Semi-Private Ice

 I guess everyone is busy up at National Showcase because it was super dead at Apex this morning. Just myself and another adult skater. It was really nice and I got a lot of meaningful work done. It kind of made up for Thursday's loss. 

Movez - Since there was so much room to do things, I decided I would give myself a mock test and run it just like it would be run on test day. I gave myself a brief 10 minute warmup. I'm not sure how much I'll get on test day. I probably should have only done 5 minutes. Then I got to my starting position for the 8 Step Mohawk. My pattern was better and overall it was a little less scratchy then it has been but I know my bad side outside mohawk still has the tiny subcurve. I think because of that I'm not quite at a 0. Next up were the Cross Strokes. My forward strokes had some rips and I remembered to use my shoulders more but the backward strokes were still slightly steppy. I think they get better every time I skate them so they weren't the worst. I moved on to the FO-BI 3 Turns and those were fine with not a single foot down. Yay. Now onto the FI-BO 3 Turns. These were gross. I had a foot down on every backward turn on the second side. I knew this would be a reskate. Next up were spirals. These were really nice! In fact, the other adult skater commented on how great they look! That's awesome because I'm really counting on these spirals to push me into the "passing" zone. Finally, Power Pulls. I wasn't able to get any rips, although I tried. They looked okay though and the backward pulls were really nice. I added everything up and came out with -1 overall so I allowed myself a reskate of the FI-BO 3 Turns and came up with a 0!  

8 Step Mohawk = -1

Forward and Backward Cross Strokes = 0

FO-BI 3 Turns = 0

FI-BO 3 Turns = -2 (reskate -1)

Spirals = +3

Power Pulls = -1

Total Score with Reskate = 0 (Pass....but barely and I might be biased in my scoring)

So yeah, I feel like I'm really close! I have two more weeks to spice up these 3 Turns and I think I'll be okay.

The 27 Program Challenge (12/27) - After warming up all of my jumps and spins, I put my music on and ran the program. Everything was fine but I got a little too overzealous on my twizzle and ended up with an extra turn? So I missed the toe turns and the mohawk but I made up for it with a nice second half. This still needs some polish but I think I will be able to make it nice for next month's competition. I'm starting to commit more to the Lutz-Toe which is progress but the jump itself is still pretty garbage in terms of technique. Sigh.