PCAS 2011 Free Skate

(N.B. I will blog about PCAS 2011 in general separately)

Here's how my free skate at PCAS 2011 went.

I had practice ice from 9 to 9:30.  Everything was fine, didn't play my music but ran my program in chunks (it was not horribly crowded but still difficult to run straight through).  I had also signed up and paid for a "warmup session" (20 min) which was at 10 a.m. as it turned out, so I did that too.  Between all that I was pretty warmed up, a little tired, but feeling in good shape.  Went off to get some food and relax.  Came back to the rink, checked in and watched more skating.  Right after skate buddy Melissa's skate it was time to get ready.

Did some stretching and jumping, and warmed up  my muscles a bit.  Got my skates on, and went into the skater's area and checked in with the ice monitor.  Hung out a bit, met my fellow competitors.  There were three of us (Pre-Bronze Men's III, IV) and also two Pre-Bronze Ladies III that we were sharing a warmup with.  Finally they called us on the ice for our warmup.  Skated around, got my legs under me, went through my difficult spots.

Warmup was over, and we watched while the ladies did their thing.  Then the first man went out (I was skating second).  I didn't want to watch so I just looked away and did some visualization of my program and breathed a bit.  Finally it was time to go, skated out and took my position...

The music started and I went to do my 2-foot spin and... something weird happened, I'm not sure what.  Anyway I kinda muffed the 2-foot spin and more or less made it a one foot.  Stopped a little early, waited and did my back pivot, then on into the glides and so forth.  It's kind of a blur.  The waltz jump went well but I was just a fraction of a second early, which was frustrating.  Still I actual heard some crowd applause at that point so that was nice.  Went and did my mohawk sequence which was just okay, a bit slow.  Remembered to do the salchow right after the mohawks and it went okay, then into the spin and did a really good one!  I was pretty jazzed!  Exited the spin and got as far up-ice as I could before I did my t-stop.

Second half, did the bunny hop (think I had some slight weirdness there at the last part), lunge (good), into the 3 (not bad) and toe loop, into the second spin which also went really well!  Exited the spin and went to do the last lunge and it went okay although I think I turned a bit at the end :-(.  Despite it being right before the Z-break it was still pretty slick but did the little salute at the end as best I could... got up and bowed to the judges, collected my tossies (yay!) and got off the ice relieved and happy.

Sat in the box (we entered/exited from the hockey box) and watched the last man skate.  He was a bit nervous and had some mistakes, but much better skills than me (like, a camel spin!).  I had seen the first man skate in practice ice and he had all kinds of good skilz (twizzles!) so I figured I wasn't going to win this one :-).

After that we all left and waited for results -- I got 3rd.  Oh well!  Went and collected my medal, got a picture taken with my competition, and said hi to my friends.  Went and texted some friends and of course JJ and Sonya.

All in all I'm quite happy with how it went.  Not perfect, but quite good, I was really happy that my spins were better, and hey, I didn't fall!  A good note to retire this program on!