PCAS 2013 Free Skate

I skated my "Battle for the Beat" free skate program this morning at Pacific Coast Adult Sectionals.  I was in a combined group of 3 (Pre-Bronze Men II-III-IV).  I was skating first, which concerned me until I discovered that our warmup was combined with the preceding group (Pre-Bronze Women V).  There were two women in that event, so I was really skating 3rd.

After my practice ice I relaxed and ate a banana and an apple, then about 30 minutes before I got my skates on.  About 15 minutes before I checked in with the ice monitor and waited to go out to skate.

Finally it was time for the warmup.  Went out and my first thought was "wow! Fast ice!"  Although I'd skated on it twice before, this was clean ice, not chewed up, and it was quite fast though fairly soft; really good ice actually. 

I had a good warmup; ran through some spins (I got a really, really good one, 3 revs easy) then warmed up salchow with some indifferent results.  Left that and went on to warm up toe loop, then waltz-toe.  I actually got a good waltz-toe (I smiled over at Tracy and Melissa, who understood how important that was) and then went back to salchow and spins.  Then they called us off the ice.

Finally it was my turn to skate; I went on the ice after the previous skater was done but had to wait a bit since they had to announce our event.  Finally they called my name and I skated out to take my place.  My music started, and off I went..

It's mostly a blur at this point.  The first half of the program went really well and I was skating pretty fast!  Got to the first spin and it didn't really happen... grrr!!! so I had to kill a little time before the punch-punch-punch thing in the program.  Off into the salchow (not so great), then around the circle into the waltz-toe and I LANDED IT.  Woohoo!!  I was really happy about that.  Off into the traveling RFI3s and final spin (which I think was kinda short, again) and finished right on time.  Yay!

Took my bows, and skated off...  watched my two competitors after me.  The first, Mark, had nicer jumps than me and did waltz-waltz instead of just one, and a sal-toe combo as well as a single sal that looked pretty nice.  The second one, William, was a little rough in spots but had great spins and a flip!  Yow.

When the results came out, it was another last place finish -- a bronze medal for me.  I'm a bit disappointed, but only a bit.  I think I skated that program the best I've ever done, by a long shot, and landed the combo, so I'm really pretty happy with it.  It's a good note to retire that program on.

Tomorrow I'm skating my dramatic program at 12:15.