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| April 9, 2008 ~ Wednesday |
| First, I would like to thank my wonderful husband Brian for being by my side and supporting me throughout this exhausting journey. I would not have made it without you. Second, thank you to Richard Bretweiser and the rest of the North Jersey Figure Skating Club for their never ending support and believing in me. Third, thanks so much to my coach Joseph Jorgens, even with our short time working together, I have never felt better physically. 3:40 - 4:00 ~ Warmup/Practice I felt on fire and landed all my jump attempts. My spins werent as bad as I expected it to be (like yesterday). I was a little intimidated with the axels flying all over the place, but Joe stopped me before I start obsessing. 6:10 ~ Competition skate I took my time preparing and tried to be calm and remained focused. My warmup was just as awesome as my warmup/practice. I felt ready to go and had no negative thoughts heading into my skate. I took my opening position (changed it at the last second), I felt the music right away and just charged through; Lutz/Loop, Lutz, Flying Camel-BLECH!! no spin and just messy, 1/2-Straight line footwork - as best as I could have done that day, Flip/Loop, Spin Combination - travelled on the camel and just lost control of it, Ena-baur into Salchow/Toe-Loop - my legs werent up to doing the flip (I should have pushed through it though), not having the flip probably cost me 1 tiny bit, Scratch spin - UGH!!!! I didnt know how I would place, as usual I hoped it was good enough. Following me was Ken Ho, a newcomer and he had a lot of difficult elements including two axels. Then Jeremy followed with an awesome performance. I didnt watch Stephen and Akira skate so I had no idea on how things would be placed. Joe predicted that I would end up 3rd or 4th. I just felt so disappointed that I didnt start early enough to prepare the axel and really pushed hard to work on spins. And I have nobody to blame but myself for it. So the dreaded ordinals came up, we were all confused because the placements were not up. Joe proceeded to do the math and had me in 3rd. It wasnt official at the time but I just nearly dropped. And when it did: 1. Ken Ho 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7/1 2. Stephen Trzaska 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 6/3 3. Tim David 3 4 2 4 2 4 2 4/3 TOM 9 4. Jeremy Balcom 5 3 4 2 5 2 3 4/3 TOM 10 5. Akira Kondo 4 5 5 5 4 5 5 7/5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I knew I was being complacent. I thought my artistry would make up the lack of technical element I needed. I was certainly just hoped for the best. This enough makes me mad and really strive to come back strong next season and have all my technical elements solid and in place so there will be no question at the end. I knew something like this had to happen for me to get moving. |