Friendly Competition and "Compliments"

I've had the pleasure of having a few friends in skating with whom I am competitive, but completely friendly. It's so fun to compare notes on how we're progressing on certain elements.

One friend keeps staying one step ahead of me in her tests, so we've never competed against each other, but we're both trying to get our axels right now. We have the same coaches. She's dying to land her axel, and often talks about my attempts spurring her on.

She reported to me a recent conversation she'd had with Coach.
"How is my axel looking?" she asked him. "Does it look like an adult axel? Or a kid axel? How does it compare to Alejeather's?"
Coach was reluctant to compare our axels, but she pressed him, and he finally admitted, "She gets around more than you do."

"He said I get around more than you?" I asked when she told me the story. "That's only a compliment in figure skating!"

Never Enough

I did a clean run-through of my program in my lesson this morning. I landed every jump. I hit all of my spin positions, I didn't stumble in any of my footwork or transitions, and I finished on time. I was beaming when I finished.

There were still a few minutes left in my lesson and my coach asked me if I could do a split jump. I told him he'd seen me do one before, because he'd said, "I didn't know you could do that!" He didn't remember, but sent me out to show him one. I had no idea where he was going with this.

Then he said, "This time, after the split jump, do a mohawk into a flip jump." So I tried it.

Then he said, "Do it again, but add a loop-toe loop after the flip. Now that's a sequence!" So I tried it... and it wasn't so bad. I do a flip-loop-toe as the opening jumping pass in my program, and so I thought he was maybe trying to strengthen the combo by making me try something more difficult.

"That's pretty good! I want you to add that into your program." Um, what? I thought he was joking, but he wasn't and told me to show my choreographer/coach in our next lesson.

I'm not so sure about it. I think my split jump is okay--my extension isn't what it used to be and my arms always go way too high. I also think it takes away from the combo, which isn't as big and floaty with the split jump first, but maybe that will get better with practice. And finally, I don't know that it works choreographically. But we'll see what my other coach has to say.

The moral of the story is, you run a clean program for your coach 7 weeks before the competition, and it's never enough! You'll get more troubles heaped on!

Eulogy for a Pair of Skates

After a two month process of ordering and exchanging new boots and blades, I have finally begun to break in a new pair of skates. Around the time I ordered the new skates, I bought some colored laces for my current skates. After all, these skates have seen me through a lot and I figured I'd send them out with a bang.

They weren't technically my first skates, but they were pretty close to it.

I broke my ankle in these skates. And I returned to the ice in these skates.

I passed my first test in these skates. In fact, I've passed 11 tests in these skates.

I did my first competitions in these skates. I brought home 7 medals in these skates.

I learned to spin in these skates. 

I landed my first loop, flip and lutz in these skates. 

I attempted my first axel in these skates. (update: landed underrotated axels in them?)

I attended my first dance weekend in these skates. 

I've gone through 6 coaches in these skates, 3 of whom I take from now.

I've skated at ten rinks in seven states in these skates. 

Thank you, dear skates, for all you have seen me through. Happy retirement :)

Axels and Brackets

So much skating, and yet so little time.

The further you progress with skating, the more time it takes to maintain your current skills while adding new ones. I want to test gold moves and bronze dances by next summer. I'm planning to go to Adult Nationals in April and I'm working on landing an axel and suddenly all the many hours I spend skating a week just don't seem like enough. Especially with that axel.

I started full on working on my axel about two months ago and it has consumed a lot of skating time. In fact, all my lessons with one of my freestyle coaches have been dedicated to the jump. I'm starting to get it to a point now where I don't need the harness so axel can be part of the lesson instead of consuming the full lesson time with her. I haven't given any of my coaches a blog name yet, but let's call this one Maxine.

Maxine happened to enter the rink on our lesson day while I was running through back double threes and that ended up dictating that we would have a moves lesson. As dedicated as I am to the axel, it was nice to have a change. She was happy with my second run-through of the back double threes and she also thought my back 8 has gotten better. Then we started on brackets, which I'd only touched on briefly once with a previous coach.

Oh my. I want to like brackets, I really do. But they are scary. Maxine says brackets are like a clock. There's something for your hands, head and free foot to do at every hour marking on the lobe. Now keep in mind that between forward, backward, inside and outside brackets and 5 or so "hour markings" on each lobe that depend on which turn you're doing, there are A LOT of positions to remember. I didn't get them all right away. I took a good fall on a back outside bracket and after my lesson, another coach I chit-chat with asked me if I thought I was going to die on the brackets. I laughed knowing that my back outside bracket terror was written all over my face.

But there's hope. I tried them again today and they seemed somewhat improved already. I may be able to like brackets after all.

And since I mentioned my axel is making progress, here's a video of some of my latest attempts. It's still not fully rotated, but I have hope that it will get there some day if I can ever learn to hold a good air position.

Dance Lesson

My dance coach intimidates me. He's kind of goofy but also very exacting. And sometimes it's hard to tell when he's kidding. I hate practicing on the same ice that he's on when I'm not in a lesson. I always feel like he's watching out of the corner of his eye and disapproving of my skating. I always want so very badly to please him during my lessons. I try to apply the specific instructions he's giving me while trying to also perform the dance well and to do so, I have to concentrate very hard. This concentration often shows on my face. Sometimes, it's just a look of pure determination. Once, while working on the swing dance, he told me to relax, that, "sometimes, you get a bit stare-y."

Recently, we were going through the ten-fox and doing the dance in hold. It was the first time we'd ever done it in hold and we never get through a dance in hold the first time. He always stops me to give me a correction. So when we got through the side pattern and started going around the end, I kept expecting him to stop me at any second. At the same time, I was trying to follow him and figure out how the partnering part was supposed to go. And while I was keeping up with that, I was trying to read him to figure out if I was on the right path. I see him giving me a strange look as we finish the pattern.

"Why are you giving me a funny look?" he asked me.
"You were giving me a funny look!" I explained.
"Oh, well that's because you were giving me a funny look."
Oh, well, that's settled.
"I guess we have a chicken-and-egg situation here," he quipped, "which one do you want to be?"
We both paused a beat and then spoke at the same time.
"I'll be the chicken."
"I'll be the egg."
"Oh, good," he said, "at least we're on the same page about something."

The Off Season

After my second place finish* at the competition a few weeks ago, it has officially become my off-season. I won't compete again until Sectionals in March 2014. So what's happening in the meantime?

Well, I'm anxiously waiting on a new pair of boots and blades to arrive. I've made a drastic change in both, so I know that getting used to them and breaking in the boots is going to take some time and pain. I hope to be starting to skate in them about two weeks from now, but I don't think production on them is even finished yet.

I've been working on lots of spins, and particularly some variations and a new camel spin entry. I'm searching for music to put together a new free skate program. I've started on gold moves as well. I want to pass them by next summer, but I think I overdosed on moves when I failed silver. I like the double threes patterns, but I've decided that power circles are evil, and the backward 8 is almost impossible. I'm making good progress on my bronze dances. So I'll certainly be keeping busy.

But the thing I'm most excited about right now is that I've officially started on the axel!!! Today, I attempted them on the ice sans harness for the first time. I was waiting on the go-ahead from a coach before I tried these and today, in my lesson, after a few walk-throughs, my coach told me to go for it! She was very pleased with my attempts. She told me I had a good concept of the axel and thinks that I will have it in no time. In our next lesson, we'll put them back in the harness (and work on brackets). Video proof:



*It sounds like I'm bitter or upset about the whole thing, but I'm not, not in the least. That same weekend, I did my first solo dance event and won both my dances. I also received all first place ordinals for the bronze compulsory, out of five competitors. And my team won the team event! It was a truly wonderful weekend, and a second place finish in the "main" event just makes me want to work that much harder :)

Second

I faced off against one of my best skater friends in competition for the first time this weekend. We had been greatly anticipating this for some time. She's been one of my biggest supporters since we started skating together and still hasn't stopped accusing me of sandbagging at my last competition, when I skated pre-bronze. But when I passed my bronze test, we knew that we would have a face-off sooner or later.

We've made jokes about sabotaging one another but verbally agreed several weeks ago that nothing would change between us no matter the outcome. We've cheered each other on as we prepared our programs. We've now even decided to hold our own personal Grand Prix where we accumulate points. But Saturday came the real test, the first event in our competitive series.

She came out on top.

I skated first in our group of three. Since I botched my spins in my competition in June, my primary goal was to nail those. I wouldn't say I nailed them, but they definitely took a step in the right direction. I'm not too upset about it since I've struggled severely with consistency in my spins, especially the camel, and I managed to pull off a recognizable camel-sit, even if it wasn't as strong as I would have liked. But I also had my first competition fall. I fell between the loop and toe loop in my flip-loop-toe combo. I have no idea what happened. In fact, I didn't even know when I had fallen until I watched the video. My final spin was not as strong as it could be, but I finished with the music, after picking up after my fall. Despite the fall, I felt better about the performance than my June one.

My friend skated a lovely debut of her new program. She said I must have lent her my jump combo for the day, as her flip-toe loop-loop came out much better than it normally does. She was a joy to watch and skated a clean program.  At the end of her program, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that she would take first place.

We took a funny picture of me trying to push her off the top of the podium when we got our medals, but besides having wanted to win, I'm pleased with the outcome. I think, at least for this competition, that had I won, the joy of it would have been spoiled by my disappointment for her. Maybe it's because I think I only could have won if she had made a serious error or two and nobody wants their friend to skate that way. But I did get one first place ordinal in the event, and I am very, very proud of that.

And so ends the first event in our Grand Prix. And I'm already behind! Train, train train! Because next time, I plan to put up a better fight for first ;)