Moving Up, Moving On

Today, the axel went into the program.

We have a local competition here in June, and I was going to skip it. I just did Adult Sectionals and Nationals not so long ago, and later this year my area has a big adult competition and is hosting Regionals, both of which I was planning on skating. This June competition seemed like a good one to skip. But I was talked into it.

Sunday, I passed my silver free skate test, and my local silver level skating friend begged me to compete. Frankly, I'm interested in seeing how we'll fare against each other. She moved up to silver last year after Nationals, before I'd passed my bronze test, so we've never competed against each other. Secondly, I knew that once time for the competition rolled around, I'd be sorry not to be out on the ice. But I've spent so much time on my program since December, I kind of wanted to give it a rest and work on some other stuff.

But I signed up, and last night I sort of grudgingly recut my music, since silver allows 2:10, where bronze can only be up to 1:50. I tried my best to do something that wouldn't completely uproot my current choreography. The easiest thing was to add music to the beginning, but that's where some of my favorite choreography is. Silver allows one more jump pass than bronze, so I knew that's what would be going in there. The cut sounded decent, so I brought it to the rink to let my coach hear it to see what she wanted to do with it.

She likes it. And she wants to put the axel in there right up front. And she found a way to put in some choreography that I really like around it. We're also changing up my spins a bit, if they'll fit. The camel-back sit, will become a camel-sit-back sit. And the sit will become a sit-pancake. It feels like we've breathed new life into my program. Suddenly there's new stuff to work on baked right into the program.

I did my first run-through, and as I went into the camel, I thought, "I'm not usually this tired here." It wasn't until I was done that I realized that I had done 20 seconds more skating at the beginning! (Well, not quite, I think I added like 17 seconds.) I still kind of see this competition as a throw-away, and luckily, my coaches do too. It's an opportunity to put some new stuff out there without too much pressure, and now I'm looking forward to it. I'm glad I signed up. I knew I would be.