got the nails….
The last few days before Sectionals were more stressful than I’d imagined. Problems with my rental car, navigating LA traffic and just keeping all my items with me as I moved from place to place were a bit much on top of last-minute preparations for the competition.
The skating, at least, went well. Coach Gary helped me out both last year and this with Sectionals: we’d met previously at a LA rink and he was already bringing skaters to the competitions. On Thursday he gave me a lesson at Toyota Sports Center.
Toyota is a high-powered place. Frank Carroll, coach to many champions including Michelle Kwan and Evan Lysacek, coaches there. Carroll had two skaters in Sochi: Gracie Gold, the 18 y.o. US champion who placed 4th in ladies, and Denis Ten, who competes for Kazakhstan and won bronze in men’s.
I had a good lesson with Gary. He had watched a video of my program and brought a well-organized list of the elements he wanted to see and go over. We worked on my jumps and spins and I ran through the program with music twice. He told me that when I relax my jumps are nice and high. (I know it’s all the other times I need to work on, times when I get disorganized and just sort of fling myself into the air without the proper timing or arm movements.)
My first run-through was great but on the second one, during my practice time, I started double-footing my jump landings. Gary warned me that if I did that at the competition it would cost me, so don’t do that.
He helped me with my sit spin-back scratch spin combination which is still pretty unreliable. He told me to concentrate, when I change feet to begin the back spin, on stepping onto the ball of my foot and staying there. To get the feeling of the correct spot he had me skate backward on the foot that I back spin on and ride onto the toe, scratching the toe pick into the ice. He also told me to press down my little toe. That’s the position he wants me to keep in the back spin. I tend to balance too far back on my blade instead.
Gary hoped I would not be intimidated by the high-level freestylers skating on the session when I would have my lesson, and luckily I was not. It wasn’t too different from the freestyle sessions at one of the rinks I skate at which has many competitive skaters. I only had one ‘moment,’ after my lesson, when I went to the CD player wanting to have my music played again. I saw a coach sitting there and thought of asking him if he would pop in my music for me, took a closer look and realized it was Frank Carroll! He looked rather impassive, as he does on TV, and was wearing a Kazakhstan Olympic Team jacket. I chickened out and asked coach Gary to start my music again.
Banners at Toyota for the rink’s top skaters including Gracie Gold, Evan Lysacek, and Mirai Nagasu.
After my lesson I packed up at my friend’s house and went to pick up my husband at LAX. I thought I was starting to finesse things since I’d figured out how to drive from my friend’s house to downtown LA without getting on the freeway. Ha! I ended up in a massive DUI dragnet traffic jam instead that made me hours late to pick up my husband. I made an ill-advised pit-stop dash into LAX which resulted in me being the one waiting at the curb as my husband had to move the car along and circled around the airport again!
We drove to Ontario where the competition would be held and at 10 we finally got into our hotel. On Friday I had an official practice ice. My lutz was being balky, fortunately a skater from my rink who is also a coach was there and was able to give me advice to get it back on track. I left my almost-new fleece jacket and a pair of Norwegian knitted gloves that were a gift from my exchange student at the rink after my practice. I realized my mistake right away, but they were gone and I never saw them again.
After a lot of running around and looking I resigned myself to buying cheap replacements– not that easy to find winter clothing in March in LA, but I picked up a vest on clearance at Kohl’s that evening. Returning to our hotel and settling into bed around midnight, I asked my husband to check that my competition dress was in the closet. Eeek! It was still at my friend’s house in LA. Earning lots of husbandly brownie points (I’m forever in his debt) my husband drove to LA to retrieve it, getting back to our hotel at 2:45 a.m.
gotta have the dress…..
To be continued……
Related Posts:
Pacific Coast Adult Sectionals: Part II My skate at 2014 Pacific Coast Adult Sectionals.
My skate at Pacific Coast Adult Sectionals Skating at my first big competition, the Pacific Coast Adult Sectionals.
Pacific Coast Adult Sectionals 2018: Part II Practice day at Toyota Sports Center and competition day at Pacific Coast Adult Sectionals in Pasadena.
Passed my Bronze Freestyle Skating Test! Taking the USFSA adult bronze freestyle test.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m so sorry you lost your jacket and gloves but OMG the dress! Glad it could be retrieved. Can’t wait to hear more.
Marcia recently posted..Currently
Yeah that was not a happy moment when I discovered that…. but all’s well that ends well.
Oh no! I’m sad that you left the fleece and the gloves at the rink. Do they have a lost and found that you can call and ask about? Thank goodness for wonderful husbands who are willing to drive for hours to pick up things we forgot. I’m jealous that you got to see Frank Carroll! That is so cool! Can’t wait to hear part 2 of your story, Mary!
Eva recently posted..Chocolate coconut milk ice cream
Thanks, Eva, I did check their lost-and-found a couple of times as well as call the rink a few days later, no dice. Yes, my friend called my husband my ‘roadie’– he kind of was! If I’d arrived at Toyota earlier I may have been able to watch Gracie Gold, Evan Lysacek, and Denis Ten practice. I would have loved that and if it hadn’t been such a crazy day I would have been able to do it.
Yes, the dress and nails looked terrific! And wow, what an ordeal!
Lori recently posted..Color of the Day
Thanks, Lori, I was quite happy with both, I need to let the friend who made the dress know how well I thought it worked out. The hassles were…. interesting…. some were self-imposed, for sure.
Wow – good thing you remembered to check for your dress. Yikes! What a great hubby, although I’m not sure I could have fallen asleep after that panic attack.
Joanne recently posted..A Culinary Review Recipe for Mushroom Potato Lasagna
Yes, good thing. If we hadn’t noticed until morning it would have been so much harder and more stressful for him drive through rush hour traffic and try to get back in time for my event.
Hi Mary,
You are telepathic! You put a message on my blog last night and earlier in the evening I was thinking that I should check up on you to see what you’ve been up too. You’ve been pretty busy competing I see. It must be very nerve wracking! But I’m sure it must have it’s rewards or you wouldn’t be doing it. I’ve glad you were able to retrieve the dress—and your husband got to do a little site seeing.
Yes, I have been thinking of you and your blog, too, I’m glad you are having some nice time at home with your son! Competing can certainly be nerve-wracking but it does motivate me strongly to learn and grow as a skater, and I feel like it’s a big part of the purpose of my skating, to put everything together into a program and put it out there.