Back to practice and progress

Tags

figure skating, jumps, loop jump, programs, shows, testing

Practices have been really encouraging this week, which is a relief since I took a longer break than I intended after the holiday show. I had only planned to take a week off, but because of rink closures and travel plans, I found myself off ice for close to two.

My first day back I had a sore landing foot and was favoring it. No jumps, wonky spins, everything was a bit off. I had to catch up with a day or two of getting back to basics with moves, edges and the like (which was also a necessity due to holiday crowds). But I feel back up to speed now and ready to move onward.

My first adult figure skating performance

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Coach A, costumes, figure skating, freestyle skating, programs, shows

Oy, an overdue post, I know. So my first performance EVAR was over a week ago, but I didn’t have time to sit down and process it since I went out of town Christmas week. Now I’m finally back to normal life (though not yet back to skating). Phew!

So, the show. I don’t have video because the rink wants us to buy from the professional company that taped it. So hopefully video will become available at a future date. It’s too bad the dress rehearsal didn’t quite work out as planned, because I’d wanted to get video then. But those public crowds just weren’t going to allow that.

I had a number of apprehensions going into the ice show, partly because it was my first skating performance, but also partly because I tend to get way inside my head analyzing everything to bits before The Thing happens, all in the name of preparation but really just freaking myself out. First off, I found out that the holiday show was HUGE. I was hoping for a nice dinky little rink show with a handful of skaters and two handfuls of their parents. But no, the organizer emails told us that there were EIGHTY skaters in all, most of them doing solos, making the show approximately three hours long. I KNOW.

Still working on the program…

Tags

figure skating, programs, shows, skating club

Today I signed up for the holiday show. Eep!

I’d been putting it off mostly because I’m an indecisive wuss, and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go through with it. It’s just all very intimidating, even though my coach wants me to do it and is urging her other adults to sign up as well. Funny enough, I think I’d actually feel slightly less terrified if it were a competition, because at least then I’d be skating with other adults. I’ve never been to a show at my skating club (which I just joined this month), but based on who I’ve seen practicing at the rink I have a pretty good idea that it’ll be mostly young girls, between 8 and 16, doing lots of doubles and flying spins and fancy footwork, all to the standard repertoire of “Oh Holy Night”s and “Santa Baby”s and “All I Want For Christmas Is You”s. Why do teenage girls love skating to Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey so much? I don’t know.

A second concern was the music. I’ve been getting more comfortable with my program (which is still very rough), which coach approved at 1 minute 40 seconds. It’s also the time limit for pre-bronze free skates, so convenient on that front. But then I saw that the holiday show limits programs to 1 minute 30 seconds, which means I have to do some cutting or speeding up, neither of which is an ideal solution. I’ve been fiddling with alternate edits but the song I picked is only that long to begin with, so it’s hard to cut anything out without butchering the whole flow of the song. Speeding it up makes me feel frantic, all flailing limbs and hurried steps. And I’m not looking to change the music – not this late in the game, at least!

My coach has been out of town for the past two weeks so I couldn’t run it by her before the deadline. Figuring I could always back out at the last minute, I signed up anyway. I have three weeks to get this puppy in shape… Or not. Not is also an option.