Catching up

Monday Lesson - Before we started out lesson, Christopher asked me if I had any upcoming competitions in mind. I'm considering Casper. I did it last year and it was well run. I'm really glad he asked, actually, because I saw that the day before competition day, they are hosting a test session and I wanted to see if I'm allowed to get on the ice for a test even though he won't be there. He said "I don't advise it" which, yeah. I would rather have him there for sure but considering I wasn't able to test in the Fall like I had originally planned because of my surgery, this seems like a good moment to knock one out. Specifically, the one I would like to knock out is my Free Dance since I have been working on it for almost a year and things keep cropping up that prevent me from testing (new skates, surgery, etc.). He eventually acquiesced and gave me his blessing to at least test the Free Dance so, yay. Anyway, since we were talking about it, he wanted to see parts of it (step sequence, spins, emotions). He said the ending is looking really good but he would like to hear a little less scratching on the twizzle. Overall, I think it's in good shape for testing. Moving on, we partnered all three of the Bronze dances starting with the Hickory Hoedown. This is my strongest dance out of the three but I've been practicing it solo. When I partnered it with him today, it felt like a totally different dance. The changes of hold and positions is something I can't practice on my own very well so we spent some time trying to get that under control. Especially difficult was the transition from waltz hold back to Killian in the end pattern. He wants me to do this fancy arm thing to make it look a little better. Moving on to Willow Waltz and Ten Fox, mostly I need need to be stronger with my holds and have neat feet. That damn outside mohawk in the Ten Fox is killing me, though.

Tuesday Practice - I realized I haven't done my annual Goal Post (I'll get that on the blog soon). However, I have decided that I want to be more organized with my practices so I can be sure everything gets worked on. No more punking out on a skill because of fear or lack of time. So I experimented today with that. I did my typical warm up laps, then I moved right into pattern dances (all of them) because I feel like this is a nice warm up for my edges at the beginning of a session. Next, I ran through ALL of my Gold Moves. Finally, I warmed up jumps and spins, ran programs, and spot checked problem areas. Everything went as planned so I think this is a practice schedule I should try to stick to. I even spent some time working on those damn Brackets. I picked a hockey circle and just went back and forth with the FI and FO Brackets. I dabbled in some BO Brackets too but wasn't very successful. I might need a refresh from Christopher (and by refresh I mean he might need to hold my hands on these again). I'm able to do them at the wall but out on open ice I flounder. 

Overall, I'm feeling back to 100% and am ready to work hard this year. I told Christopher that this is "The Year of Testing." I have all three Bronze dances, my Free Dance, and my Free Skate to get out of the way. Because I couldn't test in the Fall like I had planned, I will not be able to meet the deadline to go to National in SLC (*sad trombone*). I cannot skate up to Silver at Nationals and I think it would be weird to step down to Bronze (even though that's technically my level). So, I might do Sectionals instead. We'll see. Kinda bummed about Nationals but...things happen. I'll deal with it.