but then I pick in and it all goes to hell. I also need to really watch my arms on the choreographic step sequence, especially in regards to the toe turns. I dropped them down to my waist for some reason when they should be out in front in first position with palms out. It looks gross. Speaking of the step sequence, I need to take up more space with it too and make it more dramatic. Okay, basically, the whole thing needs to be more dramatic. Oh, and I missed the layback at the end and just did a scratch spin. But again, I have time. At least all of the choreography is there and I'm doing it roughly to speed. 

Here's the video. It's embarrassing but I'm hoping it will be the other half of a nice before & after (this being the "before" obviously, lol).