Registered!

 It's been a week. Oof. So busy! I've been practicing but I just haven't had the time to update so I'll try to sum everything up in one post.  

Practices - I've been running through both the Silver Free Skate and the Free Dance and they are actually not too bad. When I was at Apex practicing, another adult skater commented on how pretty my music was and how lovely I looked (which I really needed to hear because this is the most insecure I've felt about my skating since I came back from the broken leg years ago). Then, when I was at the Y on Sunday, I ran my Free Skate and received applause at the end from the other skaters sharing the ice with me. They may have just been being polite but I needed that too. The good thing is that I'm getting through the program, my timing is good, and I'm ending with the music (just barely). Because my practices have been okay, I went ahead and registered both the Free Skate and the Free Dance for the upcoming Colorado Springs Invitational. Honestly? I'm really anxious about skating at the Silver level. I just feel completely out of my league but I know this is where I need to be in my skating journey. Ugh, I'm just afraid of embarrassing myself, you know? I didn't feel this way when I went from Pre-Bronze to Bronze but going from Bronze to Silver is such a huge jump in skill level. I'm more than a little intimidated. Yikes. 

Lesson - We started with a run through of the Free Skate. It went well enough except for the final spin. Last week we had discussed putting a combo spin at the end. I've been playing around with combo spins for the last two years and they are barely improving. I struggle with basic spins most of the time so combo spins are not really going to happen anytime soon. I asked if I could put a layback as the final spin and he told me it really needs to be a combo. Like, I was feeling maybe okay with how the program was going. Even somewhat capable on occasion but, with a combo spin in there, I don't feel confident that I can end the program on a high note. I started anxiety-ing about it during our lesson before we came up with the plan of doing a camel to upright into a backspin. Okay, I can do that. That's within the realm of my capabilities. So we worked on that a bit before running the program again in its entirety with the new spin in place. The ending still wasn't fantastic but at least this is something that I can work on and possibly improve. The hardest thing is holding each position for at least 3 revs each. Ugh, spins. They really are my weakest element. 

IJS - This being my first foray into a new scoring system, I'm constantly bombarding Christopher with IJS questions. My question today was whether or not I will get a 10% bonus for having two jump combos and a single jump pretty much packed into the last 30 seconds of the program (that's a total of 6 jumps!). He confirmed that, yes, I will. That's nice because I'll need all I can get. I know I'll get an edge call on my Lutz and my Flip technique is not entirely clean. So that will help. This was also the first time I have had to put in Planned Program Content for a Free Skate. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. For some reason, I thought I had to know all of the codes but it was just a bunch of drop down menus where I could put in my elements. That was nice and easy. What stresses me out though is the fact that anyone ANYONE can look at the score sheet and see what got downgraded and what got +/- GOE. Like, I love that can see exactly what worked and what didn't but I don't love that everyone else can see it too. Sigh. 

Side note - I've been really hot lately during practices and I'm not sure if it's the summer heat, the extreme humidity in the rinks (especially at the Y), or just the fact that I'm working harder. But I'm wearing tank tops and I still get off the ice sweaty and red in the face. Ew.